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Sunday is proud to announce our next Bonus bike which will benefit the Catty Woods Trails in Pennsylvannia.  If you’re unfamiliar with their situation, they are a legal set of trails that have to pay insurance and legal fees in order to keep them from getting plowed.  The costs are yearly and rather large, so we brought out the Catty Woods/Scout complete bike to help them raise money.  They are a non-profit, so if you can’t buy the bike, but still want to support then make a tax deductible donation through their Paypal right HERE. Go to their website www.pawoods.com for updates on the trails.  The Catty Woods/Scout complete bike is available NOW.

Check out an interview with Flash from Catty Woods about the insurance problems and how the Catty Woods/Scout handled at the trails after the break.

So, first things first, what is your name and what affiliation do you have with Catty Woods?

Jay Crosson, everyone knows me as Flash.  I’ve been diggin there 6 out of the 7 years that it’s been getting big.  I also head up the buisness end with the insurance and lease stuff.

Who are some of the other locals that help hold things down in the woods, and how long have there been jumps at the current spot?

Besides all the travelers that help out the main locals are Janis, Abe, Treebal, Marky T, Ekim, Shwartzy, Sam, Patrick, Eddie, damn we have alot.  There’s alot getting into it this year which is nice.  The trails have been there for over 15 years but it’s been getting big for about 7 years now.  Eric Bugbee started it back in the day.  He still stops up and does 7 foot airs out of lips.

Talk a bit about the problems you ran into throughout the years and what sort of effort it took by the locals to make Catty a legitimized spot?

Well a couple years back the airport was resurveying their land and came across the trails. Instead of plowing the trails they called a meeting with us and laid it out to us.  If we get insurance we can keep the trails.  So we started going to every insurance broker in the Lehigh Valley and we weren’t getting any help, so the airport got frustrated and made us work with the town.  This is where the head aches began.  Half of the borough members were on our side and the other half wanted us out.  A lot of it had to do with the relationship betweent he airport and the town.  So, anyway we started going to town meetings to find out what we had to do.  Every meeting they would give us a list of information we had to come up with and evey meeting we would bring it, but it never seemed to be enough.  Through all these meetings we ended up starting a non-profit organization with a buisness plan and commitee members.  We were basically forced from having fun in the woods with now worries to being held down and having to act like adults.  After all these meetings, we found out that we have encurred 14,000 dollars in leagal fees that we had to pay the town.  We worked out a deal that we would split this up between 3 years and turn it into our lease.  So we are 2 years into our lease and 2 years of insurance payments down.  The plan is that once we pay the town back we end up with a 1 dollar a month lease and 7500 a year for the insurance for as long as we keep running the trails.  Thats the quick 5 minute run down.  We definitly had our headaches but we bucked up and handled our shit and now we pretty much have our dreams answered with not worry about the evil plow coming.

Now that you have a legitimized spot in the eyes of “the man”, what sort of things do you have to regularly do to keep the trails from being jeopardized?

Beside paying the bills, it’s just like having your own house.  Keep everything clean, no drugs no alchohol and we try to keep down on the scum bags.  Biggest thing in my mind is if we show respect to the town and our neighbors no one will be able to complain and we should be alright.

For all of the riders out there who are not as familiar of the trail world as others, describe a typical day spent in the woods.

Typical Saturday for a local is to show up early untarp the jumps, fix anything that needs worked on and maybe do some stacking on new stuff.  Then when people show up everything is hopefully running.  Ride all day, talk shit to each other, have good laughs, take a Sheetz run, ride more, have some more laughs, and depending on the weather forcast tarp up and head out.

You recently had a chance to debut the Catty Scout at a jam you guys held at your trails on Memorial Day.  What did the people who came to the jam think about the bike?

We had two of them running so it was pretty funny.  People had to double take.  Everyone was definitly psyched on the bikes.  They couldn’t believe that a company would do something like this for a set of trails.  It was pretty cool to see how amazed people were on the quality of the bike.  The fact that the Scout bikes were being ridden on some of the bigger jumps at the trails was awesome.  You normally don’t think quality when you hear about complete bikes, but this one has definitely passed the test.  Huge thumbs up from the Catty Crew on this bike.

We received a few pictures of you shredding on the Catty Scout.  What was your initial thoughts on how the bike felt?  What lines did you run through on the bike?

Like anyone else would have done I started on the smaller jumps to get used to the new bike.  I rode roller run a bit and then went to Fonzy.  Fonzy has some normal size jumps but you can really roast them.  I was amazed that everything held up so good.  The bars didn’t move and the wheels didn’t flatten out when I landed low.  Everything held up like I bought every piece seperatly and built it up.  I also rode dip buzz into the renewed 360 berm, which is almost as awesome as the Scout.  And of course I rode Hook.  That run is windy and has a big jump at the end with some mach 10 berms.  Once again the bike was super fast and felt perfect.

Were you surprised on how a complete bike felt right out of the box?  Would you say it felt much different from your normal bike?

Out of the box was great.  Half the bike was already put together for me, ha!  I had to play with the brakes a bit but that goes with any bike and the bars were a little bit bigger than mine and have a different sweep.  But after a couple runs on my ramps out back it felt like I’d been riding it all winter.

Everyone who has seen the bike in person instantly comments on how good it looks.  Who helped pick the colors and design the graphics on the stickers?

I had asked everyone at the trails what color schemes they liked and look at everyones bikes laying around.  I made a list and sent it over to you and Jim Bauer for you guys to sort out what would work best.  Then Treebal had gotten a couple rough themed designs together and sent that to Jim to finialze.  He ended up picking the Lee Gums special.  For those of you that know Lee Gums you will understand the stickers when you see them.  Pure PA Pride.

Did the bike meet the expectations of the Catty Locals?

The bike blew everyones minds.  We were expecting a couple good parts and then splater welds.  But once we opened the box and saw the clean welds and awesome Aitken parts we were excited to have our names on the bike.  And with Mikey back on the horse this is a true trail inspired bike.

Any last words?

I just want to thank Full Factory, Sunday and Jim Bauer at Odyssey for allowing Catty Trails to be apart of their special bikes.  It was a blast working on this project.   And I hope everyone enjoys the Sunday Catty Scout Trails special edition bike.  This is an awesome bike and people will be seeing this at the trails all summer.