What Shock Are You Wearing?

The arrival of Monday morning in Moab meant the departure of the weekend mass of tourists. All that remained were a few thousand lucky cyclists ready for more mountain bike fun. Morning temperatures are cool, but the clear sky and bright sun warm you up quickly, as does a 14 mile climb start to your day's ride.Starting from our condo in town, we headed up to Sand Flats Road. Passing by the famous Slickrock Trail, we decided to take a short detour before carrying on our journey. Motor Mike is in Moab for the first time.You cannot come to Moab and not do Slickrock! Mikey gets his first taste and likes what he sees.After our brief flirtation with The Rock, we carried on up Sand Flats Road.Even though it was a long 14 mile grind, with views like this you cannot complain.We questioned our sanity as droves of shuttle vans whizzed by carrying eager cyclists to the trailhead.If we had wussed out and taken the shuttle, we would have missed out on another fun inspirational moment. As we passed by the doubletrack Porcupine trailhead, we ran into our new friend, Dusty! This time we got to see his way cool shock....on his arm....not on his bike.He and his friends were having a big time with their mountain bikes and KTM dirt bikes all housed in a trick RV setup. Every setup they had was fancy! Nice guys.We said our goodbyes and continued on up the dirt road. Having never been beyond this point on the road, we had no idea what was in store. More climbing. Lots of climbing, with nice views. Makes it worth the effort. It's so cool out here!Finally it happened, we reached our turnoff. After 14 miles we found the singletrack trail to our left. Let the Fun begin!This section of trail was a just reward for all our effort. Sweet, swoopy, rocky rolls and drops leading us along the edge of the rim. The hardest part of the ride was resisting stopping every 2 feet to enjoy the views.The bliss was briefly interrupted with some hike-a-bike. I would have ridden it, but these guys got in my way.Back to the singletrack with a little bit of climbing thrown in for good measure.Then back to more fun singletrack along the rim.We made it to the lookout that we normally climb to on the lower doubletrack.More inspiration.After oogling and awgling over the views, it was time for some super duper downhilling.I had an absolute blast on my MotoLite with 5 inches. Hopefully my Blur is not reading this back at home as it waits for me in the garage. Speedy did not have to rent his Epiphany, he owns it. It's such a beautiful downhill.Jungle Boy is renting his Epiphany to get a taste of the sweet life.After almost 4 hours of riding, we've finally reached the trailhead!Some of the sweetest singletrack on the planet!Our day could not get any better.
We did not want it to end.Our journey to epic wonderland was coming to a close. All that was left now was a road ride along the Colorado River. The smiles on our faces were testament to the Fun we had experienced together.As we popped out of Porcupine, we saw one of our Dusty buddies waiting for his crew. Thoughts of bribing him to drive us back to town in his fancy RV ran through our heads, but we knew we had to cap off this adventure ourselves the hard way. With well wishes to our new found friends, we headed back home to the hot tub. Here's to Dusty and his friends. The guy with The Coolest Shock Ever!