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

Slickrock Trail - Lanny, Colorado River, up and down hills

Colorado River Photo Ops - group, Randy (pre-crash), me, Joey

Hill shots - Joe falling, Lanny thinking

Scenery on Slickrock

Overlook of Moab

Randy's facial injury, Me

Moab - Friday and Saturday

On Friday I left the office early, ate lunch with some coworkers at Smashburger, and then headed over to Craig's house. After Lanny and Dwight arrived we packed up and then picked up Dave in Manitou. The 7 hour drive to Moab was uneventful. We arrived to the campsite tired at about 9:30 Friday night. However, once the tents and camper were set up we all got a second wind and sat around until 11:30 talking and sharing a few beers. The other 5 guys had already arrived that afternoon and they were fast asleep by the time we arrived.

On Saturday everyone hopped in 2 of the 3 white Toyota trucks and headed to the Porcupine Rim trail head. That's right, our group's 3 vehicles this weekend were 3 white Toyota trucks (my pickup, a Tacoma, and a Tundra). Porcupine Rim trail was by far the longest ride. We rode about 20 miles on this one trail. The trail climbs at first but then levels out at the top. At the top was a great view of the other ride of the valley. We rode along the ridge for awhile and then descended down the other side to the valley created by the Colorado River. The climb and descent were fun until it turned into a single track that hugged the mountainside. At that point the terrain was too rough to ride in many places. Once we got off the trail we still had 5 miles to ride down the canyon and back to town - that part wasn't fun. That night we ate at an "adequate" Mexican restaurant. That's saying something considering after days like Saturday anything resembling food usually tastes fantastic.

My initial impressions of the area were good. It's very pretty in a desert sort of way. There were a lot of people on bikes and 4WD vehicles. As far as the trail was concerned, I didn't think it was anything that special. As one guy said, it makes you appreciate what we have in town in Palmer Park, Ute Valley Trail, etc. It was pretty rough and we all took a beating from the terrain. There weren't any spectacular crashes today (see upcoming posts). I pretty much kept up with the lead riders. I soon realized that despite my inexperience, my conditioning and athleticism made me one of the better riders on this trip. I was the first one back to the other white Toyota truck at the end of the day. All in all, it was a good day out with the boys.

Instead of a video with small pictures, I'm going to post a lot of individual pictures with captions.

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View at the top of Porcupine Rim

At the top of Porcupine Rim - riders, Joey, Me, and Dave/Craig

My trusty steed - Rocky Mountain Blizzard

Taking a break - the group, Craig

The trail - upper section, single track (un-rideable section), group photo

Colorado River/parking lot

At the end of the day I called home and Julia finally said her first words to someone on the phone. All she said was "Dadda home".

Moab Trip

Tomorrow after lunch a bunch of us (10 to be exact) guys from church are heading down to Moab, UT for an extended weekend of camping and mountain biking. It should be a good time of fellowship, warm weather, fun, good exercise, and adventure. I'll be posting pictures and a recap of our trip sometime after we get back on Monday.

For those who aren't aware, Moab is known as Utah's adventure capitol. It's just on the other side of the Colorado state line, about 75 miles as the crow flies from Grand Junction, CO. The area boasts Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, as well as premier mountain biking and Jeep trails. Google Moab or some of the National Parks mentioned above and have a look at where we're going.

We'll be hitting the famous porcupine rim and slickrock trails on Saturday and Sunday, respectively. I hope to see some of the landscape or National Parks if we have free time. Hopefully we'll all return with nothing but a few bumps and bruises and all our limbs intact.

Star Wars Kid

Story Time

Story time with Momma and my new winter gear...nothin' but cozy.

Snow, Er, Window Day

We were released from work 2 hours early yesterday due to the weather. This morning, I got up and heard that we were on a 2 hour delay. Sometime between when we turned off the TV at 8 and when I left at 9:30 for work, the 2 hour delay turned into a closure. I knew it the second I turned into the parking lot.

SO, I headed for Home Depot and bought some more trim. I figured there's nothing better to do inside on a snow day (we didn't get 17 inches of snow in town) then to tackle phase 3 of the window project. I finished about half of the windows today. I've cut and nailed up some more trim inside the windows to give it an old, wood window appearance (and to cover up our painting mistakes). I think it turned out well. I still need to caulk the ends that don't perfectly fit and fill the nail holes.

Here are some pictures. They are a little dark, but I wanted to make sure I got enough contrast between the walls and the windows.

Snow Day

Woodland Park got 17 inches of snow today (or at least at Josh's house)! Josh, send this link to your agent and let me know if I've violated any image rights. I'll have my IT department remove these pictures immediately.

Baby Elephants Cry

Yesterday Stacey took Julia to the library and picked up some books for her to read. She’s been very interested in elephants recently since she’s been playing around with her little stuffed animal version. I’m not sure if Stacey, Grandma, or someone else taught her about elephants, but every time she sees elephants (either in a book or her stuffed animal) she wraps her arm around her head as if to make a trunk and lets out a big roaaaaar. It’s pretty funny to watch her pretend to be an elephant, tilt her head back, and roar.

Last night when I got home I asked her what she did during the day, and she very excitedly told me that they had gone to the library and checked out books about elephants. She really wanted to read these books together (even though Stacey had already read them to her a couple of times that afternoon), so after dinner we all sat down to read. Of course, Julia instructed both Stacey and me to “sit down right here” while touching/pointing the carpet in a specific location.

The book I grabbed from the pile was about a family of elephants who had one young elephant (like Julia) and whose mother was pregnant (like Stacey) and due very soon. It’s the typical "another baby is coming into the family" story. The book takes a twist and we find out that the mother elephant has triplets. In typical newborn fashion, the babies cried a lot. When we got to that point in the story I pointed out that “baby elephant” was crying…but unfortunately Jules doesn’t yet realize the reasons why newborn babies cry.

So, Julia thought about it for a second and then got the most pathetic/worried/scared look on her face. When the lower lip came out and started to quiver I knew where we were headed. It probably didn’t help that we chuckled at her. She lost it and started balling. Of course, she wanted a big hug from mommy and could barely get another word out through her tears. She kept saying “baby elephant cry” through her tears until we assured her that the baby elephant was “all better” by flipping forward a couple of pages and showing her a new picture where they were all happy.

It was one of those situations I’ll probably remember for a long time. I took the picture of the page (below) we were reading when it all went down…now that I really look at the picture it is a bit scary… It will be interesting to see what she does when the next one arrives and starts to cry.