Every year someone raises the question “Should there be Paydirt?” usually this question comes from a racer, but in reality it is about more than just racing. I would like to take some time to explain what it is all about.
First, what is Paydirt? Paydirt is the program that records volunteer trail work hours for JORBA (Jersey Off Road Bicycle Assoc). The program has several purposes. It creates incentives for mountain bikers to volunteer in local public parks. It encourages mountain bikers to build working relationships with land mangers. It encourages trail maintainers to record their volunteer hours so that the hours can be used towards grants. It helps build working relationships between trail maintainers, race promoters and land mangers, assuring bike access and the continuation of bike community fund raising events like racing on public lands.
So, where and how did Paydirt start? Paydirt, a concept brainstormed by trail advocates Wally Tunison and Sarah Frost in 1996, was the birth of Jorba. Wally, a long time motorcycle racer adopted the idea from enduro racing where dirt bike racers had to do trail work to allow access onto public lands for racing. Sarah created a similar program called Paydirt to encourage mountain bike racers to step up and help land managers maintain trails to keep bike access in New Jersey Parks. At that time, both Essex and Bergen Counties had banned bikes from the trails leaving many mountain bikers with no local trails to ride. Since then, Paydirt has logged over 60,000 volunteer man hours in actual trail work, and has received recognition from many land mangers. If you have ridden trails in NJ, you already know that there are some pretty cool trails that mountain bikers have built and maintained legally.
As a trail maintainer, I can confirm that the series race point system brings in many hours, especially in the final month. I am sure that many serious racers find Paydirt very annoying, and would rather spend 100% of their time training. They may say it has nothing to do with racing, but in actuality, it has everything to do with racing on really cool trails on public land. These trails would not exist to race on if racers did not come out to help. Of course not all racers know this, because they do not take the time to get involved or look beyond racing, hence the need for education. Every year a new wave of racers enter the fold, uneducated about trail access and the future of the sport. As they take the hook, they immediately learn about Paydirt and come out to get their points and see what it is about. Many of Jorba's trail care leaders started as racers. Some still are racers. It is not "me" or "them", it is "us". Paydirt is built in education for those that enter the sport through racing. There are places for serious racing like National Championships, which by the way are on private land. However if you want racing on cool public trails to live on, your best bet is to support the Paydirt program.
As far as the grants go. Each Jorba park has a volunteer leader or trail boss. Ideally, each park should have 4-5 leaders to keep things running smoothly. Jorba is lucky to have one person per park that will handle the responsibilities. We all know that when we are not at our paid jobs, we want to be out riding our bikes. Besides exercise being good for our physical health, mountain biking is an important part of our emotional health in the form of stress relief. Trail bosses take their personal time to lead trail work crews, and they still need to take time to record hours, file reports and make proposals with the park. This is where Paydirt comes in. You may think that you are the annoying racer that is pleading to get signed off for points, but you are actually helping Jorba get recorded for grant purposes. Jorba thanks the trail bosses and the racers for following through with paperwork that not only advertises what Jorba does, but helps the project and tool grant process as well.
As the Paydirt Administrator, I may be biased about how great Paydirt has been for mountain biking in New Jersey, but by having my eye on it every week, I have seen great things happen for the sport. In 2013 racers in the H2H series performed close to 1200 hours of volunteer trail work. The state of NJ values it's volunteer trail work at $23. an hour. That is $27,600. that Paydirt brings in for it's trails from racers. Do you like riding Jungle Habitat, Six Mile Run, Ringwood, Allaire and Allamuchy? ...much of them built on Paydirt. I urge you to support Paydirt and most importantly, get involved. For those of you that have participated and support Paydirt, Jorba thanks you! .... Now let's go out and ride!
Ellen
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