ALM Photo: AMBC

HELP PUT TENNESSEE ON THE
DOWNHILL TRAIL MAP!

Recently I asked you to vote for Knoxville in the semi-finals of the Bell Helmets $100,000 #BellBuilt trail building grant. We won that round so today (woohoo!), I am asking for your vote again. Can you dig it?

Knoxville is one of three national finalists for a $100,000 grant from Bell Helmets. When our city wins, the Southeast’s first world-class public downhill mountain bike trail will be built - right here in our Urban Wilderness. But it can't happen without all of us!

Go to bellhelmets.com/bell-built and select the Urban Wilderness Gravity Trail to help send Knoxville downhill! Voting ends Thursday, June 4, so VOTE TODAY! Use every email address you have! And share the link and info with everyone you know whether they live in Knoxville or not. Knoxville is representing the entire East Coast in the finals.

For more information and a selection of awesome graphics to share on social media and in emails to all your peeps, visit downtowndownhill.com. Be sure to check out and shares the videos! They are awesome!

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Allan and I are proud to be a part of the mountain biking community in East Tennessee and providing them with images to use on the marketing collateral for this campaign. If you're into mountain biking, we'd love to ride with you! Give us a call at 865.659.3273 or email us at lisa@almphoto.com and we'll hit the Urban Wilderness or Sharp's Ridge one day soon.

I am also proud of the community support this campaign is receiving. So many people are posting the links and images on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that it's almost all that is in my local social media feed. We're up against CA and MN, but as of right this moment we're leading our closest competitor by only 2000 points. We need to continue the momentum and keep adding votes, so I thank you in advance for yours. Please share this post or any of social media posts to help spread the word!

Appalachian Mountain Bike Club is blazing trails in Knoxville, TN

Mountain biking is awesome. Enough said.

Allan has been mountain biking for many years and has been trying to get me on board with the sport for about 7+ years. This year I finally got the hang of it and have really been enjoying it. It helped that Allan took the clipless pedals off my bike and let me ride with flats. I'm less freaked out about crashing with my bike still attached to my feet!

Allan joined the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club last year to become more involved in the mountain biking community in East Tennessee and has worked a couple of trail work days with them, but Sunday was my first time swinging a hoe. It was a blast! I now want my own Rogue Hoe!

While Allan was wandering around taking all these awesome photos, I was swinging that hoe and meeting some really cool folks. There were a lot of people our age and older which was amazing. I love spending my time around people who don't think life ends at 40! And who love being outside doing physical activities.

Nearly 50 people showed up at 9AM on a Sunday morning to work on the trails at Sharps Ridge in North Knoxville, about midway between Downtown and Fountain City. The good folks over at Fountain City Pedaler provided a delicious lunch of tacos for us when we finished up about 11:30AM. Oh, and there was beer too! I was in heaven!

Speaking of Fountain City Pedaler, there was an article in the News Sentinel about Luke Grieve's involvement with trail building in Knoxville and the AMBC. Pretty cool! It was nice that they included one of Allan's photos in the story too.

Luke Grieve, Fountain Ciy Pedaler

If you are interested in learning more about the trails and mountain biking opportunities in Knoxville, pop over to the AMBC Facebook page or website and become a member. Or drop by Fountain City Pedaler, Cedar Bluff Cycles, Tennessee Valley Bicycles or the Bike Zoo, to name a few local bike shops with a passion for trails.

Here are more photos from Sunday and you can see everyone was having a great time.