Moab Mountain Bike Special Olympics. . .

Okay, not really. But if they did have a special olympics I would have taken Gold in both the One Legged Pedal Race and the Uphill Seated Track Stance.

The bike problems really began when I loaded up my old Schwinn Moab and noticed that the front tire was missing several of its knobbies. I think it was jealous of the road bike and thought it might get more ride time if it had smoother tires. No worries, there are plenty of bike shops in Moab.

My teammate that had invited me to Moab got really sick and so I picked up a gal I met last week at cross and we headed to Moab. There we joined the rest of our group of people that I either didn't know at all or barely knew. Turns out there were two condos full of friends of friends but it didn't matter we were all family bound by a single love of singletrack. Friday night was a great night of sipping wine, sharing stories and getting to know each other.

Saturday I had my choice of two groups to ride with. Group A was heading out for a road ride. Since I only had my mountain bike and I had put knobby tires on the night before, that didn't seem like a good choice. Group B contained a nice mix of mountain bike guides and world class mountain bike racers that were planning something "epic". Hmmmm. . . maybe not a good fit for me either. So I decided to do my own ride.

I opted for Klondike Bluffs. I chose Klondike Bluffs because some of the roadies were thinking about riding a trail later and I wanted to have something left. Klondike is a fun little climb with a fun descent but not so technically difficult that I was likely to injure myself and have to limp out. It was a gorgeous day and I kept a good pace up the climb trying to catch people in front of me. At the top I admired the view then headed down to be back in time for lunch. I had barely gotten onto the slickrock section of the trail when I stuck my front tire into a crevice in the rocks and did a weird slow motion endo. Instead of flipping all the way over (the proper way to endo) I got my back tire up as high as it would go and then fell onto my right side. The rock was hard but no injuries so I hopped back on my bike.

I noticed as I was riding that my cleat felt loose so I stopped again to tighten it. I twisted my foot to get my shoe out of the pedal and my shoe stayed stuck to the pedal but the pedal came right out of the bike. Somehow my dumb endo had managed to strip the pedal from the crank and the inside of the crank was no longer threaded. I waited for McGyver to show up and I thought about trying to use Gu as an adhesive but neither of those ideas panned out.

With my right pedal in my back pocket, I hopped onto the saddle and clipped in my left foot. I bounced down the slick rock stopping often to dismount and walk the more rugged sections. I was jarred enough that at the bottom I was happy to be back onto the jeep road. However, I still had a long ways to go and by now I was fed up and hungry and getting a huge blister on my foot. So I pedaled with only my left leg while my right leg hung out like dead weight. A few people passed me and asked if I needed help but most tried not to look at me. Like if they don't mention my handicap it is like it doesn't exist.

The rest of the day was great. I did a little wine tasting and then enjoyed an amazing dinner with my new friends. We had great conversation and all of the other tables were envious of us. I'm sure they were staring at us because we were so glamourous. . not because we were loud (I love the effects of a good red wine). After dinner it was time for the annual Moab Halloween Party.

If you've never been to the Moab Halloween party you are missing out. People take their costumes at this event very seriously. Sexy, raunchy, bizarre, weird and disgusting costumes were there but none were boring. Mine might have been the lamest costume since I went as a French Maid. I spent some of the night dancing with one of my new friends who had dressed up as a Hooters girl. He looked great although I was a little uncomfortable with him constantly pushing his breasts into my back.

I also spent much of the night dancing with Bob. Bob was wearing a bright read wig in a pixie cut and aviator sunglasses. Bob from Sedona introduced himself and I told him I was Shanna from Salt Lake. Some more dancing then "Dana?" I corrected him, nothing new it takes a while to get my name right. Then he asked "what do you do in Reno?" I told him I don't do anything in Reno. More dancing then, "do you get up to Tahoe much?" I informed him that I'd never been to Tahoe. He found that very hard to believe since I live in Reno. More dancing then again, "what is it you do?" I told him I was a maid. Then we made out on the deck. What the heck, that is what Dana the maid from Reno would do!

Today I woke up to a screaming headache and blue skies. The weather was too nice to waste so I rented a bike and deciced to make myself suffer by climbing Amasa Back. I've done Amasa a few times before and I think it is my favorite trail. I rode with my roomie to the trail head and we were off. Well kind of. We hiked down the "step" section and onto the trail. I had noticed at the shop the pedals were a bit tight but I wasn't worried. By the time I had hiked through the fine Moab sand to the rideable part of the trail, it was taking a ton of force to get in and out of the pedals. Of course I had tools in my saddle bag, the problem was that my saddle bag was on my bike.

I rode down the first rocky section and managed to get clipped in at the bottom. I started climbing the next section and ran out of steam (sram shifters, I was always in the wrong gear). Unable to clip out, I balanced as long as I could, then fell over onto my side. This patterned continued with me falling on both sides fairly equally for maybe a mile before, covered in dust and scraped up, I said "no more". We rode for another hour or so towards Hurrah Pass before deciding that it was too lame and we were too hungry. We turned in our rentals and headed home.