Glaciers

 

It sure would be nice to see some thaw happening in the gears of county and city management with respect to the San Diego Mountain Biking Association/National Mountain Bike Patrol. But, we might see the end to several glaciers around the world before anything in government happens.

I spoke with a representative from the county before I went to Moab in the beginning of October and she claimed that she was unable to get the ear of her boss to talk about the NMBP and the coordination required to make a viable alternative across county and city governments for us to volunteer without needing background checks and orientations for each park and city and the county itself. Now, almost 5 weeks later, she still hasn't been able to meet with him. It's no wonder so little happens.

I have also tried to contact the trails coordinator for the city of San Diego about 10 times. He returned my call once and left me a message. I've left my cell and home phone number and email, but I'm getting frustrated. On top of that, he's not even the person I need to deal with, but is supposed to be able to point me in the right direction.

On a more positive note, CNLM, which manages La Costa, Flightline and Calaveras is very interested in having us patrol, but I'm caught in that loop of the person I am talking to has to talk to someone else who probably has to talk to someone else and then the chain flows back. I'm waiting for a call back right now...

Maybe we'll have a patrol going by 2099 :(

NMBP and the County

Today I spoke with Cheryl Wegner from the County of San Diego about the SDMBA/NMBP and the ideas that I had for how we could work together. I was encouraged that the county is currently in discussions with the cities of San Diego and Chula Vista regarding how to synchronize their volunteer requirements for areas they jointly administer. I thought that they would have had to work out something like this long ago, after all, it's not like any one of them just came into existance.

In any event, I had a great conversation with Cheryl, and she liked the idea of creating a unified training program that included the appropriate information from each of the rangers and land managers concerning their parks.

I was not excited about her statement that some rangers would want patrollers to notify them a day in advance, but I suppose there's nothing wrong with it, after all, I generally know that I'm going to ride some place a day or two before I ride there. I guess my days of truly spontaneous riding are over (or maybe it just seemed like spontaneous riding and it was really just a weekly routine of multiple days riding in the same park). In any event, I guess we can notify the ranger ahead of time if there is going to be a patrol.

The major issue at this point is to get all of the agencies to agree on the same background check rather than requiring a background check for the county as well as each city. That could be costly and time consuming. I offered her the idea of a form which specified where the results were to be sent and that could include all of the appropriate cities, county, state and federal land agencies. Alternatively, we discussed the idea that whatever background check was the most stringent could be adopted and then make the county the source of the information. The county would then notify the viarious cities of the result. This, of course, would put a serious delay in the procedure as agreements were ironed out between the county and each city. I doubt that there will be a fight over which agency gets to claim the volunteer hours, but many things could bog this down.