Jeremy's Bike Blog

After publishing my previous post, morning of Day 10, I finished breakfast, removed the fenders from my bicycle, said goodbye to Denali, the super sweet guy that made breakfasts and dinners for donations, and looked like a kindly wizard in a cowboy hat, I rode down the road a bit and met up with Gabrielle, her folks Geoff and Janet, and Alex, friend of the family, at the La Quinta where they were eating breakfast and having deliberations.

None of us had done the trail, and the road is downright terrifying in sections.  Not really so much for a bicycle, you can always walk the bike, and have plenty of berth, but rather for the support vehicle.  Geoff was going to be driving a Toyota TRD 4×4 pick-up as the support vehicle, and was openly concerned about the viability of traversing the road given the wet weather that had happened days prior and was predicted to continue.  We stopped for advice at Poison Spider bicycles and learned yes, there are points of somewhat no return, and they come somewhat early on.  Advice was also sought from the NPS rangers, but they refused to offer any opinion or advice, possibly as a means of avoiding liability.

By mid-morning, we had shuttled gear, bikes, car, and people in stages to their respective starting or stowage points and we were on the White Rim Trail, all on bicycles except Geoff who was piloting the truck, which had all of our gear in the back seats of the cab and the covered bed, and rack that could carry 2 bikes.  We got lightning at a fairly safe distance, and hail as we descended into the canyon.  I would have dreaded having to drive the truck in those conditions on that road, and for particularly scary portions, Gabby would put her bike in the rack and co-pilot with her dad.

As we got into the bottom of the first descent, the rain and hail let up.  I also hit a bounce hard enough that an old, trusty, long used but ostensibly disposable 1.5 liter bottle that I had brought back from Albania bounced out of the bottle cage.  When I picked it up from the gravel track, it had at least 5 pinhole leaks.  It was one of only 2 bottles I had brought, having gotten rid of my third bottle that morning for some reason. I knew right away that this provided some metaphor or symbol, but it’s taken me a while to figure out what it was.  With the benefit of hindsight and reflection, I think it represented how completely I let Geoff and Janet assume total ownership of provision of the necessities for the trip: first and foremost being water.  We had, I believe, about 30 gallons of water in the truck, and so I actually continued to use the bottle for another day, even though it lost water slowly.

For lunch on the first day, we actually caught a sun break through the clouds.  We enjoyed cold cut and cheese sandwiches on homemade bread, and ice cold beer.

Cycling through intermittent showers, we got to our first campsite with about an hour of daylight left, and enjoyed a rain respite that was long enough to make a dinner of noodles and meaty carbonara, home made and frozen by Janet in the days leading up to the trip, so that preparation at camp amounted to defrosting and heating it up.  I was thanked and complimented profusely when I prevented us from needing to deal with disposal of leftovers by (happily) finishing he last of it with a third helping.  We also, between the 5 of us, finished off a little-under-half-full bottle of Glenlevit, along with another beer each.  This helped make us at least feel a little toasty as we went to bed in our tents, me in my bivvy with fairly water-logged feet having sported wool socks and leather sandals with pull-over bootie-top shells that were all caked up with wet orange mud by the time we got to camp.

Janet and Geoff had cellular data still (Verizon) and come morning, they could verify that the weather was predicted to improve markedly, which it did.  Indeed, we had about 50% cloud cover and only brief intermittent showers.

I want to stop here and point out: look, I’m not even attempting to describe the insane and incredibly dramatic landscape that was a backdrop to every instant of this.  I invite you check out the 3D panoramas that I took in the park to get some idea.  But basically we were cycling along, down, and up (in turns) the most epic, Wiley Coyote landscapes you can possibly imagine.  I would go to the edge of a giant canyon in the forming, and see my companions doing the same a quarter mile away and see that they were, and therefore I was likely also, actually on something of a ledge that was jutting out dozens of yards from where the wall became vertical.  Gravity defying, top-heavy spires, massive slots and fins, sweeping, carved out ledges, and stunning arches surrounded us, both on levels above the strata that the path would run along and on levels below.  It was delightfully and totally disorienting.  OK, so I guess I just attempted to describe it, but this (or any) attempt invariably falls short.

By lunch, the sun was out in force, and after another round of tasty sandwiches and frosty beverages, we continued on.  I was feeling pretty good about how my bike was doing.  It was the only bike in our crew, or that I saw the entire trip, that was not a mountain bike.  I have 38mm wide, knob-less tires with no suspension and drop down handlebars.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t see any other bike that didn’t have at least front suspension, 2″+ wide, knobby wheels, and flat bars.  I started joking “Hey, maybe I should have brought my mountain bike” with passing cyclists, and I think one or two of the 8-10 that I tried it on chuckled, but most didn’t seem to register the joke.  One younger guy driving a massive rig covered in bike-racks behind a crew of about 8 mountain bikers waved me down to compliment me on my shirt and get the story behind what I was doing on that trail looking the way I did on a bike the way it did, after which I realized I was the only person on the trail sporting a button-up shirt (moreover a flashy button-up) or a hobo-ish burlap hat.  Like the choice of bicycle, the choice of apparel was fairly consistent among the other cyclists I saw.

While my cycle was clearly not ideally suited, it was all told well suited for the conditions.  I did, with my narrower tires, fishtail around in some sands that others did not, and I also needed to stop and walk up inclines when my tires would spin out, but by after lunch on day 2, I put my handlebar bag in the truck so that I wouldn’t have to worry about things bouncing out when landing after catching some air, and started riding my bike like mountain bikers ride mountain bikes, or so I was told.

Geoff asked, at one of our meet-ups with the truck, if I would hang back a bit to help with Al’s morale, which he was worried was getting a bit low.  Neither I nor Gabby shared the sense that Al was in anything but top spirits, but we both trusted Geoff’s instincts and I had no problem making sure I was bringing up the rear, I was happy for any and every excuse to stop, take in the scenery, which often implied attempting to capture it in a 3D photosphere.

A couple hours later I crested a small ridge to find Gabby tending to Al.  Al had taken to going fast on the declines, and maybe a touch dehydrated and/or overconfident, had taken a spill.  She showed no outward signs of injury, but was also just coming to when Gabby had caught up with her.  She didn’t remember the accident, and seemed a bit phased.  Gabby asked if she’d like to ride in the truck for a bit, and she said she would.  Gabby and I did rock-paper-scissors to decide that I’d ride ahead to catch the truck and send it back for Al, and she would stay with and tend to Al, assignments we later agreed, in retrospect, were the obvious better choices (me having a bike computer to measure and report the distance, and her knowing Al, and first aid, better).

I passed Janet on my 4.5 mile sprint to Geoff in the truck, which had stopped at a campgroud.  Geoff went back for Al and Gabby and I put on my shell as some weather was rolling in.  I stared up at a raven who was, as they all seemed to be, familiar with the crumbs of snacks that people leave behind.  I was no exception, and shortly after Janet got to the spot and I was holding a blue M&M aloft seeing how close the raven would come to plucking it out of my hand, it was Janet instead who did and plopped it into her mouth.  We ruminated on children and their impact on those that have them (aka parents) for a bit when the pickup rolled up with Geoff, Al, and Gabby crammed in the back with a mess of bags and gear.  Janet, a Stanford trained Psychiatrist (and hence MD) replaced Gabby in the truck to tend to Al, and they headed off for the night’s campground about 10 miles further on.  Gabby and I chatted as we leisurely rode side by side into the Green River valley where the preparation of a delicious dinner of turkey a la king with rice was getting started.

We stayed up into the night watching stars come out around a candle lantern, and then one by one tucked off into our tents.

The next morning, as soon as I started rustling around in my bivvy, Geoff presented me with a cup of coffee which I delighted in sipping and letting do its magic before having to shimmy out of my cocoon of warmth.  When I caught up to and was riding 1:1 with Janet, I apologized in advanced and asked her for her expert opinion on a saddening, recurring dream that I have, and was just recollecting having had the night before.  Janet is extremely opinionated, somewhat brash, and after a few follow up questions, gave me some insights that were incredibly spot-on, and on which I’ve been ruminating for the almost 48 hours since.

We convened for a lunch of the remnants of several disparate provisions at the bottom of our final major climb out of the last sub-strata of canyon (1000 feet in one mile).  I jestered for the crew by demonstrating that when sufficiently hungry, any combination of flavors equals deliciousness, stacking mayo on top of chunk of summer sausage on top of a semi-sharp dutch cheese on top of tuna fish on top of a girl scout thin mint.

The cyclists had just missed witnessing some BASE jumpers when we rolled in for lunch, but they were gearing up for another jump by the time we got to the top.  One of them had left his helmet at the bottom, so I lent him mine.  We followed them out and watched them jump, to the accompaniment of a bagpipe played by another person that had also tagged along.

The last 15-ish miles of the loop is outside of the park, long, flat-ish, and relatively boring, so Gabby and I had ridden only maybe half of it when the rest of the crew came back with both vehicles taken to the Island in the Sky visitor center.  We loaded up, and headed back into Moab at about 4pm, where a car show was wrapping up.  Al had to catch a flight in Denver at 11am the following morning, so I was offered and gleefully accepted use of the second bed in the second room booked at the La Quinta.  Showers (with shower beer!) and then beers and burgers at the Blu Pig next door, and then an incredibly restful sleep on an amazingly comfortable bed to conclude a side trip that was so perfect, I’ve been frankly a little concerned is going to make subsequent adventures seem pale in comparison.