The Sudduths: Moab

11 November 2009

Moab - Sunday

Sunday was by far my favorite day. Our campsite was literally across the street from the famous Slickrock trail. Slickrock is just one of those trails that everyone should experience. You can hike and ride dirt bikes on it too. It's like no other, weaving its way entirely through a section of Moab comprised entirely of miles and miles of sandstone. It's basically the same stuff as Garden of the Gods, except that it's been laid flat over a massive area. What makes this trail very unique is that since you ride entirely on solid rock, you can pretty much ride straight up any hill, no matter how steep, as long as you can keep your front wheel down. Your rear tire will grip. Everyone pretty much has to pedal like crazy up each hill while leaning over their handlebars to keep the front of their bike from tipping back and over down the hill. Since there is no dirt trail, the trail is marked by the same dashed white lines that you've seen on the road.

As its name suggests, this trail was made for me. There were lots of hills all over the place and my sprinting muscles and low body weight were an ideal combination. There were times that I didn't make it entirely up a hill, but there were also times where I was the only one that made it up a hill. Even though I had rode my legs to exhaustion and was cramping in the quads, I was determined to ride the entire trail back out. The others weren't as in shape or maybe didn't feel like pushing themselves that hard, so the rest of them walked their bikes up the steep hills on the way out. I can't really explain how steep these short hills/climbs were except that they are pretty difficult to walk up let alone ride.

The crash of the weekend happened about halfway through the day. Randy, our class teacher, went over backwards while climbing up a hill. In addition to the expected road rash from the road and bruises from landing, he took a bike to the face. Specifically, the sprocket (the metal ring with teeth between the pedals that the chain rides on) hit him in the face on the way down. The sprocket teeth actually went through his lip into his mouth. At first he thought that he had lost a tooth, but the object he spit out was a piece of metal that had broken off in his mouth. The rest of his face had a nice dotted line that matched up perfectly with the rest of the teeth on the sprocket. Although he didn't lose any teeth, a few of them were loose. He was understandably shaken up and hurt. The picture below doesn't really show how bad his face looked after the ride. Later in the day on another trail, Dwight impaled himself on the end of his handlebars and may have cracked a rib or his sternum. Anyway, it was a good thing that Lanny the bike mechanic (by hobby) and Joey the firefighter and EMT (by work) were part of our group. Many others ended the day with bumps and road rash from the rock.

I thought the trail was amazing. It's not your standard mountain bike trail so many people probably don't like riding it after a few times. Plus, it's a pretty strenuous workout. That night we ate at an all you can eat pizza, soup, and salad bar. It was really good. I called home and again all Julia said on the phone to me was "Dadda home".

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Rock formations near our campsite