At long last, our mountain biking adventure was finally about to begin! Judy and I left Belmont at around 11 AM on Friday. Since we would be passing right by the Sierra Trading Post in Reno, we decided to stop by and pick up some last minute gear. Rob hadn’t bought any arm or leg warmers so we picked up some for him. I needed some non-cotton socks (the only ones I had were for hiking or snowboarding and not ideal for biking) so I picked up some of those. I had brought a backpack, but the store had a really nice Platypus pack at a good price so, what the heck, I bought that too.

After eating dinner at the nearby Claim Jumper, we continued driving. It was still a ways to Moab so we pulled over at a rest stop about 20 miles from the Utah border to sleep for the night. We fell asleep to the soothing and relaxing sounds of cows mooing - a big rig full of cows had parked nearby.

We awoke at sunrise the next morning and continued on to Moab, arriving at a bit past 2 PM at the Apache Motel. This was where we would leave our cars and stay the night when we got back to Moab at the end of our journey. Ryan, Dave, Rob, and Brian had arrived earlier and were already busy getting all their gear ready. The Apache Motel parking lot soon became our staging zone.

It wasn’t long before we were all packed up and ready to go. Ryan and Dave had picked up the additional B.O.B. trailer from the Poison Spider bike shop, but we had to return to the shop because I needed to get one more water bottle and Dave wanted to buy a pair of cycling tights.

By 3:30 or so, we were all ready to go, but since our shuttle to Telluride wasn’t until 8 PM (when Judy booked it, she wanted to leave plenty of time for everyone to get to Moab), we had some time to kill. Judy’s repeated calls to the shuttle service to see if we could arrange an earlier pick-up time went unanswered, so our 8 PM pick up time held. We headed to Pasta Joe’s for an early dinner, then went to the market to get some food for our first day’s ride.

As we were waiting for the shuttle, Brian pulled out some tools and started making sure that all the bolts on his bike were tight. That seemed like a good idea so I did the same. As I was tightening one of my chain ring bolts (one of four bolts that screw through the front big ring to the cranks), I broke one of the bolt heads! It wasn’t a huge deal since there were still three bolts holding things together, but it certainly would be nice to fix it.

The Poison Spider bike shop had already closed so I drove back into town to see if any other bike shops were open. Both Moab Cyclery and Rim Cyclery were closed as well. Oh well. I’d try to hit one of the bike shops in Telluride the next morning. Hopefully there would be one that opened early in the morning because we didn’t want to get too late a start the next day.

Our shuttle, a Suburban with almost 200,000 miles on it, arrived about 20 minutes early. We helped the driver pack up the bikes, loaded up the Suburban, and were soon on our way. The drive took us through some windy mountain roads and a few hours later, we arrived in Telluride.

Our condo was big enough that everyone would have a bed. It was somewhat annoying, however, since it was on the second floor and there were no elevators. We thus had to lug our bikes and gear up the stairs. Several people complaining about being out of breath from walking up the stairs. Hmmm… probably not a good sign. We spent some time filling up our water bottles and Camelback bladders and soon retired for the evening. A good night’s rest was key for tomorrow was a big day - the start of our 7 day mountain biking adventure!

Cumulative miles: 0
Daily miles: 0
Mechanicals: Roger chainring bolt (fixed)
Casualties: None

[Go to Day 1 trip report or go to pics.]

Posted by Roger at 8:26 pm.