Moab (Hugh)

It is testament to Sarah’s long suffering good nature that in times past, when I ask to go somewhere that sounds weird that’s a “whole bunch a’ miles out a’ our way”, she thinks nothing of it until it’s too late and I have booked myself a day’s kayaking (etc.) on the local amusements blabla. Experience has shown that this is not always the best way to achieve marital harmony though, so on this occasion I forewarn the team that I would like to head for a place called Moab which is a Mecca for mountain biking and spend a bit of time thrashing around on a bike.

This forward planning proves well placed. As we cruise Main Street past outfits offering everything from biking “thru’” canyoning, whitewater, skydiving, ATVing and so on, I am spared that sideways look as it dawns on Sarah why we are actually here.

I have ‘phoned ahead, and booked a morning guided ride with the boys from “Rim Mountain Bike Tours”, and I chicane with them as we pass through towards our camp. The girl taking my cash looks dubiously at my waistline as she warns me that “The SlickRock Trail” is the hardest guided ride they offer, not one for the faint hearted and a good four hours long. I am asked whether I want to be picked up even earlier than the scheduled 630am start, but I decline this kind thought. I have no bike shoes, as the 10kgs luggage limit on our earlier South America legs didn’t allow such comforts, but I find some second hand dwarf size SPDs in a superb 2nd hand store down the road called Wabi Sabi. As the sun sets, I can look out of our Reconnaissance Vehicle at the Sandstone Monolith which houses the SlickRock Trail. Looking forward to tomorrow alright.

630am comes around, and I leave the team slumbering as I stuff in a breakfast of 4 KitKats and some stale bread before hooking up with “Coen”, my guide for the morning. Coen is around 30 and sports what we used to call “bugger grips”, as worn by Mr. Comer back at school. He’s a top man, just back from a 23 day self-supported race from Canada to Mexico, in which each day ranged between 70 and 125 miles (off-road). That’s a really long way, especially carrying all your own gear. I begin to feel a little nervous and start to eye my own waistline as we near the trail head. Yet again, I have talked up my game, but feel on slightly surer ground this time and leap confidently onto my given mount. I have a brand new Santa Cruz Ultralite, the men’s version of the bike which Neil rides back in Haslemere. [Here's a map for you Neil]
Like Neil’s, this has a low crossbar, specifically designed for the riding out here, where your Balearics are constantly at risk from the steep drop-offs and inclines. I charge enthusiastically off around the “parking lot”, only to end up going over the handlebars on the flattest, least challenging piece of tarmac, right in front of Coen the guide before we even start. In the States, the front brake and back brake are the other way around. Very funny.

He switches the brakes around, because the US setup simply isn’t going to work for me, and then we are off. There is no “single track” here, or double track or anything else frankly. It’s just 13 miles of red sandstone, up and down like a bride’s nightie, with a few paint marks showing you where to go. You could do it without a guide, sure, but you wouldn’t know which bits are rideable and at what speed, and you could quite easily get lost or go off an edge into a canyon and never be seen again.
Coen has plenty of stores about such mishaps. I am glad for the company, and he is super-encouraging as he shows me how to ride this stuff. I get round the whole thing without having to walk, which is good given my Las Vegas waistline and end up chasing him hard up some of the longer hills and even overtaking him up one particularly long one. At this point it becomes his turn to eye my waistline and make some half-hearted excuse about not being himself today.

I take a few goes at a few of the steeps, and one particular one has a small crowd gathered to see the old bloke with a beard fall off again and again, but the steeps are all conquered in the end. The amazing thing about his rock is that your back tire never ever skids. Ever. This means that your ability to ride up a hill is limited only by your ability to get your weight forward. If you have a lot of weight, then that helps quite a lot. The trick is to stay in the saddle as long as you can, riding “on the rivet” as Phil Liggett says, and then when the front wheel starts to lift, you stand on your pedals and lean right over the front. On the way down, you just go with it, and hope that there is an “up” soon enough to slow you down again..

It takes a lot less time than the nice lady in the shop estimated from my waistline so the team has barely breakfasted by the time I return to the Reconnaissance Vehicle at 1030am, so we are all happy enough and later I buy myself some unnecessary gear with “MOAB” written all over it so I can rub the fellas’ noses in it when I get home. Hee hee.

We spend the rest of the day in Arches National Park which is super-cool. We visit quite a few Arches here and there, generally not by the specified paved trail, and end up in the Sand Dune Arch, so called because it has some sand dunes and an arch. We take pictures of ourselves jumping “really high”.