I just got back from Moab on Monday morning. We had perfect weather down there, cool at night (to kill off the mosquitoes) and warm in the day.
As I was driving down I-5 my car stereo died. As I still had over 1000 miles to go I stopped at Grants Pass to finda new stereo. A little shop had one Alpine stereo in stock and I snagged it. I needed the same type of stereo I had before so it'd work with my CD changer. A few hours later I was on the road with a new stereo.
I had a great drive across Nevada on Highway 50. I kept the speed under 120, but usually above 90. I got into Moab before everyone else and camped at our first ride. It was a clear night and you could see billions and billions of stars and the Milky Way.
After our warm up ride we took off into Moab to get our campground. That's when I noticed that my car was gushing radiator fluid. After some checking out of the engine and some swearing I found out it was the coolant/water pump. My mechanic said I wouldn't be able to limp the car home so I went around town trying to find a mechanic to replace it. I had the part shipped out and got back to mountain biking.
We rode one ride a day and then relaxed the rest of the day, eating and reading and hanging out at camp. We ended up riding Monitor Merimack, Klondike Bluff, Amasa Back, Bar somethingorother and SlickRock.
On Thursday my coolant pump came in and I took it to the shop. It turned out that the fan clutch was wonky as well, so I had to get that shipped as well.
Dan, Mike and I went out to Wall Street to do some top roping. Dan and Mike made it up a 5.10 rated climb while I went up 5.7-8 climbs.
We went out evening riding at Slickrock to get some pictures with good light, which was probably the most fun riding I had. I went off a few jumps (which are scary because of all the hard rock that hurts when you eat it.) I got a video of Dan crashing after a nice jump, which I'll put up soon.
At night we hit the hot tubs and yabbered at the other people in the other tubs. There were two canadians who were always up there with a case of Coors. We rode on Slickrock with one of them and he did sick shit - "I was just cutting the corner off of the turn eh." Never mind it was freakin' steep.
All the rides were pretty fun and had varied riding for everyone. I'd practice my little wheelie riding for going off of lips and stuff. I had hurt my a$$ last week because I rode a wheelie too far and went over backwards. Ron made fun of it and then did the same thing on Amasa back ("Up the middle baby! shit!" boom)
On the last day I got the car all squared away while I did some more climbing with Dan and Mike. This time I climbed a 5.9 route to the top and started a 5.10 route but couldn't get above 10 feet from the ground (must be the sissy computer hands.)
Everyone had a good time (minus the equipment issues [my rear brake went out on my bike on slickrock - but only on downhills]) and no one got seriously hurt. Well, Ron crashed on Amasa back and got skinned up pretty good (no pools of blood though :( ). His skin is actually still on the rock slab that tripped him up. I didn't take a picture because who wants to see skin on a rock.
I'll be throwing up pictures tonight which are more worth while than babbling about cars and skin.
Posted by Sam at September 30, 2003 1:15 PM