These are scribbles from some of the pages of my journals as captured from the road. I drove down to Moab last month to go and race Moab Rocks – a 3-day mountain bike stage race, to see my friends and to have spend some time exploring in the desert.
A bumpy start
This morning I was up by 6 and figured I might as well get going. I had two big days on the road ahead of me to get to Salt Lake City where I’d meet my friends and then head to Moab. I was mostly packed and just needed to pack the car. The wonderful problem of driving to adventures is you have no luggage limitations and can take it all with you. So you do!
Along with the two bins I had packed – one for food/road snacks and one for bike things (chain lube, cloths, CO2 cartridges, pump, tire pressure gauge, shock pump, those sort of things), I had my suitcase and a duffel for bike gear (helmet, pack, floor pump), my backpack with my computer since I was working from the road, and of course I need my journals. The list goes on but trust me, it was a lot of gear. There were two pairs of bike shoes, hiking shoes and sandals (because I am nothing if not optimistic!) in another bag and my yoga mat. Add to that a few boxes of envelopes that I needed to drop off at work on my way out of town. And of course, the bike for the race I was driving down to Moab for.
By 630 I had my little cart loaded with the two bins and the stacks of envelopes, the duffel over my shoulder and another bag in my other hand. I could do this in three, maybe four trips max! I’d be on the road by 7. I walked out to the elevator and pressed the call button …. nothing. So I pressed it 10 more times in that way of hoping that maybe the next time, by the miracle of persistence, it would work. The elevator gods were perhaps still asleep because there was no light, not sound, just the silence of a dead elevator.
Nothing to do but walk down the stairs – its only two flights after all. I tried to navigate the cart down the first flight and it just thump thump thumped too loudly and too unsteadily as the boxes of envelopes tried to escape. On the next landing, I thought ok, just do as many trips as you need. I put the envelopes down to the side and picked up the two bins to take them down first.
I bumped them on the railing as I stood up and both bins slipped out of my hands at the top of the concrete stairwell. I watched in horror as they went tumbling down, losing their lids and spilling their contents as they made their way down the stairwell. It seemed that each item made contact with every single one of the 22 concrete steps, echoing loudly with each thump. My apples went bouncing down, followed by mangoes, my box of raisins, crackers and chocolate, cans of club soda, filled water bottles all racing to the bottom. Beside them the bike bin was chasing hard – the handpump, the spare tubes, the spare derailleur hanger, CO2 cartridges each taking their own path. It’s just past 630 in the morning and each item bouncing off each step before hitting the next seemed so loud to me. I just stood and watched, spellbound. When the handpump reached the bottom of the stairs spinning around, and finally stopped, the sudden silence snapped me into action.
I charged down the stairs picking up the empty bins and started packing everything back in as I went. My lovely apples now soft and mushy, pop cans dented, mangoes bruised – no time to do anything other than just getting everything back into their respective bins. I packed in back in the bin thinking how I had washed the fruit so I wouldn’t have to think about it when I reached into the bin for a snack – now it just went back into the bin. I kept expecting someone to come yelling through the door at the top of the stairs, but the only sound was my heart pounding and the clattering of items going back into bins as I scrambled to pick it all up.
I took the repacked bins out to the car, came back for the envelopes, came back for the duffel, the shoe bag, then the suitcase and my work bag. Finally I came back for the bike and was so grateful for my light bike as I lifted it to my shoulder and carried it down the stairs. Back up again for a last pee, realised my sweaty shirt needed to be changed. On the way out I grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch because you just never know. My Garmin buzzed to tell me I’d done 10 flights of stairs and 3000 steps – and it was not even 7.15 am yet.
Driving out of Squamish within half an hour of my intended time, a tad more frazzled than expected, I figured if that was the worst of the trip, it would be alright. I was on my way!
Things you see on the road
At a rest area, somewhere in Idaho, there are two trucks hauling windmill blades. I was curious so when I saw someone walking from that direction, I had to ask if he was the driver. He was not but he was one of the team driving the support vehicles with signs that say “Oversized Load”.
He explained to me that the blades are 72m long – he said as long as football field but that meant nothing to me. He talked about how the back wheels of the trailer turn independently unlike shorter trails where the back wheels just follow along. I thought about how I’ve seen those windmills 100 times, but never thought about how they got there. Now I wondered about how they were installed. Was a crane required for each one? I must look that up.
The mountains are far away here so the sky yawns wide overhead. The clouds put on an incredible show moving and changing minute by minute. Nothing stands still. I keep crossing the Snake River on my drive. Always coming, always going , always here.
The road is long. With nothing but farmland for miles and miles. Mostly hay fields, but often cattle grazing with brand new calves early in the spring. The monotony of the landscape is peaceful in a strange way. The miles tick by one by one as you drive hundreds of miles. I stop for gas, stop at a rest stop every couple of hours. I have a snack, walk around for 10 minutes, just keen to move after all the hours behind the wheel. Much to my amusement I recognised a soreness in my arms from carrying all that gear down to my car yesterday.
A few hours outside of Salt Lake City I needed gas again and thought I might as well stop to eat – partly because I hadn’t eaten anything other than a mushy apple and some crackers on the road. I don’t even remember what it was called but it was a cheesy chain restaurant. The server seated me in the mostly empty restaurant and handed me the menu. The back page offered a 55+ menu. How could I not?
The meal was actually pretty decent – I had the Fish Grille with the cajun seasoning – and $12 is a good deal too! These are the little things that break the monotony and revive you to get back behind the wheel and keep pushing towards your destination. Next stop Salt Lake City in about 3 hours.