WORKIN' ON

THE B and O

BIKE TRAIL


John Mershdorf, heaves yet another shovel-full of winter’s debris from the B and O bike trail in southern Richland County.

John is a bicycling friend and long-time volunteer maintenance fellow with the Richland County Park district which administers the Gorman Nature Center and our marvelous, 18.3 mile bike trail which runs from North Lake Park in Mansfield to Butler.

John, and about a half dozen other volunteers can be found on the bike trail nearly every day through the season mowing, fixing signs, sweeping, clearing downed trees and branches, picking up debris, repairing pot holes, discouraging ground hogs, etc....

Their to-do list is nearly endless as you might imagine.

I recently spent an afternoon with John, sweeping mud, cinders, pea gravel and assorted debris mostly from intersections where crossing traffic and snow plows left their winter mess.

I had encountered John several days earlier while I was enjoying a bike ride and he was busy with maintenance chores. It was an opportunity for me to offer to lend a hand if he ever needed a helper.

I was delighted when my phone rang a few days later.

While we were rolling between sites that needed our attention John told me it was people who made the job most interesting. Often trail users would stop to thank us for our work to make the trail an even nicer experience.

Sometimes they would zip by without even responding to our usually cheery salutations.

We had one teen-age type clown impressing his girl passenger by roaring across the trail on an ATV. I hoped they survived their senseless meanderings that day.

Then there was the bozo who whinnied, “Whatchyall’doin,” as he trundled by. “Planting avocados,” was my silent response to his stunning burst of intellectual curiosity.

John usually works out of a red, 4 wheeled ATV with a tool box in the rear bed and towing a small trailer for larger tools and a container for the collected trash.

By and large, trail users tend to be environmentally conscious but it is surprising how much junk can be collected in just a few miles.

Kudos to John and his fellow volunteers for their nearly countless hours devoted to the enhanced pleasure of our trail’s users.