News/Events

Please join us on Sat, March 1 at Freedom Park for:

TRAIL WORK: Meet at 9:00 AM on Trail C, Access C1 (just inside the park entrance) to help build a big berm.  Bring work gloves, water, and a wheelbarrow and shovel if you can.  Please park down in the parking lot and ride your bike to the work site.

CLUB MEETING & BOARD ELECTION, WITH LUNCH: Final voting for the Board election (current EVMA members should have received an e-mail on 2/24/25 with instructions to vote electronically) and conduct other club business, as well as socializing.

RIDE after the meeting.

***If you are interested in helping in any capacity (Trail Captain; social media; membership management; graphic design; anything at all) please come to the meeting. 

Want to get push notifications when trails are closed due to weather/wet conditions?  James City County just added Freedom Park to their Rainout Line.  Sign up at the Rainout Line Website https://rainoutline.com/subscribe/notify/7572392002/0 and use the tabs to choose app, text, or e-mail alerts.  You can sign up to get alerts only for Freedom Park Trails A-E, or any JCC facilities that face weather closures.  (*This is ONLY for Freedom Park bike trail closures, but if Freedom trails are closed, we should probably avoid nearby trails like New Quarter, YRSP, Wahrani, Harwoods Mill.)  You can also still call 757-259-4022 x1, or visit here: https://jamescitycountyva.gov/Facilities/Facility/Details/Freedom-Park-7.

Night Rides begin Tues, Nov 5th. Important info:

• Tuesdays at Harwoods Mill; Wednesdays at New Quarter; Thursdays at Freedom Park.  First rides are Nov 5/6/7, 2024. 
• At NQ Park, meet in the first small lot outside the gates.
• All rides require sign-in, so please arrive by 5:45 PM to sign in and get geared up to ride at 6:00 PM.
• All rides start at 6:00 PM; we must be off the trails by 7:45 PM; we must be out of the parks by 8:00 PM.
• All rides are weather dependent.  If the weather looks at all questionable, or we’ve had rain recently, check your e-mail and/or EVMA.org by 5:00 PM (or sooner) to check ride status.
• 2 lights required: one each for your helmet and bars.
• These are GROUP RIDES.  The parks/trails are not open for anybody to just ride around by themselves.  You must be there for the 6:00 PM start with the group.
• If you have any questions or ARE WILLING TO BE A RIDE LEADER, contact us at evmamembership@gmail.com.  We need some backups for when the regular ride leaders can’t be there.

We get lots of new EVMA members but many miss the annual renewal e-mails (spam folder, too many e-mails, etc.) and their membership lapses.  Download the "Wild Apricot for Members" app from the Apple App Store or Google Play to get renewal reminders on your phone and never miss a renewal again!  It's free and you can renew and pay right from your phone.

1. May 1-4, 2025, Douthat State Park & Carvin's Cove.  We've been going to the natural, rocky trails at Douthat for decades and within the last several years added the day trip to CC for some purpose-built bike trails.
2. Sept 11-14, 2025, Allegrippis Trails at Rays Town Lake, PA.  Fun, flowy, mountain trails with enough elevation for fun, but not too much to wear you out.  This is a great intro to mountain riding.  We plan to work in a stop at Cacapon State Park in WV on the way there and/or back to try it out.
   
3. Oct 15-19, 2025, Brevard, NC to ride Dupont & Pisgah.  An East Coast destination!  A group of us have a rental house near Brevard. Find your own lodging and meet us to ride.
   

Trail Reversals! We asked Freedom Park to reverse the riding direction of trails D & E for February.   Look out for the cool reversible-direction signs at the trail heads/ends to be changed from Saturday, Feb 1 through Fri, Feb 28. (UPDATE: reversals remain in effect well into March, to be changed back....sometime.)  We haven’t reversed these trails in a while and we’d like to make it somewhat regular.  In many informal discussions with various EVMA members over the last few years, we’ve heard mixed reactions about reversals.  We can’t please everybody.  Here is some common feedback:

• Many (but not all) people say that they enjoy D reversed occasionally.  A good number really want D reversed more often. 
  
• The consensus is that many people seem to not enjoy E reversed.  But some do like it reversed sometimes just to get something different, even if they agree that it flows better forward.
• D & E work well as one big loop, with trail heads/ends that line up.  It works well to have both reversed at the same time to keep the loop (even if E backwards is not most people’s favorite).
• D & E have few access points, so there’s little risk of people entering the trails there and going the wrong way during reversals.  So if we’re going to reverse some trails, D & E make sense.  We’ll never reverse C during normal park hours, as you can’t ride the features reversed. (But we sometimes night-ride C backwards which many agree is fun!)  Trails A & C have too many access points for people to enter the trail, so there’s no good way to notify/enforce reversed directions. 
• If you haven’t tried D & E reversed yet, give them a try.  Even if you don’t like them as much reversed, at least it will be like riding a new and different trail.

The Tuesday night (28 Jan) ride at Harwood's and Wednesday (29 Jan) retirees ride are canceled this week. We're giving the trails time to dry out, especially Harwood's. If you ride there solo, then be careful of the entrance to the "B" trail; it's become a mudpit. We'll be fixing that later this week.

SATURDAY 18 JAN, 8 AM - 12 PM - Harwood's trails are closed for the annual foot race supported by Newport News Parks.

Friday 4:00 PM is ON, Saturday is cancelled.  Explanation below.

• Friday: meet at 4:00 PM along the park road at access C1 (near park entrance) to help unload 2 tons of turfstones.  We have 5 people confirmed and could use only a few more.  Bring work gloves.
• Saturday - CANCELLED: The plan was to meet at 10:00 AM and haul a 4-ton trailer load of purchased dirt to use along with the turfstones to rebuild a berm on trail C.  But our dirt supplier (JSG, next to Freedom Park) is not loading dirt now because their dirt source is still covered in snow.  So we considered some smaller projects using pushpiles of dirt at Freedom Park, but one of our project leaders was on site and said that the ground is frozen and digging will be no good.
• So we’ll look for the earliest chance to reschedule, which will probably be at least a few weeks out.  Sorry!

Tonights ride at Freedom is a go.  6 PM.