Krusty came in late last night after we got back from our Slickrock ride, so we had the whole gang ready for an adventure today. Bonzai and I had burnt off some adrenaline yesterday, and I haven't done back-to-back rides in a couple of years, so I figured that would compensate for Krusty's alleged lack of riding. We decided to try some of the trails southwest of town, including the Moab Ridge trail and the Hurrah Pass trail, and set off about 10:30 AM.

It took us a little while to get to the southwest part of the town and get oriented. This orientation included a wisely aborted attempt to climb a potentially leg-killing utility road that I mistook for the Moab Ridge trail.

Ultimately, we found the correct Moab Ridge trail and started climbing. Krusty had hiked this trail with his brother several years before and confirmed that it was a simple four-mile out-and-back, and that it was pretty much straight up for the first couple of miles. "Yeah-yeah" we poo-poo'ed, "we're climbers, we love technical challenges. Bring ... it ... on!" About 500 yards up the trail, we realized the folly of our bravado and conceded that maybe this wasn't the trail we wanted to be tackling at noon in August. The temp actually wasn't too bad, maybe low 80s, but the sun was definitely beating down upon us. Reconsidering the map, we decided to go back up over the Lion's Back on Sand Flats Road, pick up the Porcupine Ridge trail and take that all the way to its terminus directly across the road from our campsite. A perfect plan.

Krusty, Bonzai, and Cannonball		Where the hell are we Krusty?

The climb was fine as far as the Slickrock trailhead, but after that it got a little rocky. The Porcupine trailhead was about seven miles up Sand Flats road, but that seven miles felt like 15. The road continued to climb, steep in some parts, but overall, just a steady 5 percent climb. The wind was in our face, blowing maybe 10 to 12 MPH. We labored. Bonzai seemed unaffected, but Krusty and I suffered, and it seemed like we'd never get to the trailhead.

Finally, finally, 18 miles into the ride, we were at the trailhead. This ride had EPIC written all over it. A true epic ride though is a like an epic Rockford Files episode -- there has to be some validating and character-building pain points. For Rockford, getting arrested, damage to his car or trailer, or just an old-fashioned ass kicking; for an epic MTB ride, wrong turns, crippling mechanicals, twice the expected riding time. Thus far in the ride, none of these things had happened, but the miles were starting to pile up. Still, we had a good map and the trail was clearly marked with decent signage. I figured we'd be home by 35 miles.

Prepping at the trailhead	Sand, sand everywhere	Action Bonzai

For a few miles the trail was clearly signed and we pedaled along in a dreamworld of dunes, slickrock, canyon walls, and heat. It was beautiful. But after a while, the signage became confused, with Fins & Things, a trail not on any of our maps, intertwining itself at all junctions of the Porcupine Ridge trail. Soon, we could not positively identify our location on the map because of the numerous undocumented forks of Fins and the disappearance of signage for the Porcupine. Finally, after consulting the map for quite some time, we conceded that somehow we had lost the Porcupine and gotten off track. Running low on fluids and energy, we decided to fall back to Sand Flats Road rather than replunge into the sandy desert and hope to find a trail we had already lost once. A wise decision, but one that would add more mileage to our legs. The needle was starting creep toward EPIC.

The ride back to camp was pretty quiet, each of us enveloped in our private world of pain. And there was pain. I mean, you wouldn't know it by watching the three of us from afar, but at the localized level, there was considerable difficulty all around. Each of us was employing our personalized coping mechanisms, leaving little energy or concentration left for chit-chat.

We may have been roughed up a little, but we weren't spent by any means. We hammered through town at a solid 18 MPH clip and then really laid on the wood when we hit 128, ripping over 20 MPH for the first couple of miles -- this at the 40-mile point in the ride!

OK, now we were shot, spent, completely busted. It was comical. When we got to camp, we spent about 15 minutes stumbling around like drunken sailors, each of us trying to find something to alleviate the pain. Clothes came off, drinks came out, bikes fell over, Bonzai stumbled into the Colly for a bath, it was a blur. I could not make my brain focus on anything. I had a vague sense that I needed to drink, eat, and change out of my bike clothes, but I was so tired and fuzzy-headed, I just couldn't make all this stuff happen.

This stupor lasted for about two hours. Eventually, Bonzai and I ended up sprawled around the cooler on moving van mats, with Krusty joining us in his camping chair. Like the ride home, this time period was fairly silent as we each drifted in and out of consciousness. When we finally rallied, it was as if somebody has snapped their fingers -- our heads all cleared at the same time with the same thought -- Food!

We hopped in Krusty's Bronco and roared back to McStiffs. Within minutes there were plates of meat all around and more silence, punctuated only by the occasional primal grunts associated with gnawing meat off of a bone.

This ride definitely qualifies as an epic because of the sheer energy we put into it. Krusty was amazing today. For a guy who claims no recent saddle time, he looked like the old Krusty to me -- put the hammer down and full speed ahead. There were no mechanicals save for a slow leak in Bonzai's front tire that had mastestisized to a full blown flat by the end of the ride. We made a couple of wrong turns, but when faced with critical navigational and logistical decisions, we made reasoned, rational choices that probably prevented some pretty bad news. Wisdom and judgment are nice fringe benefits of age.