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MBO PHOTOS
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ABOUT MT. BIKE OREGON: GIVING BACKMt. Bike Oregon (MBO) is all about community; celebrating the mt. bike community, but also celebrating the gorgeous Oakridge/Westfir area. It is the ultimate mt. biker's dream getaway and community party, complete with meals, shuttles, an expo of bike companies, demo bikes, contest and a free nightly beer garden. GROUPS WE SUPPORTCity of Oakridge Park Fund - Green Waters Park is home base for MBO, and we feel it is important to give back to the local parks fund.Kiwanis - The Kiwanis are our dinner chefs. With the money they earned in 2006-2008, the Kiwanis were able to buy over 300 helmets for local kids. They also used the money to support other local projects that benefit the community. Moose Lodge - The Moose are our breakfast chefs. Some of these funds help children's charities and other local events, such as our annual 4th of July Fireworks Show though the Moose Lodge Oakridge Library - Oakridge is getting a new library five times the size of our current very small library. Grant funds cover the cost of the building, but the library relies on donations to support their fund to buy more books. We are so proud to be able to contribute to this fund! Booster Club - The funds are used to help teams and activities, everything from band to football. Kids who benefit from this help volunteer at MBO. Grad Night - Grad Night is the high school seniors' final trip, a safe and fun get together. Teen and parent volunteers involved with Grad Night have volunteered with us in 2006 and 2007. Preschool - Sadly our preschool has lost summer school funding so, the preschool parents will help this summer to help keep the school open in the summer. Homeless School Children - We donate to a program that buys bags and supplies and helps feed homeless school kids. Police Reserves - The Police reserves handle our security. Many of the officers are mt. bikers themselves. As reserve officers, they pay for their reserve supplies from their own pockets, and our donation helps cover those costs. Sports Teams - These are set up and take down staff we donate money to all the sports teams that help. Track Resurfacing Project We donated money to help the track get resurfaced. Oakridge has a long and strong proud track and cross country program that has produced many team and individual state champions. Trails Fund - MBO donates to local charities including GOATS (Greater Oakridge Area Trail Stewards) The idea of MBO came to us many years ago. THE MBO STORYRandy Dreiling, a trail guide in Oakridge, wanted to start a mt. bike tour company in the early 1990's, but there was a steep trail ahead. The mills in the Oakridge area had just closed and some upset citizens blamed mt. bikers for the mill closing.Fast forward to 1999 and finally things were changing. Mt. biking was starting to become more popular in Oakridge/Westfir and businesses started to notice. Randy moved to Oakridge and started Oregon Adventures which conducted small tours limited to 12 people, but he wanted a bigger event. Randy's first attempt at a non racing mt. bike event was called Mt. Bike week, but without a budget and as a new event, it didn't take off. But that didn't deter Randy. He knew that with the right support, a mt. bike event could be a great success. After years of trying to sell people on how great Oakridge is, Randy finally got Porter Childs to come experience the riding. Porter is the owner of Good Sport Promotion, a Portland-based event coordination company with extensive experience coordinating large-scale bike events such as Reach the Beach, the Portland Twilight Criterium and the Worst Day of the Year Ride. Randy and Porter hit the trails so Randy could share his vision. They rode five trails in two days and by the second trail Porter was hooked. The two of them stayed up until 4am talking about the dream event and how to make it a reality. Porter invested his money and company into the event because he saw clearly Randy's vision. In the first year, River City Bicycles, a Portland-based bike shop, and New Belgium Brewing both came on board with support and financial backing. Local mt. bike club the Disciples of Dirt (DOD) guided riders on the trails. The hundreds of miles of trails that the event participants ride and the trails that DOD maintains all year long and they agreed to give support to having hundreds of people out there for the weekend. The first MBO was held in 2005 and there were more guide than riders. But the riders came from over 10 states and they had a blast, went home and told all their friends. The website MTBR got a lot of traffic on the message boards and the news spread like wildfire. By our second year in 2006, the event finally came into its own and sold out with 300 riders from 20 states. So in 2007 we added a second weekend, but we're committed to keeping our numbers small. From the get-go, we've recognized that MBO is special because of the community that comes together to ride and we want to preserve that awesome atmosphere. We also want to respect the trails and keep the impact to a minimum. Because of the success of Mt. Bike Oregon, both the City of Oakridge and Lane County, Oregon have given us tourism grant funds from room tax funds to support the 2007 and 2008 MBO's. We'd like to send out a special thank you to the Disciples of dirt for guiding riders all weekend long, and to our staff and volunteers who drive shuttles, serve meals and general make MBO tick. We couldn't do it without these additional 75 people! We look forward to you making this your annual tradition and we hope you'll come back to join us year after year! Sincerely, Randy Dreiling And Team MBO, the camp counselors of Mt. Bike Oregon "That is the magic word, single-track. We have the narrow trails where you feel like you're way back in the middle of nowhere, where you don't meet another soul for hours on end, if at all. And it's very fast single-track, smooth, rolling, very speedy and very beautiful."
~David Chamberlain, Oakridge Resident |
