Lessons in Porcupinism

Short Version:
Some things we learned in Moab, a great ride on greater bikes, we shift house.

Long Version:
We'd been learning things from the Invermatons:
- A broken neck is not the end of riding. (Don)
- Laundry baskets are valid hiding places, but only if they're full of dirty laundry. (Mark)
- Another broken neck is still not the end of riding. (Don)
- Back of the hand = discipline; open palm = abuse. (The Viv of Destruction)
- It's easier to negotiate deep sand-traps on a bicycle if you're not a heffalump. (Christie, Lori, Gina and Nene, v Me, Steve19, and Cam)
- Willpower + grit + laughter = Anything is rideable (Sodium Chloride Viv)
- There's no accounting for taste. (Lori, Cindy, Viv19, Ann, Christie, Gina, Nene)
- Performing repairs on bicycles is made vastly more difficult when helpful people like me help. (Don)

We were a couple of weeks too late to run the Whole Enchilada; a 31-mile mainly downhill epic which drops from the now-snowed-under Burro Pass. Still, the main Porcupine Rim trail was open, and a short climb from our drop-off point (thanks Don!) saw us away laughing, chasing the main group's two-hour head-start on the fun but rough downhill to the Colorado River.

Don and Christie had decided that they'd earned a rest day, and had loaned us their super-awesome Ibis Mojo SL bicycles for the ride. Turns out they're not only SuperLight, but also SuperPlush ; we were floating up and down both steps and drops we'd've been fighting on our own bikes, with only our unwillingness to place such precious devices at risk slowing us on both climbs and descents. A couple of times Nene was negatively-impacted by my tortoise-like downhill progress; forced to slam on the wrong-way-around brakes in a hurry to avoid rear-ending me. I suffered most, though, when an attempted crawl down a series of steps that I'd normally have blasted through at pace led to what would have been a total face-plant had my elbow not been there to bear the brunt the landing. This, of course, occurred just after we caught the main group, so there were witnesses aplenty to my buffoonery.

There was some crazy terrain, with some washed-out sections of trail engendering huge rock-drops that some mad bugger rode, and that several untall women* navigated with generally endearing complaininess. We played leapfrog with a mad old man from Michigan, who was about seven feet tall and was wearing something which looked very much like the orange perspex face-shield section of Rebel Alliance pilot flight-helmets, and then we were off on the road-ride back into town where we stole internets, did laundry, and bought a wee thank-you gift for Don and Christie before heading out into the desert to their AirStream for dinner. Which was so delicious that we moved in next-door.







* = And Fucken Dave