White Rim this weekend

Thinking about a desert camping weekend with a little WRIAD on Saturday. Anyone that's interested, drop me a line to get the details. Denver people I can possibly help arrange transportation.

White Rim Success

Friday night drive and bivy at Mineral Bottom, my status quo. 2 cars and 6 people and bikes arrived from Denver via food logs at the Glenwood Qdoba. The rain passed before we sacked out and no tents were pitched. We all caught glimpses of beautiful stars mixed with occasional wind and clouds. I was up with my 4:30 alarm to almost calm winds, sitting next to my 1/8" pad in my bivy and jacket, eating my granola. Everyone else filtered awake and we rolled at 6am with the dawn. Erik forgot his eye drops (important after a recent PRK) so I dashed back and got them while the other 5 continued. A strong chase saw me stripping layers when I caught up before the pave.

The day rolled according to plan. Dropping into the beauty of Shafer and the river below, tons of fun picture stops along the way, shared lunch on top of Murphy's and the full gang plus the late arrival of Fred rolling through Hardscrabble and right on to the finish. I cleaned all the sand and the Mineral switchbacks at 2:1 and beers, soda and pizza were greedily shared in Fred's vanagon. First century and offroad century for Bill and Brett. Kick ass! Shawn rode super strong all day. Erik and Dave got it done and I check another month off the list for WRIAD. 5 down, 7 to go. Eventually we packed up the E and Scuby and rolled into Moab for a quick milkshake stop at Wendy's. I also fear I saw Dave inhale TWO Baconators with his Frosty. Shawn and I bucked up for the drive home, arriving back in Denver at 4am fueled by coffee, Red Bull and conversation. We said our goodbyes to Shawn and Brett, dropped off Dave and Bill off at Bill's place, Erik headed home from mine and I crawled into bed with my lovely wife before the sun came up.

WRIAD, working man style. Done!

Ready

When I was racing cars, our club used to encourage members to go to the track when they could and not wait until everything was perfect. If you waited for everything to be perfect, inevitably you'd never end up going. It is just a simple saying but I've found it applies to most things in my life. Take the leap, give it a try, just do it. Nike. Just kidding. Aside from being recklessly unprepared, the knowledge and experience one gains from "giving it a try" is usually far greater than waiting for that perfect moment and more often than not you're surprised by accomplishing something you weren't sure you could do.

Why blather on about all this? Well tomorrow I'm riding the White Rim in a day with some friends, one in particular who I've been encouraging to come along with me on a ride like this for a while now. He's ready, I can see it but up until now I'm not sure if he could. Tomorrow I hope to show him one of my favorite places and give him that nudge to accomplish something big, something I know he can do.
And since my rambling isn't all that exciting, I thought I'd throw a few great pictures of our route up, none of which were taken by me...
Ah the desert, to where I must escape now and then, if only for a day. As Anatoli Boukreev described his mountains "like cathedrals where worship gives you strength and strips off the scale of ordinary life," so too do I feel similarly winding among the pillars, arches, canyons and sand of the Island in the Sky.