Moab, Part 2: Slickrock Trail

After riding Porcupine Rim, my favorite riding buddy ever, Will, and I went looking for some thanksgiving dinner. Well, they wanted seventeen bucks for a plate of turkey and sweet potato at the local restaurant, so we just drank a beer (and we had to buy chips and salsa to go with it, crazy Utah booze laws), and found the rest of the guys that we had ridden with earlier at their campground. After a yummy meal of instant mashed potatoes and Dinty Moore, we headed back to the hostel where we walked right into the middle of a full Thanksgiving dinner. More eating!
Next morning, after waking up from the turkey coma, Will and I went to see what the Slickrock Trail is all about. And it's easy to describe. One word: SURREAL.
The landscape is smooth, wind sculptured rock that looks like endless rolling dunes. The riding surface is 95% rock and 5% sand. This meant that we could get away with rolling bald tires with 20 psi. In fact, that setup was preferable. The rock offers such good traction that we could easily climb inclines that, had they been loamy Michigan dirt or Front Range decomposed rock and half as steep, they would have been near impossible to stick.
Mountain bikers aren't the only ones that love the crazy traction: We saw many dirt-bikers and rock-crawling Jeeps scattered across the slickrock area.
So if the whole trail is just bare rock, how did we know where the trail was? Simple: Someone had painted white spots on the rock to show the way. We were quite literally following the dotted line. I kept waiting for a big X to mark the spot to dig.
Well, we were having a grand old time riding up and down this crazy steep rock until I messed up and fell over--onto the end of my handlebar. I would post a picture of the incredible bruise I got, except that I think I'd get booted from Blogger. Let me put it this way: If I weren't a girl, I would probably have a couple cracked ribs.
Well, everyone falls. I just had to go big! And I wasn't so hurt that I couldn't finish riding.
And the best part about it all? Lee McCormack pulled in next to us in the parking lot! As in Lee Likes Bikes! Lianna likes Lee Likes Bikes....this guy gets a lot of people really psyched about riding. And he's the patron Saint of pump tracks. And he's phenomenal at translating what we do on a bike to words, the true definition of a teacher. I even have his book! (thanks Will)