Delayed gratification

PANGUITCH, Utah—Sometimes you wish for something so hard that you wonder whether it's ever going to happen. The problem with that, though, is usually by the time you get to actually live out your fantasy, you've built up such high expectations that the reality of the whole experience can't possibly match what you've built up in your mind and the whole thing ends up being a letdown.

That happened to me one Halloween when I was a kid. I had been dreaming about eating a whole bag of candy corn—not just the regular candy corn, but the kind with the brown chocolatey layer on the bottom. Being the candy-corn-deprived little monster that I was, I schemed for weeks about how to acquire some black-market confections. Through a little subterfuge, a lot of heavy bartering and calling in a few markers I was owed, I eventually got my chubby little fingers on a bag and feasted like a crazed rodent who had come across a store of ergot-tainted wheat in a Pilgrim grain cellar.

Of course, my vomit was brown and felt like boiling acid on the wrong way back up my gut pipe, and I sure did have a lot of explaining and penance to do after my misadventure. Needless to say the whole experience was a let down, and even today I eschew candy corn on All's Hallowed Eve.

But that happened a long time ago and far, far away from Panguitch, so I'll get to the point now before I start weeping again and require some more sessions with a therapist.

Just around the time I started riding a mountain bike, I had stumbled across a description of a marvelous Utah trail that wound its way through an orange-and pink-landscaped dotted with dramatic hoodoos. To me, the ride was like the Seven Cities of Cibola and I was a modern-day Francisco Vásquez de Coronado waiting to discover the mythical land.

A couple years later I learned that the trail had a name through a chance meeting with a stranger. The trail was called "Thunder Mountain," and the stranger explained to me that Disneyland's Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster had been inspired by the landscape through which the trail meandered. The trail itself starts just miles outside of the entrance to Bryce Canyon National Park, and the terrain was rumored to be similar. While on vacation walking through Bryce, I couldn't help but think to myself more than once, "wouldn't it be cool to bike here?"

I became more obsessed with the trail and started researching it. I came across a few washed out photos that indeed confirmed its existence. Later I discovered where the trailhead was. Finally, on our first real out-of-state biking trip several years after I had first heard whispers and rumors of the trail, we made plans to stop and ride it along with several other epic "must-rides" out there. But a bizarre twist of fate prevented us from following through.

A few years later another mishap made us miss out on conquering Thunder Mountain. These near misses made my desire to ride the trail even greater than they originally had been, when the story of Thunder Mountain first stirred in me the excitement of a well-told campfire tale.

So when we planned this trip, we built in an iron-clad guarantee that we would ride Thunder Mountain at long last. The night before our ride, I tossed and turned in my sleep, realizing that I had built up expectations for Thunder Mountain that were so high that reality couldn't possibly match them. Would the ride be a giant letdown, I wondered? What if its "most-difficult" designation made it entirely too hard for me to ride and I ended up bashed and bleeding at the end?

The alarm rang too early and soon Caroline and I found ourselves at the crack of dawn riding up the dim canyon into a frigid morning down-canyon headwind on a relentless climb toward the trailhead. Caroline had eaten two big bowls of cereal before we left and I had eaten my fill as well, using milk that had been traveling with us for days in a cooler. Near the trailhead, Caroline hurridly made a dash for one of the porta potties along the way. A bad case of dairy gurgle-belly had turned her weak and greenish looking in the face.

Would this be another curse to stop us from reaching my personal Seven Cities of Gold? Not today. A herd of pronghorns skipping across the sagebrush in the colorful morning light inspired us to go on. We laughed in the face of the mad cow who was snorting and pawing the ground in front of us in an attempt to keep herself between us and her calf; she was like a horrible gatekeeper bent on turning us back from a journey into a mystical land visited only by Gods and Heroes. She failed in her mission.

As we turned onto the singletrack, we suddenly knew that no amount of mental preparation or anticipation could compare to the ride we were about to have. The trail was manicured like Paris Hilton's toenails. Amazing pink hoodoos rose here and there around every corner and provided more bling to the ride than an entire store full of gold chains, diamond rings or ruby tooth implants. Around each corner I kept thinking that I was looking at a movie set. The surreal landscape was so unusual, I kept thinking that if I crashed into one of the hoodoos, it would bust open to reveal paper maché and chicken wire.

And, of course, it wasn't just a ride up and a coast down through some nice scenery kind of ride, either. We earned our views with ups and downs, and by picking our way through a few hairy technical sections and cheek-puckering switchbacks. It doesn't get much better than that.

Thunder Mountain was everything we had hoped it would be and more! It certainly ranks up there among those "must-ride-before-you-die" rides. And as if riding through a land that inspired Walt Disney wasn't enough, the final mile back to the trailhead is a ripping downhill that gives every bit as much of a perma-grin as a ride on one of Walt's old roller coasters. Best of all: it's free and there are no lines!

Everything in this area seemed to have some pink in it. My ass cheeks were pretty pink from the saddle sores I have acquired during days and days of riding, while over in Bryce Canyon—again thick with German tourists as the Euro continues to wallop the dollar in its exchange rate—we saw ruddy faces wet with sweat climbing up out of the broiling canyons at midday. Obscene utterances sound even dirtier in German.

One unfortunate woman had hiked down to the bottom of one canyon wearing flip-flops and managed to badly turn her ankle. She sat under a ledge in the shade waiting for help to arrive. On our way up the steep switchbacks, we watched a Park Service crew maneuvering a Stokes Litter on a single big wheel down to the bottom so she could be carted back up to the rim. That ride would have been like a recumbent bike ride through Thunder Mountain, only probably a lot scarier!

Poor woman. I bet she'll wear sensible shoes the next time she visits a National Park from now on.

Our day ended with a vist to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes state park in southern Utah. Although it was about a million degrees outside, we were desperate for a shower after driving for several hours in our smelly Thunder Mountain bike clothes. Every commerical campground, RV Park and flop house along the way turned us away when we showed up begging or showers. Well, can you blame them?

I mean, Caroline looks normal and everything, but in my biking jersey and shorts I looked like some smelly, dirt-stained blueberry hybrid that had escaped from a genetic experimentation facility operated by the Latter Day Saints somewhere in the foothills of rural Utah. God only knows what would happen to me if you added water.

Thankfully, anyone can walk into a state park or national monument, so our entrance fee got us a long-anticipated shower and a visit to superheated peach-colored dunes as an added bonus.

Yep. Anticipation sometimes leads to letdown, but we've not seen that happen these past couple weeks. Thank goodness for dreams and aspirations, because they become the stuff that paves the elusive road to fullfillment.

See you on down that road!