Moab...again!

well kids, got back last night kinda late due to a traffic fatality (not ours, but some other unfortunate soul) on eastbound vail pass that shut the highway down for a couple of hours. being ever the closet schadenfreuden i took a picture the results. it wasn't grisly or anything, it's just the twisted remains of a tractor-trailer rig (okay, i guess that implies the potential for awful carnage was there) on a flat-bed trailer.
this accident was caused by a rogue, cold-weather front that dumped snow and its accompanying rapid, exponential lowering of the coefficient of friction with tires and road surfaces they roll over. hmmm.
the trip was awesome although we were wondering (me mostly) whether the weather was willing or wanton (how'd y'all like that for alliteration?). there was supposed to be a front moving in mid-day saturday for moab bringing with itself a 70% chance of thunderstorms. same thing for sunday-yesterday. we went for it...
Saturday:
weather permitting, our goal on paper was to link both the atv sovereign trail with the bikes only sovereign and punctuating it with an ascent up klondike bluffs trail. didn't work. we only finished the first out-and-back, bikes-only sovereign. let me preface it with, the group for this iteration of moab was the homey trinity plus two. can't change the name because this is the (hard)core trinity o'love and testosterone-fest. the plus two were larry (not the cable guy but our colleague and geeky brother) and jeff (an i.t. kinda guy). larry's not a cyclist but he's up for anything new and was down for hiking when we went biking. jeff's a pretty fit marathoning kinda guy. larry went for a hummer tour (get your mind out of the gutter) and the rest of us did sovereign. we were rolling nicely-with the exception of jeff's chain breaking and a quick re-route of the chain through the pulleys-through the singletrack. dodging obstacles, climbing rock abutments with the names of our knees on them, and sandy switchbacks pretty good. we all took turns pulling up front and everybody was showing the requisite allegorical chest poundings a la technical proficiency (i kinda sucked, i guess), tempo, fluidity...etc. for public displays of cycling manhood and validation. here we are clearing a rock obstacle. i just can't quite get the timing down so you see everybody's rear end...
kev...
billy...
jeff...
me (shot by billy who apparently can time shots)...
here's billy showing the novices how to clear a man-sized rock
on the way back i blasted an uphill move and put a gap on me brahs. unbeknownst to me, jeff flatted. while ahead i took a slight detour (it all lead to the same place), and kevin remained faithful to our original out-and-back path which lead to a divergence of the trinity plus one. another group of two cyclists said that our bud kevin yin'd instead of yang'd at the fork in the trail. so we head back to what we thought was the split they ambiguously described to find him. we figured out that he couldn't have taken this way back but by this time the rain was pouring. out in the eastern side of utah bordering the western side of colorado there's this nasty clay-sand mixture that turns into cement when water's added. it gums up the bottom bracket cluster, the high-end of our gear cluster, and our pedals and cleats. we figured kevin's-being the sentient being that he is-headed back to the truck. so we kick it to get out of the rain. we're climbing over nasty, moonrock when dry can cause technical difficulties, now slick as snot. as billy said, it adds another dimension [to mountain biking]. specifically, it added a non-sucky dimension in that it was cold (therefore time to fatigue was delayed), you had to finesse the obstacles (as opposed to getting to ramming speed and hittin' it!), you had to anticipate everything just a little bit quicker, and braking time was effectively reduced (forget about emergency stopping). it was an audio-visual-kinesthetic challenge that was mentally and physically taxing as well as rewarding, because rain riding in technical terrain heightens your senses-thus making this particular experience sensational. sho'nuff we meet kevin on the trail and it's full speed ahead back to billy's truck. close to the truck, billy mis-times his jump and turns on his afterburners early. before he fades he puts a nice four-car gap on us but i close the gap and eventually i'm gluing up solo to his wheel. i surge towards the imaginary finish line. at the end, it's me, billy, jeff, and lanternrouging is our boy kev. we get into the truck and it's like we had one of those therapeutic mud baths except we kept our clothes on and rode our bikes. so we sat on some tarps inside billy's truck on the way back into moab with his heater cranked!. from there we hosed off our bikes and ourselves at poison spider bikes. we were wet and shivering from the cold (but our bikes were clean!). quite a sight to see. needless to say we were hypoglycemic and starvin' marvins...
our soppin' wet selves go into city market where we proceed to buy our salad bar lunch by the pound! oh man it's a glorious sight to behold quite a delectable smorgasboard o' vegetarian friendly options! we eat at the hotel. change. then proceed to hang in the hot tub during a relaxing rain. it's a nice temperature treat: hot mostly with cold rain bouncing off your noggin'.
that evening after eating we walk into town to walk off the meal. jeff cap'd on free wi-fi at the hotel across the street to get something for work finished. we're walking in the dark with nary a streetlight talkin' the evening away. we stop at an indie bookseller where we imbibe in espresso type drinks from a fairly competent barrista who coincidentally used to live not that far from where i currently reside. small world no? we walk back, enjoying each other's company and the slight chill in the air...in no time it's nighty-night time...
Sunday
we figured we had a very little window to ride between the rain so we woke up earlier than usual to go ride slickrock. billy decided to go hiking with larry in arches so it was jeff, kev, and myself at slickrock. we all took turns up front again but it was also my opportunity to do some more action shots. as it turns out, my batteries were dying so my chances to take choice actions shots were pretty much nil. if you look carefully at this one, a motocrosser biffed it trying to get up a semi-steep hill.
here's the homehill stretch of jeff and kev above the fields of moab.
there's a protracted climb out of slickrock where jeff and i decided to dice it up. oh, by the way, the weather has broke and it's gorgeous. i took on a climb and he attacked at a brief uphill. we both gassed it fighting for pole position for the cattle guard which was our imaginary finish line and the exit from slickrock. we were both fighting for the same line (it's discontinuous white lines painted in the rock for direction's sake). i cheated by taking the hypotenuse, whereas he properly took the right angle approach being the good white-line follower that he is. needless to say i reached the cattle guard first with my hypotenusing ways. at the parking lot we regrouped and descended the slickrock area to meet billy and larry at poison spider bike shop. on the way home, we eat at a dominos pizza joint and we inhale large pizzas and submarine sandwiches. yup. it was a glorious weekend minus the traffic incident at vail pass. i am currently suffering from PTVB- post traumatic vacation blues.