Its good to get out of eden every now and again to go experience rocks and what-not. So Last Friday morning we loaded up the truck with bikes in a modified shocker configuration

and set out for the land that the mormons settled. Not that the engineers don’t get out much, but its good to try out different terrain and stay away from the computer for a while.
The open road, sleeping outdoors and smelling like a campfire for a week sounds good. Along the way we stopped in Barstow at Peggy Sue’s Diner where we met up with the Del Sol car club

First stop was Gooseberry Mesa in southwestern Utah.

where we just explored from our campsite for the first half of the day, came back for lunch and out for some rockier rides in the afternoon. Then packed up and headed for Moab, which was a lot further away then I thought. Saturday night and Sunday were busy on the trails and in the campgrounds, but we persevered.
On Sunday, we met up with the oldest member of the TRP (test ride posse) from British Columbia, Andre, who flew to Salt Lake City and drove over with his bike.

Nick made breakfast, though there wasn’t many takers

We rode Kokopelli/UPS/Porcupine twice during our stay. Nobody likes to stop the fun for pictures, so this is just one from the overlook rest spot.

Then some Amasaback to Rockstacker where Josh rallied some tech-gnar on his carbon Blur LT. We saw a family going out on ATVs with an infant in a backpack on her mother’s back, and a toddler sitting in front. Its nice when they can get started young, and a little brain trauma never done hurt nobody.
The next day a couple more Canadians showed up, Jordan Manley who just came from winning a big photo competition and his twin brother Chad.
We went on a technical ride the next day that turned into a bit of a clusterf&$k right off the start – but we’ll skip over that… It was nice exploring some new territory, and HB was good company and found us the 2nd half of the ride. After slogging through some sand and up some crazy rock-crawling roads, we ended up here:

and finished with the treacherous exposure and fun descent of Portal trail. I’m glad we packed plenty of PB & Ts for this ride, because it was a long one.

And so it went: riding, camping and Canada jokes. And then one incredibly uneventful fifteen hour drive home yesterday. And so the summer begins…
I’m ready.

For a company that is heavily staked in the full suspension world, the bike racks here at the cannery are something of a refreshing contradiction. the shiny new bikes with our names on them are pretty heavily outnumbered by the beaters that abound here, all proudly showing the patina of long lives lived and ridden hard. So many of the people who work here ride to work, work on bikes all day, punch the clock to then work on their own bikes, ride home from work again, and in their spare time, ride bikes for fun. That’s a good thing.

Although, riding bikes for fun can have its downside. Now that the days are longer, the local mayhem of Wednesday night rides has resumed. This year, El Gato Negro and Danny B have led the charge, and the first of this summer’s “Wednesday Night Races” went down two nights ago. Use of quotation marks there is to acknowledge that the phrase should not be taken too seriously. Anyway, the first event featured some arcane ways of leveling the playing field, including but not limited to handicapping the fast guys by making them fill their shoes with sand, roshambo contests, dirty beer chugs, and mandatory front to rear tube swaps. Sounds like Chapin got the short end of that stick for the most part – which is what happens when you’re the fast guy at work (note that in the linked photo he’s flanked by a couple of total nobody locals. pffff….

Karma can be a bitch though. After spending most of the evening acting as marshall and personally overseeing Chapin’s competitive circle of hell, Danny B took himself down on a fire-road near dusk, further reinforcing the wisdom of “do not follow Todd or Jenn when it is getting dark.” Here, with his freshly broken scapula, Danny B re-enacts the crux move (that, or he’s shouting out “oh yeah, back that thang up!” while getting his best hip grind on. you decide):

First Wednesday Night Race of a new season, and someone’s broken already. Could be a long summer. Chalk this latest up there with the 2 broken necks of years past, and the untold acres of gravel rash that Wednesday seems to have force fed the workers here. Fuck calling it hump day. From here on it might have to be take your lumps day…