Fruita Trip - Day One

After meeting at my house for some French Toast and coffee, Friday morning, Brad and I loaded up the truck and headed west.  We were a bit nervous about road conditions in the mountains, so we took the Frontier, rather than Brad's Focus, doubling my miles driven for the year!

Anyway, there was a bit of snow on the road, and a little bit falling from just shy of the tunnel until just west of Vail.  Other than that, the road was dry, and the drive was easy.  We arrived in Grand Junction, around lunch time, hit my favorite thrift store, then had lunch.  Finally, around 1:00 PM, we drove out to the Loma exit to  hit up the Mary's Loop/Horsethief Bench trails.

The trails were in perfect shape.  We had a mix of blue sky and puffy white clouds overhead, and the temperature was in the high-50s to low-60s.  Pretty much perfect mountain-biking conditions, for me.

As we rode up the hill from the trailhead, my chain broke.  We weren't even 100 yards from the truck when it happened.

"Dude, I saw that!"  Brad said.  "I was looking right at your chain when it let go!"

No big deal.  I never ride without a chain tool.  So, after fixing the chain and telling Brad to keep his eyes to himself, I was ready to ride within 5 minutes.

I won't bore you to death with too much detail about the ride.  I crashed a couple of times (caught my pedal on the ground), Brad did some aerial ballet because of the same reason, but recovered without crashing.

I flatted my rear tire, as we were making the final climb to the ridge over the frontage road which takes you back to the trailhead.  After fixing it, we rode out to the frontage road, only to have it go flat again.  I had only one tube with me, and couldn't find a patch kit in my bag.  So, rather than use Brad's spare tube, I aired the tire up to 75 psi and hauled ass for the truck.  We were pushing along between 25 and 30 mph on the frontage road, and I rolled up to the truck with about 20 psi in the tire.  But... I rolled.

That night, Brad and I went to the Rockslide, in GJ, for dinner.  Rain caused the band to move in from the patio to the bar, so we sat and had a couple of beers while listening to the band until almost midnight.  More about that here.

As for the ride, check this out:



I bought myself a Flip Video camera with some of my birthday money, and this is my first attempt to put together a movie with it.  Also, in the riding scenes, I am holding the camera in one hand and steering with the other so you get a pretty strong "ShakyCam" effect.  I'll try to do better, in the future.

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