RAD Conquers Its First Clean-Up

#sorrynotsorry about how long the post is going to be, but all the feels are just oozing out about how awesomely, over-the-top successful RAD's very first cleanup day was.

We were floored when about 100 people showed up!! Our membership, together with several other incredible volunteers within the dirtbike community, cleaned up approximately a 5 mile radius.  We're guessing that approximately 465 volunteer man hours were put in to today's efforts.  FYI: the quota we had to meet for our Nevada OHV grant funding was 150 hours... we more than tripled that on our very first day.

This being our first rodeo... we had no idea what to expect and were just winging it, honestly.  Luckily, we caught the attention of a group who does know what they're doing -- the Desert Pigs.  These selfless, wonderful human beings who make up this group spend every weekend ... folks, every single weekend!!! ... cleaning up illegal dumping in the Dayton and Fernley areas.  When they heard about RAD's project here, dozens of them hauled out to Reno and helped with some challenging stuff, such as fishing TV's out of the pond and dragging cars out of tricky places.  RAD is extra thankful to them for their special support today.  We encourage you to donate to their cause - they run entirely on donations to fund their cleanup ventures in our desert. Here they are:

This was truly a community effort.  Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful supplied the large debris box at our staging area, as well as various hand tools for our volunteers to use. Pine Nut Mountain Trail Association also lended us lots of tools to use. After this debris box filled up by noon, dozens of volunteers took it upon themselves to just take their pickups and trailers full of more debris to the local dump station.

So how did you take care of the big stuff?

 Some of the poster children for this event were the abandoned camper, the friggin BOAT, and some abandoned cars.  Well, it pays to have rad friends.

The boat was actually removed a few weeks prior to the cleanup day, when it came back as stolen property after a VIN-check.  The Reno Police Department removed the boat, as it was their case.

Plan A with the camper was to haul it to the Lockwood landfill.  However, upon further assessment, it was determined that it definitely did not have the structural integrity to survive a trip down the freeway.  So, with the help and special talents of Terry the Shed Mover, Reliance Grounds Management, and Thomas Precision Welding ... we epically demolished this trailer and stuffed it into the debris box. 

Then we had a white car wedged between a hillside and the pond - not an easy recovery spot! - and a red SUV. We made an agreement with the Washoe County Sheriff's Office that if we dragged them off the land and onto the end of the public road, they would arrange for a tow company to haul them away.

Tires were hauled away to various local tire shops who would generously accept them.

But there was SO MUCH MORE than that!  Our rad volunteers scavenged the area, determined to find every last bit of trash, restoring the land to the way it should be - pretty to ride by.

It was important to RAD to take care of our people.  RAD catered coffee and an assortment of breakfast pastries in the morning.  Thomas Sangster, owner of the Sparks Chick-Fil-A, generously donated a whole bunch of chicken sandwiches and fixings for lunch.  When we ran out of that, we went and got some pizza!

And here's just some gratuitous pictures of RAD people being rad...

We'd like to thank...

 First and foremost, we want to thank each and every one of our devoted members and volunteers for spending this beautiful Saturday being ambassadors of our sport and part of the solution. This is our little corner of the world.

We are grateful to the Nevada OHV Commission for the grant we were awarded, which will carry us on to the next phases of our "Keep Trails Rad" movement.  Today was a great example of how your OHV registration sticker money is going to work for you in your own backyard.  The commissioners are very insightful, helpful and easy people to work with.  In fact, a few commissioners were present today getting dirty at this cleanup.

Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful and Pine Nut Mountains Trail Association provided us with wonderful tools and resources to get us started.

Terry the Shed Mover, Reno Motor Sports, MotoSource and Big Valley Honda provided monetary support to help with lots of surprising little costs that we didn't think to work into our grant budget, because we are noobs.

Reliance Grounds Management and Thomas Precision Welding supplied some heavy equipment and special talent which was instrumental to today's success, and United Site Services generously donated porta-potties (another thing we didn't think to put in the grant budget. **facepalm**).

Sparks Chick-Fil-A catered lots of sandwiches for a nice mid-day break!

Desert Pigs provided some very special extra support, and are a wonderful new ally of RAD.

The support our little club is receiving from the community is so encouraging!!!

So now what...

On the 2020 grant project front, we will now begin gearing up for the trail work in the Peavine Maze.  We will coordinate a schedule with Sierra Trail Works, and let you rad volunteers know when the trail work days are.  We are certainly looking forward to having whoop-free and rut-free single track in RAD's favorite riding area.

But we aren't all work around here. Stay tuned for the next RAD member ride event (with a fun twist this time), and come to our next member meeting on Wednesday, March 11th at 6:30pm at Revision Brewery.