It was Saturday night when I got the text from Shelby about riding Navajo Lake and part of the Virgin River Rim. Both KB and I got excited and were anxiously awaiting the plan. The plan turned out to be no good and the whole thing was cancelled. This left us waking up late and wandering around the house wondering what we were to do all day long. Then it dawned on us that we could in fact go by ourselves. We had the technology and the know-how. Being social creatures by nature, we invited a few other people to join us.
And then at the bright hour of 11ish, we headed up toward the mountain to get our tires dirty and see if there was any oxygen.
You all know that I have been off the bike for the past couple of months, hitting the pedals only a couple of times every once in a while. Well, I have officially fallen completely off the wagon. Four rides in four days. I am happy to report that mountain biking is fun, again.
Our ragtag troop of three rode around Navajo Lake and then stopped for lunch. We hadn’t had enough singletrack so we hit the Virgin River Rim trail for a few more miles to get the legs good and tired. It felt awe inspiring to just spin on the somewhat smooth, alpine singletrack. I found there to be plenty of oxygen, this is probably due to all the higher altitude backpacking we have been doing this summer.
Anywayssss, it was a kick ass day. And has prompted the planning of the Annual Autumnal Virgin River Rim Group Outing of the Mooseknuckler Variety (The job of Mooseknuckler Event Title Person is still open). I hope that you will all take note that I used the gerund form of the verb to plan, meaning that the process of planning has begun, hasn’t terminated, we are in the middle of it. And by has begun, I mean that I shot a few texts out to people whom I thought would be interested. If you happen to be in the mood for some colorful mountain riding in about 6-8 weeks, hit me up and we will get things rolling.
Speaking of getting things rolling and Mooseknuckler Events, Slotoja (the only event I’ve ever named that didn’t take three lines of print to type out) is about to happen. For those of you who aren’t attending, you will be missing out on a whole lot of this:
I know you all want a whole lot of that. I wonder if that jersey still fits…
And some of this:
Currently there are four of us attending, Double D, Double D’s roomy (whose name I still don’t know), Mr. Anderson and myself.
Some of you may not understand the draw of riding 200 miles in three days, just simply to ride 200 miles in three days. This while stopping when we choose, sleeping where we can and basically playing bum for a weekend. I’m going to venture a guess (I would’ve used assume but we all know what that does to you and me) that those of you who don’t understand the appeal have never played bum before.
There is a deep rooted feeling of freedom to be able to simply roam, to live in the moment of your travels. You have a start date, sometimes a finish date, and everything in between is just seat of your pants, kick in the balls, figure it out while you go. This idea usually doesn’t appeal to many folks, especially in this age of instant gratification and endless streams of information. Venturing into the unknown is almost impossible, but once it has been done it is difficult to not yearn for that feeling again.
Time passes and the sweaty nights in drainage culverts convert into romantic memories of the nomadic lifestyle. The hum drum routine of every day life drowns out the bad of those moments when you are standing at a cross road wondering which way is going to take you to where you thought you wanted to be and converts them into where you want to be.
Once you’ve been a vagabond, you need a dose of freedom every now and again to maintain your stability and sanity within the structured life of our society.
My first time “vagando” (that is the Chilean version of a verb that means to go about being a vagabond, in gerund form, I don’t know the word in English. I don’t think it exists.) was the Southern Hemisphere Summer of 2003. We left Santiago expecting to spend a few days in the beach village of Pichilemo. After those few days were up, it didn’t feel right so we headed south taking buses from one town to the next, burning up my savings account. We made it to Puerto Montt and it got cold. We made our way back to Santiago and I continued to not work for another four or five months.
I’ve been a bum at heart ever since.
That’s one of the things that I love about bikes, they are the fast form of DIY transportation. The chosen form of vagabonds everywhere.
P. L. and R.