Ridecamp: [RC] [Guest] Hungry Buzzard Ride

Joe Schoech jschoech@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

My wife, Tamra Schoech, managed the Hungry Buzzard ride in Alabama last 
weekend.  We want to thank all of the riders who participated for coming to 
the bi-annual SERA benefit ride.  We hope you found the trails challenging, 
but rewarding.  It was great to be able to ride again in the Talladega 
National Forest after a seven year absence.

Tamra and I want to extend our sincere apologies to those endurance folks 
who were not able to find a suitable parking spot and decided to go back 
home.  Unfortunately, we and the Forest Service were surprised to find that 
on this same weekend a local saddle club had scheduled a trail ride on the 
same trails and at the same parking facility.  I estimate that they had 60 
folks attend their trail ride, with 40 trailers.  Of the two user groups on 
this public land, we were the only ones with a permit.  We had posted 
announcements of the ride, weeks in advance in all of the appropriate 
places at the camp. We did not know of the conflict of schedules until 
Friday morning before the ride.

Although the Forest Service did all they could to mediate the parking 
dilemma, we simply ran out of room.  A satellite parking area was 
established, but that was filled up quickly.  We appreciate all who were 
willing to park ?uncomfortably? close to one another or the trees.  We had 
no trail-use conflicts due to the efforts of both the trail riders and the 
endurance participants ­ to this, we thank all of the endurance riders for 
being good ambassadors of the sport.

We were able to park all of those who were able to get to the camp before 
the ride meeting at 5PM on Friday.  We don?t know exactly how many 
endurance folks decided not to stay, but if it was one, it was one too many 
and we are very sorry.  I also know there were non-endurance folks who also 
decided to leave as a result of little or no parking - this is no 
consolation to any of the endurance folks who had planned on having a great 
weekend in the Talladega National Forest at the Hungry Buzzard ride, but 
were unable to find a suitable parking spot.  Again, we apologize.

Joe Schoech


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