Moab Rocks 2022: Stage One

I'm still choking on the dust...

Moab truly doth rock.  That question has been answered.

Best to start at the beginning?

I've already complained about my rearranged travel before I left (thanks, American Airlines!).  Despite the challenges before us, Dahn did a diligent job driving us four hours whilst I sat in the passenger seat starving and dehydrated to get us to the registration table with fourteen minutes to spare.

After having our presence acknowledged, we checked into the Adventure Inn... which would put a roof over our heads and be serving breakfast... after we'd already be heading to the start line... but it's just a Frogger hop across four lanes of Moab traffic to a convenient store with XL coffees and preservative pies... so okay.

Stage One:

We're rolling out the door and we make it about fifteen seconds from the motel before Dahn realizes that the gear he swapped over to after the True Grit (the last time he rode the bike) was popping and clicking on his full squish SS, so...

Ominous pre-race gear swappage.

I'd already mapped the route to the start line at the school in my head, but we fell into herd mentality and followed some people who didn't know where they were going.  You know, as you would.  We eventually got to the school and sorted ourselves into the starting chute.

The day started with a no-shit thirteen (or fourteen... apparently the Canadians still haven't figured out wheel sensors since the last time I did a TR race back in '06) mile climb out Sand Flats Rd.  Once the neutral rollout vehicle pulled aside, I quickly found myself off the back of the haves and falling into the strung-out have nots.  I was more than eight miles into the climb before I remembered that I'm in one of the most beautiful parts of our fine country, and I should probably take a look at my surroundings.

My surroundings being the four inches in front of my tire.

Round a turn and I can see the road clinging to the side of a rock wall ahead and the ants climbing up it in the distance.  Further along, the surface turns visibly gray, an indicator that the road is paved... because it's too steep to hold up to erosion to not be.  I end up walking about fifty yards of blacktop.  Meh.

We finally turn off the road and on to Porcupine Rim.  I've only ever been a tourist here.  Stopping at every overlook.  Sessioning technical bits.  Taking photos.  Not this time.

I pucker my sphincter every time I can sense that I'm closer than twenty feet from potential death.  I know I can't logically fall off a cliff from this distance, but... aliens?  We get to the Snotch, and it's comical to watch grown adults sit on the steep rock face holding their bikes in awkward positions slide down on their lycra covered backsides.  From that point on, I got the experience I was looking for when I decided to come here. 

I'd never been down the Porcupine descent on a rigid single speed.  I've wondered what it would be like for more than fifteen years.

Now I know.

Great googly moogly.  I'm so used to just slam banging my way down 99% of this trail, just leaning back, pulling up, and launching off the ledges.  Now I'm hunting and pecking and doing my best to stay outta everyone's way.  I have to remind myself, I wanted this.  I needed this.  I've wanted to see how bad the Moab Rocks Stage Race would be in a turgid manner, and it's delivering in spades. Eyeballs loosening in their sockets and kidneys getting tetherballed around my spine.

Hold on for semi-dear life, and then in the most unceremonious of manners, the finish line is just there at an odd point in the desert where the land goes from one government agency to another.  We still have to ride the rest of the way down (which is 50% harrowing for me due to my fear of heights and also death) and then back into town for a 34 mile day in the legs (and arms and lower back and upper back and neck).

Lunch, beer, nap, racer social, beer...

Costco beer is still beer.

And early to bed.

I'ma hold onto the rest for next week.