The Red Rock Casino is a little high brow for KB and I, but inside the confines of said establishment exists a wonderful little place called The Yard. The Yard is a restaurant but you don’t go there for the food. They claim to have the biggest selection of beer on tap in North America. I don’t know if that is true, and frankly it doesn’t matter because they do have a lot of good beer on tap.
As a Mooseknuckler Ally I am sure that you have all heard, if not personally tried, the nectar of the gods known as Hops Rising. In God’s Country known as Utah, you can get this liquid refreshment in small bottles and big bottles. And it is rumored that it will be available soon in cans. One of the weird things about God’s Country, is that you can’t get this liquid refreshment out of a keg despite the fact that it is brewed right here in the belly of the beast. To my knowledge, there is no place in Utah you can get a Hops Rising on tap. The Yard has it.
It also happens to have Delirium Tremens on tap as well. That was my first choice and once I had finished that delectable little snack and it had properly lubricated my senses, I ordered a Hops Rising. This would have been the end of this story except for the fact that this was KB’s Birthday Feast (not to be confused with the Pre-Birthday Dinner that happened on her Birthday’s Eve). Naturally, she ordered a beer or two as well.
For those of you outside the know (read who live in God’s Country and abide by God’s Laws), both of those beers are high point meaning that two of them after a bike ride and one should probably avoid operating heavy machinery like a fork lift, but not limited to that either, for at least a little while. Seeing that I didn’t feel like having this song being played at my funeral, we walked around for a bit.
Around this time, I remembered that we had a small fortune locked to the top of the car. I also remembered that “locked” is a relative term, as in it’s relatively easy to steal anything. Seeing we had some walking around to do, we walked outside and checked on our two-wheeled love machines. They were still “securely” locked, so we turned around and went back inside.
She was walking just in front of us, but her getup gave her away. She was rocking cheap running pants, the kind that look like MC Hammer pants but have zippers at the bottom and for some reason are always a color that glistens and looks like sparkles. This was topped by a big, poofy sweater that looked warm. Her head was kind of tucked down inside the neck of the sweater like she was trying to get as far inside as possible to stay warm. She was carrying a shopping bag. And seeing that this was a high brow establishment, it was one of those paper shopping bags with the rope handles that you get when you buy something overpriced. Her hair was disheveled.
She walked in the doors just in front of us.
On the inside of the doors was a car. This, after all is a casino and all casinos have a car that you can put your name in and win. I think it is a law or at least part of getting your gaming license that you have to have a car giveaway every month.
One thing most people don’t learn when they are in a casino is that there are lots of casino “police” wandering around. Some are in uniforms, some in suits and some in plain clothes. There entire purpose is to keep order. Order in a casino means that you have to be playing. If you’ve ever tried to sit down for very long at a slot machine without putting money in it, you quickly learned this fact. All of this is relevant because when you are out hoboing in Vegas, the casinos are a wonderful place to stay warm, the only problem is that you have to keep moving.
She knew this. She stopped and read the sign, pretending to be interested in the car. She was smart, conserve energy. Find reasons to be where you are. Find a place that you can stop for at least a few minutes without looking out of place. Then keep moving to another sign, another table, another spot that isn’t outside where it’s cold and the real police aren’t as friendly or worried about making a scene. We walked past her and it dawned on me that there may be some douche bag blogger that was walking in just behind us that could have probably typed something similar in describing us and he wouldn’t have been far off the mark.
We stunk. We had ridden 15 miles in the desert just a few hours earlier. We were both a little buzzed and we were just killing time in a casino staying warm and not driving. And yes, we looked out of place.
KB played a few dollars in the slot machines. We stood behind the Black Jack tables and thought about playing, but didn’t. We used the restroom at least ten times. And then we drove back out into the desert and put up our tent, placed our sleeping bags inside and then stood around a campfire. I couldn’t help but wonder about that lady and where she was putting down her “sleeping bag.” It made me wish I had stopped to speak with her and find out more about what she was doing. How she ended up there…
But we had bigger things to worry about.
I had never seen these before, but we found them in every gas station we entered. Single serve wine in a little plastic cup, that is pure genius.
Ever since I have known my wife, she has a particular strong appreciation for the time of her coming into this world. Most of us celebrate our birthday. She celebrates her birth month. There is zero chance of me ever forgetting that her birthday is coming. As soon as the Christmas lights are down, her birthday celebration starts. This weekend was the culmination of that celebration. She had been scheming for the past few weeks about what to do, where to go. She settled on Blue Diamond and Willow Beach.
Blue Diamond is where we started.
This was our first trip to that particular trail system. Being a shop rat I like to stop in and see shops, see what they are doing, how they are existing. I tend to like to look but not talk to anyone. KB loves to talk to the people and we always end up buying a map. This trip was no exception.
We walked into McGhies Bike Outpost and were immediately hit by the persona of the man behind the counter. He was frantically drawing on a printed map whilst showing a slide show on his computer and making sure that the person he was telling where to go, had no way of blaming him for getting lost. There was an absolute overload of information. He talked about aliens, petroglyphs, dams, mesas, peaks and roads. Drew things on the map that were good to know but were not helpful in negotiating the trails.
We came in about half way through his schpeel. We listened and looked at the map that you could purchase, not the one he was drawing on. Once Chris finished with the poor sap ahead of us, he politely greeted us and immediately began from the start of the slideshow. Repeating the same anecdotes and drawing the same lines on the paper. About 2/3 of the way through his speech, he realized I was chuckling incessantly and he looked up to realize that maybe we weren’t the regular customers that had walked through his door. At this point, he changed the route we were to take extending it out another 12 miles.
We purchased the map. I always buy something at a store that provides me with information.
We hit the trail and immediately forgot everything that he had so painstakingly described to us. I’m not going to lie, his details were so in depth that they made the trail more confusing. After stopping to look at his scribbles a couple of times, we just rode the trail that looked like the most fun and that would take us the farthest from our starting point. This meant that we never actually rode the Mustang Trail. I think.
The Blue Diamond Trails are fun, but they are really easy. This was confirmed when we got back to the trailhead and a racer type in pink shorts proudly letting his knuckle out of the closet, began chatting us up. In his words, “You’ll see a lot of beginners and racers who just want to knock out some miles. If you want harder trails you go to the other side of the hill.” He pointed to where the Cowboy Trails are.
KB’s next planned adventure was paddling the Colorado from Willow Beach. We did this. It was fun and really hard seeing that KB had to go to the next point and we then had to bust ass to get back in time so we wouldn’t have to pay an extra hour on our rentals. (We couldn’t fit the bikes and the kayaks in the car for this trip) My arms are still sore.
And seeing that we started this story with a beer, we’ll end it that way. The Dam Brewery in Boulder is a favorite stop for us. The food is descent and their beer is alright. I’m not sure why it is a favorite stop, it just is.
We sat at the dark wood bar and ordered beer from a man in a t-shirt who wore his reading glasses on the end of his nose so he was always tilting his head to look through them or over them. He asked things like, “Are you having a good time? I want to make sure my career choice hasn’t been a failure.” As the beer in our glasses began to go down, he stopped and chatted more. He told us the stories of the people that stopped in and had to tell him the most obvious of details that were also the most irrelevant. We joked. I told him about the guy that called to ask me when the prickly pears would be blooming and then proceeded to argue with me when my answer wasn’t what he was expecting. The bartender chuckled.
And then he forgot to get us our veggie burgers.
P. L. and R.
