heavy dose of heaven

Heaven ... before us and within us

Skipped out of office all together for Friday, headed to Fruita on Thursday night! Spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday thoroughly burning my hide and soaking in all the Vitamin D and dirt I could possibly handle... and then some.

Friday we hit the Loma Play Ground for a thorough mess of fun. Ran into Mike Curiak and Pete B. (almost literally ;-) on Rustlers ... played around with Mary, chased a Horsethief, took Steves Cutoff, then doubled back for a backwards Mary, hit the new (and therefore must be explored Wrangler), and finally some odd bits that dropped us onto the base of Moore Fun and back to the buggy. I didn't take a single picture, but Ed did ;-) We kept it simple and mellow in anticipation of a nice big ride on Saturday. It was scrumptious and I fell yet deeper in love with riding, desert, sun ... everything.


Ed's pic, of course

Saturday we just rode our butts off. Yeah, we had 2 cameras ... and 2 flats... and therefore kept a pace slightly slower than perhaps either one of us expected... but we still had an all day adventure that pretty much left us both satisfied and worked ... in all those good ways one wants to be worked and played and dreamy-eyed by the end of the day.

We started at Wrabbits Valley -- and I still don't know the names of everything we hit. It included: the desert on the N. side of the highway, some whoopdies and some soft-sucking-sand, the burn (one of my favorite places to be - and ride - on this earth) and number of big climbs on the South side of the highway, a lot of really, really exposed sunshine, a kick-ass downhill that I will likely never tire of, some messed up hill of a climb, a huge ride along the upper most rim in the area, then some far-out loop that we've been eyeing to ride for 2 years (holy heavens that was a FUN loop!!!), then finally down onto the floor of the valley (sort of), and ended up riding Western Rim back North and finished up back where we started without double-backing at all. One nice big counter-clockwise 45 mile loop. Lots of soft sand. Lots and lots of sun. I do believe that both of us had smiles plastered across our faces the whole big beautiful day (flat time not included ;-)).

Yes, I took pix... but be forewarned: they all have big white spot in the middle of them (sorry).

Click for all my pix:


I'm sure that Ed will post his pix at some point!

I have a couple thoughts that popped into my over-busy mind:

• Sometimes, when we're really rollin' and finding our way through a mess of a trail, I think I hear Ed shifting gears. We all know, of course, that Ed's pony don't have no gears.
• I did not feel tired once. Not once -- my legs and my body felt full and present and capable the entire day.... However, my FEAR of feeling tired got my head all warped-up a couple of times, and it was all I could do to fend off that fear from actually seeping in and making me tired. On a really personal note I just find this really, really interesting.
• Sometimes, when looking out into the grandest of spaces ... I can't help but feel like jumping out into it and soaring over it and through it like a bird. It makes me need to be so quiet -- and yet it makes me dance.

Here's to my man, may he not have pinch-flats ever-ever-ever again for no stupid reason:


Sunday, we explored an area where there are no bikes allowed. Ed took the best pix of this area, and mine stink.... We had a nice 3-hour, mellow hike to recover from the nice rough-and-tumble ride from Saturday.

Here's to all the lovely people we know out there who are so thoroughly gettin' their SPRING riding season ... ON!!!


jj