The Fat Man Hits Moab; Moab Hits Back!

I can tell you one thing about Cortez, Colorado: It's got no shortage of ham! Caroline and I pulled into a little place on the main drag called Poppi's to grab a quick bite. The road had been long and hot. We had been on the road for hours, and we still had hours to go. Outside of Poppi's we found a great way for securing our bikes. The method ensured that it would take a thief hours or an Atom Bomb to steal them, and if the latter method were used, they'd be worthlessly radioactive anyway. But I digress.

Poppi's has a menu item called "The Ultimate Grilled Cheese." Boy am I a sucker for the word ultimate. And when the description said the sandwich included not only ham, but bacon, and chedder cheese and pepper jack all served between two slices of Texas toast, well who was I to refuse? We dispatched the waitress to fetch one, and a plain old grilled ham and cheese for Caroline. Delicious! Bing-bang-boom! Ham in our guts and we were outta town! Cortez doesn't have a lot of things. But it does have tasty ham. Check out Poppi's next time you're in town.

Hours later we found ourselves in Moab. It was my first time. Caroline is a Moab pro. We quickly checked into our hotel, a strange wood-clad affair called the Red Rock Inn. Everything in Moab is rock something. Red rock, slick rock, tower rock, balance rock—you name it, and they'll add the word rock to it and sell it to you.

With just a few hours of daylight left, we took the opportunity to get in a short 16-mile ride. Caroline had chosen the easiest trail in Moab, which was good, I would later find out. Out on the Klondike Bluffs trail, we got a taste for slick rock and got to see some really cool fossilized dinosaur tracks. The three-toed tracks were right next to the trail and were well presevered. Looked like a meat eater. I was walking near the footsteps of kin.

That was all well and good until disaster struck shortly afterward. Now I'm big and sluggish on foot, but on a bike, well, you can imagine. I had been handling the slick rock pretty well, but then all of a sudden I had to go up this cliff thing. With a belly full of ham weighing me down, I couldn't quite get the momentum I needed, and before I knew it, I was down on the rocks with a shooting pain in the back of my leg. My big chain ring had ripped me open stem to stern, with about a five-inch long gash that had three other gashes radiating away from the main one. The bleeding was incredible! Not to be branded as a wimp, I rode down the rock and attempted the climb again. Nailed it—though the back of my leg by this time looked like it had fallen prey to a real dinosaur.

Later on at the hotel, the towel got pretty soaked with blood. I hoped the maids had biohazard training or wouldn't get spooked and call the police the next day when they would come and make up the room. Nothing worse than finding a blood soaked towel, I always say.

I have proof that giants walked the Earth with humans a long time ago. I got this photo of a human footprint wearing a size 47 double D dress shoes in the same geologic member as that three toed dinosaur track. (heh-heh. I said "member.") It wasn't just a human, but a giant, like the one David smote back in the Bible days. Put that in your pipe and smoke it and tell me not to support the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools, Mr. and Mrs. Smartypants! Had I had the time and a half pint more blood, I would have chiseled the damned thing out of the rock and sold it for about a million bucks on Ebay. But since I didn't, I'm not tellin' you where I saw it. You best just leave it alone!

See you on down the road ...