Volunteer for the Michigan Mountain Biking Association

2/18/09 Posted in News  |  0 Comments

Volunteer. Yes you. This is the year for you to give back to your community, or give more, or bring that friend or family member along. The Michigan Mountain Biking Association has plenty of opportunity to get you off the couch or off your bike from digging in the dirt or working with your local bike shop, or keeping track of cycling related bills. Below are just a few examples to get more involved.

Working the trails – Be proud of the trail you ride on by working on it!  Build and maintain sustainable trail by keeping the trails safe to ride, rerouting when the trails are too washed out. We had nearly 12,000 trail work hours.

Join a Committee - Three new committees are forming: marketing, advocacy, and membership committees. The marketing committee with work on bike shop liaisons, media contacts and keeping the store up and running. The advocacy helps launch new trails, work with legislators, coordinate communications with local land managers And the membership committee will help keep a MMBA presence at mountain biking events across the shape, recruit new members, and help maintain the current members.

Newsletter contribution – The Bent Rim Bugle newsletter comes out on a quarterly basis and is always in need of fresh stories and help with layout and design. Bring your creative edge to the MMBA.

Put on a trail school – The biggest value the MMBA brings to any land steward are our educated, committed trail workers. Many trail workers go through our trail school learning how to build sustainable trails and what to look for when building new trail.

Organize a kids ride through the Mountain Kids – The Mountain Kids program has a ready-to-go trailer of 14 kids bikes. You can help a kid fall in love mountain biking.

Join the Bike Patrol – Love riding your bike and keeping people safe on the trail? This team of volunteers hands out water to dehydrated trail users, helps fix broken chains, give directions, and are Red Cross certified to help out in case of a medical emergency.

There are many more ways to be involved than a shovel in the ground. I hope we can see out the trail and maintain Michigan as one of the most unique places to ride in the country.

The Michigan Mountain Biking Association is a volunteer organization that promotes and protects mountain biking throughout Michigan. We have 2,500 members that help maintain over 1000 miles of trails throughout Michigan, not just for mountain biker, but for any outdoor enthusiast. To get more involved contact the MMBA Executive Director, Marne Smiley at execdir@mmba.org