In June 2019 I’d visited Bangalore (BLR) to race my first DH race. What I brought back with me was rather odd. I had been infected by a bug, a parasite, feeding off my every waking moment.
Every morning, afternoon, evening, dusk, dawn, you name it! This parasite was there, telling me things, whispering in my ear, “HYD needs trails, you can build them, you can make trails in HYD.”
I felt compelled to build. I lost control. It had taken over me. HYD will get itself trails!
…Now you might be have already done the mental math and asked the question, “June 2019 to July 2020…that’s not half a year! Why’d he write “half” ?”
Allow me to explain. I had returned from BLR and instantly was swarmed with different projects and work. In the last week of August I had gone to the Eastern Ghats to train. I planned to get into it as soon as I returned from there, however I returned in a wheelchair. I had been hit by a car while descending a hill on my road bike. I had to get plastic surgery on my leg, arm, and face. Quick side note, throughout that time, the MTB nationals were scheduled for October and my actions/decisions were based off that. I spent most of September in that wheelchair and was lucky enough to get back on my bike almost immediately after. My Prime objective for the season was to get back in shape and prep for the Nationals. Fortunately it got postponed to Feb 2020 so there was more time to train, but that was all I did till Feb.
Nats came and went and as I returned home I got to work planning out how I’d start trail building. The first thing I wanted to build was a tiny jump, something to practice on. Took me a couple hours of work and I was able to finish it. Nothing fancy, nothing big. A small modest jump. A small project compared to what was to come.

A small Start
It had begun! I was ready to get out of the house bi-weekly and build something new while maintaining the old…and then…COVID-19…Lockdown. Perfect! Now I CAN’T EVEN DO WHAT I’VE PUT OFF FOR AGES! It took till late April for me to get out of the house and back to digging. This time, lets build a berm!
We also made a double* after the jump. [double* a jump with a separate takeoff and landing with a gap in between. large doubles with more than 7-10ft gap can be called Gap Jumps.]
It’s been a couple weeks since all of this happened. Day before yesterday I’d set out to build a very small, very simple, very very very easy “double”. To be honest it wasn’t intended as a feature, rather a Stop-Gap solution to the rising problem of motorists and scooterists coming and destroying the berms.
This feature will be easy for any rider to clear while being a big obstacle for a scooter or motorbike.
I’m not going to bore you with a super long post so I’m cutting it here and will have a separate post about what I’ve learnt.
Till the next post,
Tschuss!
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