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I was
getting married in May and decided I wanted to have a different
type of stag. Some of the FatBoys and I figured that a trip to Moab
would do the trick. We settled on April 4th to 9th and started planning.
The final group turned out to be myself, Arno, Bruce, Jeff, Paul
and Steve. Steve was my bestman and the novice mountainbiker of
the group. As a relative rookie, he was concerned that he might
be in over his head. This was a notion that the rest of us at various
times either tried to dispel, or played up by telling stories of
trails hugging the edge of 300 foot cliffs. We didn't tell Steve
about the 3.25% beer, or he would have never gone.
Day
One :
 The
day finally arrived and after some frantic last minute details,
I picked up Bruce, Jeff and Steve. We met Paul and Arno at the border
crossing at 7:30 am . We drove and drove and drove. The plan was
to spend the first night somewhere in Idaho. After we passed through
Boise, the default was Idaho Falls. The evening was spent at some
cheap motel, a "Super 8", I believe. We were multi-tasking ...drinking
beer, installing a headset and fork on Steve’s bike and watching
a bad movie on TV.
Day
Two :
The
next morning the journey continued with a drive through "scenic"
southern Idaho. They sure packed a lot of nothing out there. We
rolled into Salt Lake City, took a lap around town, watched all
the Mormons as we cruised Temple Square and continued on to Moab.
Wow, it’s jeep week. Dinner at some Tex/Mex restaurant/private club/beer
hall, then we sat on a picnic bench at our motel, drank 3.25% beer
and smoked fake cubans. Does life get any better?
Day
Three :
We spent
the better part of the day playing at Slickrock...you just have
to. Last spring my wife and I passed  through
Moab on our way home from the Grand Canyon. We rented bikes and
to this day we still laugh at what the rental guy said to us "Yah,
Slickrock is the most technical riding you'll ever do." That guy
should get out of the desert and go for a ride on the North Shore!
Back to the motel for some more of the beer that Utah is famous
for. We planned our next couple of rides. First would be Porcupine
Rim, then Poison Spider Mesa. There was some guy in the motel parking
lot replacing the front axle that he broke on his Cherokee. You
thought snapping that XTR deraileur sucked! Dinner at...Eddie McStiffs.
The "full Moab experience" today.
Day
Four :
Porcupine
Rim, tasty. This was my favorite ride of the three that we did.
The choices were to ride the whole thing right from the motel, hire
one of the shuttle companies in town or run a shuttle ourselves.
Being truly fat and somewhat cheap, we decided on running a shuttle
of our own. The weather was crazy, we had sun, rain hail and snow
at various times throughout the ride. The view from the top was
spectacular and when the trail pointed downwards it ripped. The
best part was of course when it turned into singletrack, hugging
the edge of the canyon. What a sweet trail!
Day
Five :
We did
tourist thing this morning at Arches...amazing scenery. Arches,
spires, mesas, domes and one very big phallus. Drove on down to
Poison Spider Mesa in the afternoon. A pretty cool easyish ride
today amongst all the jeeps. The plan is to ride the Portal Trail
today, only problem is we don’t have a map, a  guide
or any clue (besides the faded marks painted on the slickrock) as
to how to find it. We had an uneventful ride to Little Arch and
after checking out the view, decide to find our way to Portal Trail.
Steve being the beginner decides that Portal isn’t for him and heads
back to the vehicles by himself to wait for us. Yah, I know, we
probably shouldn't have let Steve go by himself, but he's "Mr. Outdoors
Adventure Guy", it's what he does for a living, he can take care
of himself. The rest of us press on for a while with about two hours
to go before sunset. Well to make a long story short, we turned
around and rode back to the trucks. No Steve...no note, nothing.
By this time, we had about an hour until dark and a storm was coming
in as well. Jeff and I decided to go back up to where we last saw
Steve. We strapped a set of lights to my bike, took Arno’s cell
phone and took off. We reached our destination, the slickrock dome
by Little Arch with no sign of Steve. We’d given ourselves until
30 minutes before dark as a turn around time so that we could get
out ourselves. It was five minutes beyond that time. Jeff and I
were contemplating whether to call search and rescue now or wait
until we reached the vehicles when the phone rang. It was Arno,
Steve was at the trucks. It turns out that he rode from the trailhead
along the highway to the Portal trail to meet us. What a relief,
not only that he was okay, but that we didn’t have to call his wife
and tell her that we lost her husband! That night at dinner, we
ordered a bunch of huge pizzas and completely gorged ourselves.
Boy they tasted good! Forgetting where I was, I ordered a pint of
"the nectar", Guinness. Why would anybody bother to make 3.25% Guinness?
Mr. Guinness must be performing barrel rolls in his casket.
Day
Six :
It's
time to go home. We plan to drive the 2000 kilometers all in one
shot. We take turns driving and trying to sleep not to mention ingesting
half the coffee in the western U.S. Twenty hours later I arrive
at home after dropping off the boys. Sleep at last.
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