24 hours

Last weekend was supposed to be one of those weekends you never forgot. We have been planning it since January, and I guess I can just say it didn't go quite as planned. Jo had been looking forward to our Moab trip for months, and flew in to visit Ben, but also to join us on the Slickrock Trail for some biking!

So, let's get started - 24 hours of hell:
Friday at 3:45 pm- I was trying to leave work a little early. We were headed out to Moab! I was so excited, Jo was coming into town, and I couldn't wait to see her and to hang out with all my best friends. Well invoices were giving me trouble. The afternoon was ticking away, and as I was trying to leave, the printer decided it hated me. Finally I got out of there forty minutes after I had planned, and I felt quite frustrated.

Friday at 5:00 pm- E and I finally left the house. The pouring rain made it harder to pack the car. We hoped that the rain would stop, because camping in Southern Utah in the rain is horrid. E said as we left "I hope we are not making a huge mistake..." (notice the foreshadowing...)

Friday at 10:00 pm- E and I arrive in Moab and meet up with our friends. They are just finishing dinner, and have decided that the rain is too cold and strong, they would rather stay in a hotel. We agree, and head out to look for a hotel. No Vacancy is all we see and hear for the next hour, I guess everybody was thinking what we were thinking.

Friday at 11:30 pm- We decide we better look for a campsite. After driving around for another hour without any luck, and a close encounter with a black widow we decide to sleep in the car. As I was falling asleep, I thought, "I can't believe we are doing this." The rain outside failed to stop.

Saturday at 7:00 am- Ben knocks on our window. We roll it down to find more cold rain and a very angry Ben. He says he and Jo are leaving, neither of them slept, and her vacation to Utah is too short to be miserable. We agreed and convinced him and the others to join us for breakfast before they left for home.

Saturday at 9:00 am- I guess the rain made everyone in Moab think what we were thinking, a hot breakfast in a dry restaurant sounded good. So after checking two places with hour long waits, we found a funny Chinese restaurant that served breakfast. Then we sat there for 25 minutes without anybody coming by, so we left and ended up at Denny's. Forty five minutes later we finally had a hot meal. But the rain didn't look like it was going to stop.

Saturday at 11:00 am- We finally are done with breakfast and all agree that we should just turn around and go home. I am really bummed out, I really wanted to bike the Slickrock trail (see this post), I really wanted to go camping, and I really wanted to enjoy the Southern Utah sun. I guess none of the above would happen.

Saturday at 2:00 pm- It was amazing how tired I was. I guess sleeping in the car didn't work so well, so while E drove home, I took a nap, in the car! Then at 2:00, when we were about an hour away from home the storm kicked up again. After driving through snow and rain we hit a horrible bout of wind. David was the last car in the group, and all of a sudden he slowed down and radioed us that Logan's bike had flown off the bike rack! Logan has a beautiful, new bike with some kick ass parts. It was worth well over a grand, and he had yet to ride it with his new seat, derailers, and handlebar. Well you can imagine what kind of swear words we all said. E pulled over, and he and I jumped out of the car to run three blocks up the mountain back to David's car. Logan's bike was a wreck, luckily it wasn't a total loss. A nice driver was able to slow down and grab it, before any other drivers drove over the $1000 wreckage. I didn't know what to do but laugh. God hated us. I gave Logan a hug and we all somberly climbed back into our cars after attaching the bike corpse back to the rack.

Saturday at 3:45 pm- E and I rolled into our driveway tired and crabby. We were finally home. The last 24 hours was something we could have lived without. Damn it.