Utah  

I rode to Moab and looked for nice motel.  One of the 2 Best Westerns would do -  it was the nicest place I’d been to for a while, with a big comfortable room, outdoor swimming pool and right in the town centre. 

I dumped everything off my bike and set off in search of Fred at Arrow Sport for a new set of tyres.  Moab is a long narrow town clinging to highway 191.  Fred’s place was about a mile South of the town centre in a housing area.  He has a new building at the back of his house full of anything and everything for the travelling biker.  I told him that Sam had recommended him and I wanted some tyres.  He had loads of offroad tyres, so I picked a nice set of dunlop 606’s.  I’d left my tools at the motel, so Fred had to take the wheels off ($20 per wheel!!).  Good tip -Take you’re own spanners if you go there it’ll save you $40.   He fitted the tyres and balanced the wheels, and then lent me a couple of spanners to change my oil.

I set off back to my motel for a shower and to get some food.  I’d started buying 2 meals in the evening by now because I’d lost a bit of weight in the last couple of weeks.  I’d buy a steak dinner and maybe a plate of seafood and chips and (always) a bottle, or 3, of Mexican beer. 

Todd arrived in Moab a little later and we both went for a meal at a decent restaurant.  Stopping to buy a ‘Moab’ T-shirt, because I’d lost my fire brigade one and the one I’d bought in Chamonix when I was there a couple of years earlier on a mountain biking trip.  They’d fallen out of my bag when I left a zip open.  I needed 2 shirts.  One to wear and a clean one for when I got to where I was staying.

Todd persuaded me to stay in Moab the next day and go to visit The Arches National Park.  I wasn’t that keen to be honest, I was addicted to the trail and wanted to crack on in the morning, but I went anyway.  It’s only about 3-4 miles North of Moab, and guess what?  The place is absolutely bloody awesome!  The rock formations contorted into the most impossible shapes that seemed to defy gravity.  The Balanced Rock, The Cathedral, North and South Windows, Babel, The Organ and The Delicate Arch. 

We rode to the bottom car park to walk to a viewing point for the The Delicate Arch and took the high (short) walk.  We walked about 150m to the edge of a sheer cliff.  It was about 100m straight down.  Across the ½ mile wide valley and up the sheer cliffs at the other side was the Arch.  I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing!  We stood there for about an hour; looking, photographing and shitting our pants at the edge of the cliff – trying to pretend we weren’t.  We were!!   

People were walking around up at the Arch and they looked so small it was hard to make them out.  The whole experience left me slightly dazed.  This is a place I will definitely come back to, next time I’ll bring Holly.

It was about 40 degrees now and I wished I’d brought some water.  I needed some shade, or to ride my bike so the air rushing past me would cool me down.  We headed back to Moab, Todd to go to Fred’s for tyres.  Me... to go shopping!  I wanted a new book – I’d finished ‘The Long Way Round’ by Ewan Macgregor and Charlie Boorman.  So I wandered the shops for a while and eventually found a replacement, ‘Touching the Void’ by Joe Simpson – a brilliant book about an amazing rescue from the Peruvian Alps.   I went back to the motel at about 3, got my towel, my new book and sun block and headed for the pool.  A man was on a lounger, and his wife was in the pool.  ‘Hello’ I said.   ‘Are ya ahl reet?’ he said back, in an accent I knew all too well!   Glenn and Debbie were from Gateshead – about 30 miles from where I live in Morpeth.  He told me that he recognised my accent so he’d ‘test me out’ by asking me how I was in our local lingo.  We chatted for ½ an hour or so.  It’s a small world!  

I set off in the morning and the tracks were sandy and fairly slow.  I was worried that it was going to be a very long day at this pace.  By mid morning I had reached Black Dragon Canyon.  It was amazing.  A mile or 2 long, rocky technical stuff interspaced with rock falls and sand.  The next couple of days were to be the best of the trip for me.  It wasn’t somewhere I’d fancy going on anything bigger than I was riding.  It was very hot, over 40 degrees and I stopped frequently to take a picture or to rest in some shade. 

Sam’s maps offered a detour ahead for big bikes, with a warning of deep sand ahead.  I thought, ‘No problem’, and kept going.  I’m glad I did.  It led to a brilliantly twisty, steep quad track that took me to the start of Devil’s Canyon.  Devil’s Canyon was deep sand and very difficult.  It was the only place on the trip that I was aiming for the rocks, just to give me a rest from struggling in the sand.  I rode for about ½ a mile and I was completely shagged.  I was going through my water too fast but I needed it to keep my hydration up.  I wet my head to try to cool down.  I was thinking I would never make the end of the canyon as it looked to be about 10 miles on the map.  Just then I came across a rock fall which blocked the way.  There was no way past, and to be honest, it was a blessing in disguise.  It took me 10 minutes just to turn the bike around in the narrow canyon bottom (with much frustrated swearing) and  by the time I’d got back to the start of the Canyon, a total of an hour had passed......to ride 1 mile.  I had been riding with my legs trailing on the ground behind me and my chest resting on my tank bag.  The effort of riding normally was just too hard.  My head was starting to hurt and my wiz was clear for the rest of the day.  The water I was drinking was going straight through me, and although I’d drank a gallon of water in the 8 hours of the days ride, I was still dehydrated.  I drank another 2 litres before eventually went to bed.....my head was throbbing.

Next day Todd wanted to ride with me as he didn’t have gps maps for this part.  Half an hour after the start, I’d lost him!  I went back to where I’d last seen him, and found his tyre track going the wrong way.  Bollocks.  I felt responsible.  What if something happens to him?  What if he is never seen again? Bugger!  I didn’t enjoy the responsibility, and I worried about it the rest of the day.  

I joined the Piaute.  What a trail!!  A quad track through the green hills of Western Utah.  Utah had blown me away with its beauty, its unforgiving nature and its natural wonder.  This was, and still is, the best track out of the 6,600 miles I covered.  I flung caution to the wind and ‘went for it’.  This was something to enjoy.  The steep mountain drops off the track were forgotten, as was the possibility that someone might come the other way.  I just focused on the track and rode the bermed corners and rocky stream crossings for 15 miles as if in a trance.  It was bloody brilliant, and I was disappointed when, like all good things, it came to an end.

I rode into Kanosh.  The last place before an 80 mile desert crossing.  I rode into the gas station and was greeted by 5 locals in the office having chat.  When I said what I was doing there, and where I was from, the garage owner said ‘Nothing out there for 100 miles.  Go get yourself a beer from yonder fridge.  I had apple juice!  After yesterday, I didn’t fancy drinking any beer.   The gold in his mouth must have been worth a fortune.  They were great people and he wouldn’t take anything for the drink.  One told me that Kanosh had sprung up when the British had left a group of prisoners in the desert to starve to death.  Bastard British!!

Every house up the town had the Stars and Stripes flying from the front of the house.  Patriotism is the norm out here, as opposed to the apparent banning of it back home in case of possibly offending some small group of immigrant goat farmers from some 3rd world country!  The Americans celebrate and encourage their identity rather than suppressing it and demonising it like we Brits do. (Party political broadcast over with!)

I set off across the desert with more than a little trepidation.  What if I break down? Or fall off?  What would I do?  I needn’t have worried.  I stopped after about 30 miles under ‘the tree’ to get out of the sun and eat some ‘trail mix’.  I wondered if Todd was ok.  I tried to put him out of my mind, and tell myself that there was nothing I could do, I would see if he turned up.  If he didn’t, then I’d worry.  I rode on.  My nose became dry and uncomfortable in the dry heat.  I rode past Crystal Mountain, a dried up lake and over a hundred miles of desert.  I was well chuffed with myself when I rode into the Border Inn on the Utah/Nevada border in late afternoon.  This was the only place for miles in any direction.  I filled up with gas and spoke to a couple of Harley riders.  I told them where I was going and about losing Todd.  Just then, as if by magic, Todd appeared.  Sporting the biggest grin I’d ever seen.  I was so happy to see him.  He wasn’t lying in desert being eaten by buzzards and a weight was lifted from my shoulders.  We laughed and shook hands.  ‘Where the hell did you go?’ I asked him.  He’d lost me, so he rode North until he came to a highway and then made up a route from there.   We took photos of the place and had laughed at the sign promoting skiing in Utah with a ski jumper on it.  It was 40 degrees for Pete’s sake!

It was 10 o’clock now and I Looked across the desert to the mountains.  The sky was red, blue and grey.  It was beautiful.   Utah had been hard.  Scary at times, fun, barren, spectacular, mountainous and green in places, but more than anything......hot.    The feeling of achievement I felt was huge.