Back on the road…

by

I’m sitting in a hotel in Moab on a Sunday night and my legs, hands and mind are smoked- what a damn good feeling. Got the Bulleit Rye on sip mode and was thinking I gotta get a post up.

The start of this year was gonna be a time for some change- I am working at getting my bike life in order. So with that being said, I started it off by doing a 23 hour drive straight to Tempe, Az. for the purpose of having Dirty Biker show me what Southwest mountain biking is all about.

The first place he introduced me to was South Mountain in Phoenix. That place was no joke when it came to technical climbs and descents. I think it would take awhile to get sick of riding that place. Phoenix is lucky to have such a gem.

After a couple days of getting comfortably numb in Phoenix, Dirty and I headed up to Sedona to go beat our drums at the vortex. Luckily, the drum part is a down right lie but we did ride a trail called Highline that will eventually give you the opportunity to pass one of the almighty vortexes. Highline is a pretty wicked beautiful trail and that’s all I gotta say about that.

Since Dirty has one of those day jobs, I went and saw a buddy I hadn’t seen in years that lives up in Glendale. We headed to Sunday Cycles to see what was available in that area. We ended up being told to check out Trail 100. It was a pretty stoney place to go turn the pedals and feel like you are in the middle of no where but when in reality you are surrounded by random pockets of neighborhoods.

The next day after meeting up with Wes, it was 12 hours of Papago at Papago park in Phoenix. I showed up to the event toward the end to see if Scandinavian Jesus was falling apart at the seems on his duo team. See, this jackass partyed till three in the morning the night before and had to wake up two hours later to get his drunk dancing shoes on for a lovely 12 hours of tag-team pedaling. To my surprise, he’s drinking beer and whiskey when I find him and he’s looking like he just tapped into the fountain of youth- then to top it off, the Jesus wins the damn thing with his partner Michael Melly . Those two guys are text book drunkcyclist (here’s Scandianivan’s version of the event)

Dirty was mentioning something about maybe hooking up with a friend of his from Yeti Cycles at McDowell park where there was gonna be a Yeti demo going on. The day after 12 hours of Papago, Dirty, his lady and I bust out to the Demo on the Lords day. The first 10 minutes of meeting Dirty’s friend Nate, I am handed a Yeti flask and offered some liquid yoga to fire it up. I remember thinking to myself, there is some cool shit about to happen like ride bikes and drink whiskey- the simplest things can align the day perfectly and Nate hit it out of the park.

Once the Demo was over, Nate wanted to get his dog Penny out on the trail- I know Dirty and I were starting to feel whiskey magical and thinking we should do a lap with him. So we all go out for a sun down quick trail sesh.

Beforehand, Nate let Dirty and I try out a 575’s that they just redesigned from the ground up. All I have to say about that bike is, it’s Satan approved and leaves a streak of fire after every corner.

Our boy Cupcake just moved back to Tucson from the arctic midwest and Dirty wanted to get down there so we could say hi to him. Especially since Caveman hadn’t seen the Cupcaker since SSUSA. We all met up at Epic Rides headquarters, and I got to meet Todd Sadow that creator of Epic Rides . We ended up doing a short ride that evening with Todd in Tucson. The guy just doesn’t put awesome events together, he  gets his ride on as well.

After being around Dirty for over a week at his house and Nate from Yeti had to head up to Sedona, I asked If I could tag along for another Sedona adventure. So after a hard night of celebrating life, Nate picked me up.

This next part of the trip got pretty good- the weather was perfect, Nate was rad to ride with and the trails were really breath taking. This time around I got to ride Hangover and we started from Over The Edge bike shop. One of the owners of OTE was our trail guide, so he gave us the local trail tour before getting our Hangover exposure on. I’ll be honest, the exposure can get to you if you don’t stay focused on riding. I’m glad I got the first time out of the way so I know what to expect the next time. One other thing, everyone I met at OTE was awesome- thanks for the coffee and beer.

Nate and I left OTE before it was gonna get dark and see if we could get some photos when the sun was going down on Highline- it ended up working out but we rode back in the pitch black- It was my fault because I wanted to keep shooting. Luckily when we took a couple wrong blind turns we hand someone with a flashlight getting us back in the right direction.

The next morning in Sedona, we got on trail right before the sun came up to see if we could get some shots of the sun coming up on the trails. It was so amazing out once that sun popped and start hitting on the red rock and soil.

Well, my trip shortly ended after Sedona and made my way back to Spokane. I learned something from this trip- it started out Dirty showing me parts of Arizona for riding but it ended with meeting some of the coolest people I’ve ever met and along with getting some awesome trail time in. Shredding bikes with your friends is what it is all about…

by