WHY EAGLE SUFFERS....MY LAST RANT?

This is a picture of a bike rider racing Cult Cross right here in my current home town of Eagle. Eagle is struggling these days, real estate prices have tanked, like everywhere, EVERY single business that has tried to make it in Eagle Ranch in the business core there has gone out of business over the past eight years or so because there is no money or population to support them, everyone except the bar at the Dusty Boot, and only because the owner has deep enough pockets to keep it rolling. The Eagle Ranch Golf course and fitness center cost roughly $500,000 just to keep them open and operating every year, and the town pays for it. Some moron developer thought it would be a good idea to build a mega mall here to get things rolling, in what is possibly the WORST time in history to open a cookie cutter box store mall, which got voted down by the smart people here. The town manager blew an opportunity to annex the Eagle/Vail airport into the town limits of Eagle many years ago which would have greatly expanded the town's tax base and probably gotten us a nice new fitness Facility which the town of Gypsum now has which I'm sure was at least subsidized with tax dollars generated from the airport. The town of Eagle bitches about not having enough events in town to bring in more revenue. For three years I have attempted to do something about this, alone. I've brought a series of bike races to town to try and support the lifestyle here as well as introduce our town to people who do not ordinarily come here, and some have come, and enjoyed it. I approached the new "chamber" type committee called "One Eagle" which is trying to promote the town and offered to make my bike races part of something bigger, I did not receive one follow up call, from any of them. I founded a trail advocacy group to be stewards of what we have on the outskirts of town here to help promote and improve what is here, and I ended up improving and creating everything alone, until others came in with their own agenda and tried to make this their own political statement. Now there are self proclaimed "locals"whom I have never seen riding here in Eagle in 11 years who are publishing a book about the trail system here......perfect. For these and many other reasons I just simply say no, I'm done, I'm not going to promote this town any more to blind eyes and ears, you guys do it, you create the races, the groups, the events. I'm tired. I gave a lot and I've got no more to give. I tried, I quit. For the few people that enjoyed what I attempted to do here, thanks and I hope you had some fun for that was the bottom line, one of them anyway. I'm turning a page today, no more Squirt Lube (god knows I banged my head against the wall for over four years with that), no more race promotion, and no more work with the lube distributor...good bye to all of it, I'm free.