Life’s mysteries tend to whip my imagination into frenzies, which pretty much can be expected for a writer, dreamer and obsessive optimist like me.
Mother Nature’s handiwork offers endless opportunities for spiritual experiences, and Slickrock stands steadfast as a perfect example.
A mountain biking mecca, without question, Slickrock treats you to some of the sweetest riding you can imagine, and you’ll find nothing like it anywhere else.
So, while we endured the July heat in Moab, Utah, the only real question for me was: When?
When would I slip in a few hours of extreme ecstasy?
Before our family hikes in Arches National Park?
Maybe the afternoon before our evening jaunt to the Delicate Arch?
How about the next morning, since we opted for another evening sunset outing to Landscape and Double-O arches?
Or, maybe, a spiritual sunrise sortie on our exit day?
Slickrock on the mind. It’s hard not to have it around Moab, where an endless parade of mountain bikers roll down the streets, all of them, I’m sure, fresh from a Slickrock adventure.
Life being what it is for a family man, hours fly by like minutes, and days disappear in a blink. Suddenly I faced one sliver of an opening in our schedule, that sunrise sortie, that would come just a few precious hours after our sunset hike to the Double-O.
Somewhere between the sun’s appearances, something nudged me toward a troubling reality: There would be no Slickrock this time around.
Part of me embraced it. Part of me railed against it.
I’ve got a mountain bike bolted to the roof of my truck, and have driven it nearly 2,000 miles to get here, and I’m going to get blanked? Am I serious?
Deep in my gut, the final decision found peace. Yeah, no Slickrock. I can live with that. I’m not sure why, but I can.
When morning dawned, spending the final hours cooking up breakfast for my girls and savoring some java while gazing across the Red Rocks bathed in soft sunlight just felt right.
We made our exit from Moab around noon. An hour later, we seriously hit I-70, westbound, across the rugged southern edge of Utah.
The sign flashed by quickly: No Services, next 106 miles. I glanced at the gas tank, just more than half full, then looked again, two or three times. Finally, I relented. We better fill up.
We turned around, and headed back to Green River to top off the tank. Better safe, than sorry, right? That’s been my mantra.
As our truck rolled to a gentle stop in front of the gas pump, a loud crash unnerved me. I jumped out. My bike continued with a gentle shoulder roll off the roof, and clanged on the side of the truck, its rear wheel still bungeed into place.
The front fork that diligently held it atop the roof for those 2,000 miles broke loose, bending the quick-release skewer like a piece of Powerbar in the hot sun.
Once again, I looked toward the heavens. Thank you, whomever, for turning me around. I can only imaged the damage the bike could wreak on the truck and the tent camper behind, when ripped from its grasp at 75 mph on I-70.
On further inspection, I surmised the fork must have been cracked. Maybe it was that rocky descent on the Colorado Trail outside Durango. Who knows?
Then, it hit me.
If that fork indeed cracked, or somehow found itself compromised, that would not have been the best of circumstances to play around Slickrock. Because, of course, if you crash on Slickrock, you crash, hard, on rock.
Without a doubt, I thought, better safe, than sorry. Always.
Time to ride.
