2012 is THE year for Velo MSM. Why is that? Well so many things have been happening with our little collective that it’s hard to even keep up. It seems like every week I’m getting an email regarding amazing new developments at our little and mostly unknown playground.
Four years ago when this all started, if you tried to convince me that Velo MSM was to become one of Ottawa’s Hottest Mt biking destinations I would have laughed and offered you another beer. For good reason, our effort was 2 independent groups building trails in 2 different areas or the mountain. Group A was building trails around Lac Fournier unknowing that Group B was pushing very hard at building a trail from top of Cheval to the top of Vanier. We didn’t have a vision, a plan, or even know about each other’s work. It was just a bunch of mountain bikers looking for new local trails to ride, bored with the typical dirt bike/ski-doo trails littered everywhere in the Outaouais. So we started to cut some trails of what is now known as Ridgeback (Group A) and Pilsner (Group B). To date, this has been a wild ride, and with what’s planned for this 2012 season… the ride has only just begun.
So what will 2012 bring you ask? Well if you follow the 2012 phenomenon you will hear of the end of times, or a looming financial meltdown, or maybe even of global unrest, but my favourite is: “It’s the end of one age and the start of a new one”. Either way, one thing that I am certain of, is that 2012, will bring momentous change to Velo MSM, a start of a “New Age” per say in the Ottawa mountain biking scene.
So with so much planned what’s our first step? Well in today’s web enabled world we need a new supercharged website. We want this website to be our unified voice to you. We’ve redesigned the site from the ground up, paid for better hosting and installed a publishing platform so all our members can contribute from time to time. You see, Velo MSM is a self-organized collective; we are not your typical organization with rules, membership costs or leaders. We are just a bunch of normal mountain bikers (ok some of us not so normal) after a common goal: To Build Exciting Mountain Biking Trails for us all to ride. Since this little experiment of ours has blossomed so much in the last year, the time has come to start showcasing all of our hard work. We really want to share this awesome playground we are building; in hopes you can enjoy it too. We plan for the site to have all the standard stuff, an about section, trail descriptions, maps ect… But we also want showcase our work by the use of new media such as the trail day photos, videos of our friends and members ripping it up, regular blog posts about current events, upcoming trail days and a place for you to stop by and discover what’s shaking at Velo MSM.
So here it is in all its glory! The New Website …(Crowd Cheers)… We hope you like it. There is still a lot of work to be done but its standing and looks pretty slick if you ask me. This is just the beginning for us, and now we have the fancy platform to showcase the exciting things to come in 2012 and beyond.
The 2012 Velo MSM Mountain Biking season will be epic. Our first Major announcement will be revealed at the Ottawa Outdoor & Adventure Travel Show. Come by the OMBA booth and check us out. I promise you will be surprised with what we have to show you.
Happy trails!
Your friendly Velo MSM Web Grunt,
K