24, April, 2006

We drove a short way to Zion National Park today. We always go tubing down the river here but the plan quickly changed. We have never been up here in April before and the water was flipping cold and was completely rapids. We went to plan B and took our bikes down and decided to ride around. There was a 3.5 mile bike trail so we decided to give it a whirl. It didn’t take long at all so we ate lunch by the river and biked off to the town.
We browsed the gift shops in the town for a couple hours and then were going to go bike to this old abandoned town. There was no bike trail near the highway and we didn’t want to all have too bike two miles uphill back to the RV, load up the bikes and drive to the ghost town. Instead, my dad biked to the RV and came to pick us up. We drove until the bike path appeared again and unloaded all the bikes to ride back to the ghost town.
About to be on our way, we realized that we had left the back-pack in town with all the gifts, food, drinks, and camera in it. My mom and I hopped into the RV to run back and get it while the rest of the family stayed with the unloaded bikes. Making sure that all the bikes were away from the sides of the RV, my mom started to pull forward. We started to hear a grinding sound and checked in the mirrors to see if we had run over anything. Not seeing any, we decided to move again. There was the grinding sound again. “Terry, am I running over anything, we’re hearing this weird sound, “ yelled my mom out the window. “No, go ahead, I don’t see anything,” replied my dad. She started to move forward when he yelled “STOP! Wait just a minute, oh my, oh… my.”
Apparently, when my dad was unloading the bikes he had placed one in front of the RV. You can’t see directly in front of the RV so we couldn’t see the bike resting on the front of the motor home. My father pulled the poor bike out of under the RV. One of the handlebars was grotesquely twisted a completely backwards, the seat cover torn, the one wheel was curved while the other was shredded, including the metal, the gears and chain were bent outwards, and it was in the dumpster by nightfall. MY bike was in the dumpster by nightfall. I loved that bike. It was not even two years old, it looked almost brand new and it was blue. Leaving my dad fuming at his forgetfulness, my mom and I quickly drove back and picked up the waiting back-pack. We then loaded the bikes back up and drove to the ghost town. Then we headed to Freemont Indian State Park.