Thanks to everyone! The excavator can move dirt, but the dirt doesn't become fun until volunteers like you show up and make it great. And great is an understatement!
Wade summarized the everything. In addition, there is a berm into the climb off of Dizzy (by the picnic table) and the first 250 feet of trail from the picnic table through the woods was reconstructed so it isn't a rutted mess. I think it may actually be fun to climb, but definitely not as easy as Rewind. The parts we removed and rebuilt were the sections that mostly involved pedaling effort, not so much technique. Wade scouted the entry into the serpentine highway and it has some things to make it cool. Plus, there is now more of the big rock to ride on!
Let me know if you like the changes! And start thinking of other things you want to improve and let me know. I definitely want to do a similar event in the spring. Maybe not a full 4.5 days, but a 3 day weekend would be an efficient use of a rental.
For reference, a week-long rental is about 2.5 times the cost of a single day rental. A week rental includes 40 hours of machine time, versus 8 hours of machine time for a day (engine hours on the hour meter). In addition, the fixed cost of delivery and pickup are spread across 40 hours of usage instead of 8. To crunch all the numbers for you, it is 1/3 of the cost per hour to do a week rental versus a single-day workday rental. And, the time commitment of driving a machine that goes 2 mph to and from the worksite is reduced, so our effective hours of useful output are much greater. That's why it makes sense to do projects like this as a big event instead of a day here and there.
