we (chris, tim, and i) celebrated a non-traditional thanksgiving in moab. we spent the day riding our bikes, not over eating. chris and i indulged in this the sunday before (thanks Kathy!) at his mom's house. by the end of the weekend, i was struggling. i could not lift my front tire over anything. in fact, on the way back from the last ride i rammed into a rock and just about endo-ed. that was a pretty good indication that it was time to be a lil' more careful. what led to this...
thursday we awoke, ate, got ready and were riding by 10 am. from town we rode up past slick rock to porcupine rim. the day was overcast but warm. as a disciple of the "fat cyclist", chris had us practicing our moves. this essentially means, we would try more difficult lines on ledges trying to see what we could ride. i of course do not have the skill or prowess that tim and chris posess. it was fun. i ended up endo-ing down this ledge. i came up on it fast and it was steeper than i anticipated. the next thing i knew my bike was on top of me. i just layed there for a moment or two identifying how badly i was hurt. it knocked the wind out of me a bit and that was the scariest part. i am a bit bruised but not bad.
usually after a crash, it takes a while to get back to "pre-crash form". not long after the incident, i was in flow. everything seemed seamless. i had balance where i had lacked it before. it was a great finish to the ride.
friday started much like thursday, but we rode out to chris' favorite trail, sovereign. this took much longer than we anticipated. chris had planned for us to hit gold bar to golden spike and down poison spider. we ended up just riding back. it was still 36 miles.
saturday, we parked at ken's lake and rode flat pass. we had never been on this trail before. it is not really flat at all. it is a four wheel drive road with lots of ledges--really fun stuff. at the end you come out on a sandy road and there are three river crossings. this was not a good mix. in the future we will probably go out and back, skipping the sand and about 10 miles on the road. after we refueled at hogi yogi, we went back out for a quickie on sovereign. we actually drove to the trail head. we have never done that before and it makes the trail really short. this is when fatigue started to set in for me.
pictures, i know i should have some, but i don't. here is my lame excuse...my camera is broken. not completely broken, it will still take pictures, but the screen is broken. i have no idea how this happened. it was fine one day and a few days later it is apparent that something had hit it and causing the afore mentioned damage. i will bring it in the future, i am just getting over this set back.