I’ve been to Moab, Utah to ride mountain bikes. I like to say it was by accident. That is to say, someone had an accident (on their bike) and a spot on a trip opened up so at the last minute I found myself in Frank’s Volvo hurtling southeast through an endless array of small US towns. We pulled into quite a few of them to grab some eats. Folks were always genuinely really nice. The pie was always really good. The coffee was always awful.
The riding in Moab? It was okay. Very different from the North Shore and change always holds a certain charm. But, for my investment in riding somewhere different, it’s no Sedona, or Cumberland for that matter. I loved the endless sky. I rode a bunch of trails including The Whole Enchilada from top to bottom (Hidden Valley Trail, among others, is better). I had breakfast, lunch, good coffee, and… well… muffins at the Love Muffin Cafe. I really loved the Love Muffin Cafe.
This coming fall will mark nine years since that trip and in terms of what I took away from the experiences there are a couple of things I regularly do:
1) Make fun of Larry Talker for how many freakin’ flats he managed to get in a single day running his sandwich-bag-thick-sidewall OE Schwalbe tires.
2) Thinking about this photo from the Moab trip. I mean, I know why I took it – come on – “ROAR!” But for some reason, this particular image catches my imagination, not photos of the big sky, amazing arches, or riding bikes.
I don’t have any context, and I certainly never met Mrs & Mr. Wilson. I’m fairly certain it’s not even from Moab proper, but rather something I snapped in the parking lot of a janky little motel we stayed at in Salt Lake City after the worst sleep of my life following some 20hrs of straight driving.
I would have been wheeling my Ti Raijin out the door, dressed to ride, when I saw the car. Four more hours or so of driving to go before I’d find out if I’d chosen the right gearing for Slickrock Trail. Yet to realize how badly the elevation & exposure was going to destroy my motor. I never have been the best at drinking water while I’m riding.
For whatever reason, I hadn’t pulled out my camera once yet on the drive. No photos of all the warplanes-on-pillars that every small town seemed to have, or of the endlessly straight monotony of driving through Idaho, or of the police cruiser that came flying out of a drainage like something out of an action movie to chase down a Ferrari that passed us like we were standing still.
I can remember a lot about the views, terrain, and mechanicals from that trip but always inspired by thinking about that awful sleep and this car. At first, that seemed weird but then, reminiscing about my 2nd-Annual-NO-Cumberland-Trip this year I realized that my gateway to thinking about adventures there always starts, or at least involved, thinking about Cronuts at the Cumberland Village Bakery. Getting stung by plants or insects makes me think about riding in Bellingham (nettles that sting, nettles that numb, nettles that itch, nettles that gash). I sometimes think of riding in Kamloops when I have a dry itch.
Maybe that’s weird? The other day I twisted my ankle a bit and I started thinking about getting city-boy-lost riding in Terrace – when I was learning to ride flat pedals after injuring my ankle building trails here.
Memory.
Some other random Moab photos from 2K12:
