How would you feel if your favorite trail was going to be sold to the highest bidder? Well that is what is happening to Chuck Boyer of Arizona. He was the first to discover the amazing trail system that they call Fantasy Island. Boyer is 68 years old and still participates in local Mountain Bike Races in his area. The State Land Department wants to turn his Fantasy into condos or apartments. The people who love Fantasy Island are trying to fight back, but the chair of the Fantasy Island Conservation Alliance said that the only way they can save Fantasy Island is to raise the money and buy it themselves. Here is the story.

Chuck Boyer has a big grin and a fresh wound when he greets me at the entrance of Fantasy Island. A minor mishap earlier this warm March morning sent him tumbling down a hill, leaving a patch of bloody flesh around his elbow.

But it takes more than a little spill to slow down Boyer, who, at 68, happens to be the oldest racer competing in the Mountain Bike Association of Arizona. Besides, as the original trailblazer at Fantasy Island, he’s already given gallons of blood, sweat and tears to this network of desert flat-track that crisscrosses roughly 335 acres of mostly state land near Irvington and Houghton roads.

“I’ve got a few scars over the years,” he chuckles.

Then we’re off on our tour, tearing up and down hills and across flatlands on a trail that winds through a forest of cactus, creosote and palo verde. Boyer points out different twists and turns–the Shooting Range, Tea Cup Hill, the Little Grand Canyon. We ride past displays of art on the edge of the trail, such as a reassuring tombstone on a treacherous descent. (The epitaph: “Here Rests K.C. Stern/Pulled 3G’s on a 1G turn.”)

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