Day Four: May 23rd 2013

It was hot last night in our tent. I woke up several times over the course of the night covered in sweat. I pushed aside my down sleeping bag and star fished naked on the tent floor. I’m sure we don’t need our down sleeping bags out here, but since we are headed into another winter (in NZ), we brought them.

I wake up around 7am every morning, as that is when the morning sunshine pours into the tent, producing a warm glow. I must admit, I think last night was the worst sleep yet. That was quickly forgotten, as I popped my head outside the tent and felt a cool desert breeze and saw the perfectly cloudless sky. Another wicked day in the desert, I thought. You can’t really go wrong with the climate here, it’s pretty much always sunny.

I let Ben sleep in a bit, because I know he too didn’t sleep very well.

Today we are biking. Which makes sense, since this is a bike trip. I can feel the excitement entering my body, as it’s time to explore a new unknown area. We decided, the night before, that we were going to ride Lunch Loop Trails in Grand Junction, which is only about 25mins away from Fruita. We are told, by the local bike shop, that we HAVE to ride Holy Cross. It’s fast, technical and offers a great downhill experience. After taking a look at the trail map, we deiced to tie in a long uphill on Tabeguache Trail to a quick downhill on Pre-Nup, which opens up to Holy Cross (long tech downhill) into Holey Buckets, uphill on Miramonte, more upill on Leftover Lane and a long decent down Curt’s Lane. Day is figured out.

After Ben wakes up and tunes up his bike (for an hour), we are pretty much ready to make the 30mins drive to the Lunch Loop Trails. A quick stop for coffee, juice and wifi and away we go.

It’s REALLY REALL REALLY windy today.  Like I mean… REALLY WINDY. Sand in my face while biking, windy. Gotta love it.

We parked the truck at the Trail Head and suited up. We randomly ran into Mike (my phyiso from Whislter) and a couple other people from BC. After a quick chat about what they rode in the morning, we were off. The Tabeguache Trail was a long, gradual climb. It felt good to get our legs moving. The wind was ridiculous, but I’m glad there was a breeze, as the heat and sun were even more ridiculous. After a good, long climb, we made it to the top of the trail and entered the Pre-nup trail head. Lets the decent begin!! This is always the part that I love. Going doooowwnnnnnnn! With smiles on our faces and dust in our teeth, we started the twisted, technical decent.

We were about 15mins into the ride, loving life, when I crashed. HARD. I got a little too confident and followed Ben’s line over a little rock drop. I went way too fast and landed with my front tire a little crooked. This, as I have experienced before, whips your entire body over the handbars and smashes you into the ground… extremely hard.  I haven’t had a crash like that since Whistler, in 2009. I had the wind knocked out of me so bad, that scared me initially. Then, I instinctively thought I broke a rib and thought I re-broke my collarbone. After laying there for 2 mins, I started to  think that I broke both my hands. Coming from many injuries, I know what it feels like to break body parts. I was still, trying to breath and Ben came running back up to me with a frantic worrisome look on his face. He assessed my entire body and helped me up. I came to the conclusion that my collarbone isn’t broken, my shoulder, however, is extremely ripped to shreds. I seem to be missing a little bit of skin from that area. My palms are badly bruised, but I don’t think anything is broken…. I slowly hopped back on my bike and rode the rest of the trails back to the truck. I was thirsty.

It felt like hours. I was riding so slowly. I stopped in the middle of a trail, and cried. I really begged my body not to be broken and that this trip wasn’t ruined. I spent a little time listening to the sounds of the desert and taking in the beautiful views.

After about 2 hours, we were back to the truck. Ben grabbed the ice from our cooler and I jammed my hand into it. It immediately felt better. I kept it there until I couldn’t stand it anymore. My body felt like I’d been hit by a train.

I think I am getting old.

All the sudden it dawned on me that I didn’t buy Travels Insurance. Oops. We headed to the nearest wifi we could find, and I quickly bought one months worth. That would have been ridiculous. As if.

It was REALLY time for food and water.

We drove into Grand Junction and found an awesome Nepalese restaurant. They were closing for the afternoon (it was 2:25pm), but they still let us come in and eat the delicious buffet of Indian, Nepalese and Tibetan food. Ben and I stuffed our faces full for $17. Yum.

Feeling extremely dirty, we decided we would pay $6 each for a swim and shower at the local rec centre. Remind me never to do that again. It was total culture shock. All the sudden I REALLY felt like I was in the USA. Nonetheless, it felt like to swim a couple laps (which was hard, because I was REALLY sore) and shower. We came out of the rec centre feeling physically fresh and mentally exhausted.

Arriving back to our campsite at 18 Road trails, felt like home. We unloaded ourselves and the bikes and spent a little time relaxing in the evening sunshine. It felt nice to just lay still and let my body heal.

Ben wanted to ride PBR (which is a new trail they created up here recently). He started to get ready for the ride… and I joined him. I wanted to see how badly my body was, so this was a good tester. The trail head just starts a little ways up from our tent, so the approach was easy. Pedaling into the tight single track, whipping in and out of little berms felt good. PBR is fast. It’s a downhill trail which has little jumps scattered throughout. For the first time since noon, I smiled. I was so happy my body wasn’t broken and I was able to enjoy what I love to do. We zipped down PBR so fast, it was over before it started. Pedaling back up to the campsite felt good, uphill sweating, with the wind at our backs.

We didn’t really eat dinner. Ben had corn chips with hot sauce and I had a little salad with red pepper and cucumber. We crawled into the tent, watched a couple episodes of Star Trek and passed out.

Good day, I thought. Good day. My only worry now, was that tonight is going to hurt and the next morning is going to be worse. Ugh.

R&B