To Hell And Bike

"You've got 15 miles to the Columbine Pass. Throw 'em in. I'll run you up there."

I looked at George. He hates getting rides, I know. He's a purist about these things. But he was leaving it up to me.

"Naw," I said. "We're doing okay."

And you know, something about letting that truck drive off without us gave me a boost. I put my dripping head down, got an endless loop of "Stars Fell on Alabama" singing in my head and pedaled steadily for the next four hours. The weather stayed rough for the rest of the day. We got lost once and rode three miles out of the way. But we made the whole 35 miles.

By the time we reached the cabin, the storm had broken for good and we had daylight left for a long rest and a decent dinner. That's when I knew we were going to make it.

Monster Miles to Moab

The next four days were completely different. The weather dried out and, as we came out of the San Juans, so did the terrain. The aspens gave way to smaller, scrubbier oak and then pinyon pine. The scent of sage rose as the landscape warmed up. The distant La Sal Mountains soared on the horizon as we crossed under long, red mesas. Moab lay just on the other side of their gray snaggle peaks. We made a steady 30 to 35 miles a day.

And we weren't alone anymore. After some R&R following their death ride down the highway, three other riders caught a lift along the route until they overtook us on Day 4: Chris Ferrara and Dan and Loretta Siniff. They pulled their bikes and panniers out of the truck, and we were a group of five that rolled into camp that night.

It was an old log homestead on a working ranch. Its owner, a laconic bearded westerner named Tam Graham, had even built a propane-heated shower nearby for cyclists. We chopped a little wood for him (by now, we were ending the day with leftover energy) and Tam leaned against the split-rail fence and told us about ranch life in the Rockies. He showed us the bomb-crater-size barbecue pit where he throws a 1,000-person cookout every summer.

"Last year we had a rooster ropin'," Tam said.

"What size rope do you use for that?" one of us tinhorns asked. He considered.

"A very small one," he said.

The riding got more interesting, too. We had a day of true single-track mountain biking as we shed the San Juans, mile after mile on a thread of rocky trail. (I was thrown twice before I learned the fundamental rule: Look where you want to go -- not at what you want to avoid.) We had a day in the open desert with the trail nearly invisible in the loose red sand. We had a screaming three-mile descent into the town of Gateway. We sped so fast I had to let air out my tires to keep them from exploding under the heat of my brakes. Dan's set of fancy hydraulic disk brakes nearly failed when his fluid boiled over.

And we had one grueling day of nothing but climbing, six hours of groaning effort out of John Brown Canyon at the Utah line. I pushed much of the way, peering out from under my handlebars.

The last day, of course, was the hardest, a monster 38-mile run into Moab. Unfortunately, by the end of Mile 1 I was already mentally tasting the salt of my first margarita. The ride was endless, with long uphill slogs in the blistering desert sun. We were on scorching pavement now, and I was digging for the very last reserves. There was no question of quitting now, which made the effort even harder somehow. It just had to be done. My vacation.

By the time I dragged my sorry, bent and creaky frame -- and I'm not talking about the bike -- to the rise that looks over Moab, I was over. It was a popular view spot, and a fellow in a green Ford F150 was parked there, along with a dozen other cars. He asked me where I'd been riding and I told him I'd just zipped over from Telluride, 200 miles away. He nodded his head, looked at my noodle legs.

"Not many people do that," he said. His was a philosophy of simple truths. The best kind.

He was exactly right, I thought. Maybe that's why it was so fun.

Steve Hendrix will be online Monday at 2 p.m. to discuss this story during the Travel section's regular weekly chat on http://www.washingtonpost.com.

For a photo gallery with additional images of the Telluride-to-Moab bike ride, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/travel.