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Writer's pictureJim Foley
Mar 21, 20238 min read

March Newsletter

Updated: Aug 23, 2023

What we’ve been doing



The Latest

We have a new Secretary - Lorie Still!

Girlz Gone Riding Orange County Chapter, ride leader and member of Trail Angels

Scroll down for more about this awesome addition to our team. We are building several workgroups, let us know if you would like to participate:

  • Grants and Funding

  • County MTB Trail Inventory

  • Trail Boss Development

  • Economic Impact Assesment

  • Land Management Agreements

The Dirt

  • OCMTBA and The Foothill Knights High School and Middle School MTB Team sponsored a trail work day at Santiago Oaks. We had a turnout of approximately 30 team members and coaches.

  • We organized 2 trail work days in Santiago Oaks.

  • OCMTBA and OCMB brought people out for Trail Work events with LCF(Laguna Canyon Foundation) on TnA (Laguna Ridge) and Mentally Sensitive (Sheep Run) trails.

  • Oakley and OCMTBA are sponsoring a trail work event for Oakley employees coming up in March in Whiting Ranch.

The Trails

  • Met with City of Irvine representation to discuss increased open access days, Great Park bike projects and potential development of MTB specific recreation areas

  • We met with California Parks management to express our support for the renewal of the lease that provides access to the San Clemente Single Tracks in the San Onofre State Beach

  • We met with new City of Laguna Beach city council member Mark Orgill to discuss trail systems and management in city owned lands not presently managed by Orange County Parks.


The Partners

  • We are beyond excited by the continued support of our local retailers, Rock n Road was the first retailer to include a membership with the purchase of a new MTB and now it's being adopted by more of our awesome local bike shops!

  • We are working with High School and MIddle School Teams to sponsor trail work days. Foothill Knights was our first and we are setting up further events with other local school teams.

  • We are working with local riding groups to sponsor trail work days. ThinkMTB is sponsoring two Laguna Canyon Foundation events on Lizard Trail and Old Emerald Falls this month.

  • Our President, David Browning, has been selected to a position on the Orange County Parks Trails Subcommittee and will be representing your interests for a two year term starting at the March 27 meeting.


Upcoming Events



The Good Dirt Ride, a community event, now in it's 16th year has been announced for September 30, 2023. Put it on your calender, this is an event for you, run by you and with a goal of raising funds that benefit you! Registration will open on April 1, thanks in advance for your support.Register Here

Our Supporters

With two stores in Tustin and Trabuco Canyon, The Path is By Riders and for Riders since 1998. In an effort to support our cycling community and help grow OCMTBA, The Path is offering a free one year membership to the first twenty people that buy a new mountain bike in March!


Lorie's Story Lorie was introduced to mountain biking by her husband 30 years ago, but her participation took a backseat while raising two boys. She was reintroduced to mountain biking when her oldest joined the high school cycling league in 2013. She volunteered to manage the team and while doing so, came to the realization that the riders were having more fun while she sat in the pit-zone during races. She started riding her 14 year old son's bike whenever she could, and eventually bought her own. Lorie continued managing the high school team for several years, even after her kids graduated. In 2018, she joined Girlz Gone Riding Orange County Chapter, completed volunteer training, and now actively leads monthly club rides. In addition, she is a member of Trail Angels. Her mountain biking passion is cross country and cross country endurance rides. She loves the adventure and camaraderie of mountain biking, and is focused on introducing others to the exhilarating sport!


Local Focus


The Path Bike Shop From Val Vanderpool & Tani Walling Tani Walling opened The Path Bike Shop in 1998 in a 500 square-foot space on a shoestring budget in Tustin, California. At the time, Tani was also working at Tustin Brewing Co. and he continued to juggle both jobs until 2001 when he was able to focus on The Path full time. The Path was mostly a service and repair shop to start, but it didn’t take too long for Tani to start adding inventory and staff. Over the years, The Path has expanded its footprint as neighboring suites have opened up in the building. In 2009, The Path moved its retail store into its current location in the building next door. Today, the original shop space is used for storage, and our retail store is now approximately 5,000 square feet. In October 2012, The Path opened a second location in Trabuco Canyon, California. The Path Bike Shop Live Oak is located near popular Orange County trails, including the Luge. It's slightly smaller than the Tustin store, but is still well stocked and has a full-service repair department. The Path’s roots are in mountain biking and the shop has become known for its vast inventory and knowledge of off-road product and technology, but both shops serve all cyclists. As The Path has grown, it has expanded its partnerships to include more than a dozen bike brands. The Path also has a huge selection of apparel, accessories, parts and components. Both shops offer a full menu of repair services, including specialty in-house services like suspension and dropper post rebuilds and custom wheel builds. In 2020, The Path launched an online store where the majority of its inventory is available for purchase for pick up in-store or to ship within the U.S. The Path also recently relaunched its bike demo program and continues to add more models so customers can try before they buy. The shop also hosts several group rides in various locations across Orange County, including its popular Women’s Wednesday mountain bike ride every other week from March to October. The Path also produces a podcast hosted by Tani and longtime Path ambassador Eric “Auk” Akiyoshi. New episodes of The Path Bike Shop podcast are released every other Wednesday and cover a wide array of topics, including shop news, local events, broader bicycle industry news, and more, and they occasionally have guests on the show. Episodes can be found on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and elsewhere online. The Path has some exciting things in the works for 2023 for its Tustin shop – stay tuned for updates!


Foothill High School Mountain Bike Teams From Team Director Bonnie Walker In 2011, two sophomore students at Foothill High School wanted to introduce a new club to the student body. They were successful and The Foothill Mountain Bike Club was formed. The dedication of these young athletes, a team of two, and the vision to share their passion for mountain biking has now actually become two Foothill teams. The Foothill High School Mountain Bike Team consists of Foothill High School athletes and any middle school athlete grades 6-8 who live within the team boundaries. The 2023 Foothill MTB Team consists of 33 young men and women. The Foothill Composite Mountain Bike Team, our newest team introduced in January 2023, consists of high school aged athletes 9th-12th who are not attending Foothill High School specifically, but whom are either homeschooled or privately school. The 2023 Composite Team consists of 13 athletes. Together we are a united team of 46 athletes, along with our skilled and fully certified coaching staff of 19 adult volunteers. The organization the Foothill teams operate under is called SoCal Youth Cycling League. The SoCal league provides registration platforms, coach mentoring, coach training, student athlete clinics along with securing venues to hold competitive race events within the Southern California Region. The SoCal League consists of 74 individual high school teams. We may be a competitive cross country mountain bike race team, but our primary goal is to ensure our athletes are learning to ride safe, develop their riding skills, learn about trail etiquette but most of all, have fun. Many people may have seen us buzzing around local Orange County trails wearing our bright golden-yellow team jerseys. Some may have even seen us giving back to the community by volunteering our time to organizations like OC Parks, OCMTBA and RaceOC to name a few, with trail maintenance or other volunteer opportunities. If you would like further information about our team or the SoCal Youth Cycling League, you can reach out to the Team Director, Bonnie Walker at foothilldirt@gmail.com. www.socalyouthcycling.org IG @foothilldirt FaceBook @foothilldirt

Bomber Crew MTB From Co-Founder Tatsunori Tsuchida Bomber Crew was founded, well due to a confluence of a few events and inspirations. In the autumn of 2020 my shop, Tokyo Automotive had received the pink slip of a vehicle that a customer no longer was interested in fixing. We were going to go the normal route of fixing it to become a loaner car, but soon found myself wanting to gift the vehicle for both charitable and PR reasons. I reached out to my local Placentia Chamber of Commerce to ask who would want the vehicle. After a little while of searching, my very uncle like friends, Roger St. John and Michael Beaver (both veterans) called up to say the Placentia Veteran's Village would like the car. The Prius would be used to transport residents and staff to various errands including trips to the VA Hospital. The process of getting the Toyota ready wasn't complicated in terms of the work, but it did take months. The primary problem was the Hybrid battery, but we also put wheels and tires with a graphics package. But this is in between paying jobs. So if the shop got busy we would put it on the back burner. I think it was April of 2021 is when we gifted the prius to PVV/New Directions for Veterans. Meanwhile I was riding my bike. Freddy (Fred Salazar) and I were a part of a Facebook group called SoCal Tundra Outlaws (a bunch of Toyota Tundra enthusiasts), and he puts up a post "does anybody on this group mountain bike?" or something to that effect. I responded and we met at the Fullerton Loop and ended up becoming friends. Months later we (Greg, Nick, Fred & Myself) were riding Santiago Oaks when Fred exclaims... Hey Tatsu I saw you gave a Car to a veteran's prius yeah I wanna do something positive for Veterans through Mountain Bikes! uh, OK you know I'm a liberal right? ...& all of a sudden I'm the admin of a Veteran Mountain Biking Social Club. Turns out Freddy has a background in Graphic Design. No, I don't mean professionally, but he's dabbled in it his whole life. His alter ego on Instagram from a past life is PinHeadFred, and he starts to dedicate a ton of time to making flyers and MTB jerseys for the group. As this was all happening Bomber Crew MTB's FB membership and Instagram Followers had been growing exponentially. Our first event was held on the Sunday following Veterans day on Nov 14 2021 and had amassed roughly 200+ riders from all over SoCal. Ceremonies included a moment of silence, a ride broken down into beginner/intermediate/advanced, and a raffle for a veteran's charity. At our inaugural event we ended up donating $1000 to New Directions, and subsequent events would raise similar dollar amounts for other charities. The whole goal of Bomber Crew is to get someone off the couch that might be thinking dark thoughts. We would be especially happy if it were a veteran that was contemplating suicide, having issues at home, or is just looking to socialize. But we do not discriminate as to who comes and not all of us are veterans. As Fred puts it "Veterans and friends" https://www.bombercrewmtb.org/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1036388676769569/ https://www.instagram.com/bombercrewmtb/


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