Last post of 2016. Good bye to an awful year. The next one has great uncertainty with the orange maniac at the helm. But enough of that morosity.
The last few days of 2016 have in fact ended rather well for us. Two Sprockets that both work for the University of Missouri were both gifted additional time off between Christmas and New Year. We took full advantage and made a short notice trip to visit North West Arkansas – now for ever known to us as NWA since almost every advertising hoarding along the highways seemed to reference “NWA”, the “biggest in NWA” or the “best selection in NWA”, you get the picture. Anyway I digress. There were two strong motivations for visiting the area, for me it was the mountain biking trails which have become something of a legend in biking circles especially since Bentonville played host to the International Mountain Biking Association world summit just a few weeks ago in early November, 2016. The second reason was to visit the world renowned Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Four Sprockets left Columbia Boxing Day morning in fine weather. The unseasonably warm December weather was a significant factor in the decision to go on the trip. The forecast indicted just about perfect conditions for outdoor activity with no rain and temps in the 60s Fahrenheit. We arrived in Bentonville mid-afternoon after a 4 hour drive and filled the remainder of the day enjoying a late lunch then visiting the original five and dime Walton store museum on the fine town square (WalMart – for those that might not be familiar, Bentonville is the home to the colossus of retail, where the Walton’s opened their first store and is home to WalMart corporate headquarters). We then wandered on over to Phat Tire Bike Shop to arrange two rental bikes for the next day. After that we headed to our hotel to get checked in. It’s worth mentioning that we got a really good AAA rate 0f just $67 per night at the Marriot Townplace Suites and they were kind enough to have let us store the two bikes we’d brought with us in the room. They are clearly used to having many cyclists as guests.
Next morning, eager to get on the trails we got going down to the Phat Tire bike shop for opening time at 10:00am to pick up the two rental bikes. I was amazed at the quality of the bikes we got. Trek Superfly 7 29ers ($2100 retail value) for just $30 each for the day. The staff in the store were super helpful and even let me borrow a helmet as I’d forgotten mine. They happily answered our questions and pointed is in the right direction for the trails with enough beta to set us off straight.
There is a quite stunning network of paved bike trails around Bentonville including the Razorback Greenway that connect to Bella Vista 10 miles to the north and on down to Fayetteville 30 miles to the south and all kinds of interconnections in between. But we were there for the MTB trails. So following the advice of bike shop we skedaddled off to the nearest greenway trail head, just a block off the town square. The Greenway trail interconnects with the infamous Slaughter Pen MTB park. As suggested by the bike shop staff we started off on the All American trail as a short and fairly straight forward intro. It has some cool little man made features mainly on the level followed by a short series of swooping berms down a steep descent into the valley once more meeting up with the parallel paved Greenway trail. From there it was a brief sojourn along the Greenway again until the next clearly sign posted trails of the Slaughter Pen system led off into the woods. The lads quickly left us two rusty crusties after they successfully negotiated a shallow creek crossing and disappearing through a maze of trees. I tried to follow but just paid for it by hitting a submerged rock and dunking both feet into the icy water. We met up with them again later after they had run all over the hill sides on some of the steeper stuff. We all played around a little in the free ride feature park that includes teeter totter, drops, jumps, table top jumps and bermed turns. We saw some young locals getting some pretty big air on some of these.
From the free ride park we began back tracking taking in a combination of the Urban, Angus Chute and Razorback MTB trails. We’d been out for over 3 hours and were pretty gassed but had enough energy left to power back up steep climb of the All American reversing our initial path. Tired but happy we retreated to the Pedalers Pub, where we enjoyed a tremendous lunch and local beer from Bike Rack Brewing Company. It has to be said the simple highlight of the lunch were the curry chips that we shared as a starter.
After going back to hotel and getting cleaned up and relaxing with a movie we continued the lunch theme by going out for a late dinner at the excellent Flavors Indian restaurant.
On our third and final day we rounded out our trip with a visit to the aforementioned Crystal Bridges which was very interesting not least because of the amazing architecture of the buildings. I highly recommend a visit if you have the chance. It’s free due the philanthropy of Alice Walton and the Walton Family Foundation. Set in 120 acres of lovely grounds in the same valley as the MTB and Greenway trails. Following that Sam wanted to give the All American MTB trail one more go so I went with him. We had a blast and myself and Jack are now in the market for good mountain bikes after the taster of the super fine Superfly rentals.
Rusty Sprocket Velo Club 
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