The pavement is still warm as I lay the side of my face down on it. The rough asphalt surface of the mountain road digs into the skin of my cheekbone and my heavy breathing causes me to drool out the corner of my mouth just a little bit. A full Autumn moon illuminates the landscape around me: aspen forests uphill to my east, red sandstone monoliths, massive canyons and pinion scattered downhill to my west. It's midnight and I'm too tired to even unbuckle my helmet, so my head rests cockeyed and uneven against the road. I want to roll over onto my back but my pack keeps me from it, and unbuckling it creates a task that doesn't seem worthy of my energy at his point. The September air is still warm, even up here at 8,000 feet above sea level. The wind that has been punishing me for hours - adding insult to injury by blowing in my face while I push my bike uphill - is now at my back as I lay here, contemplating this journey I asked for and now must endure.

At this point, a mighty conflict rages in my head. The antagonist is sleep. It has in its corner my hips, quads, knees, back, shoulders, the soles of my feet and the now pus-filled blisters rising on the backs of my Achilles tendons. All these body parts have taken sides with sleep, hoping to sway my mind into simply allowing me to close my eyes right here on this barren patch of earth and slumber indefinitely.

But the protagonist is the will to finish, and as it is, finishing wins out.

So once more, I drag my aching body up off the ground. Once more I begrudgingly swing a leg over the saddle and clip in to my pedal. Once more I push off with my free foot, turn the cranks and undergo the familiar routine: ride slowly in the granny gear for a few minutes until the hill's incline rises, then unclip and walk just a little bit slower. We walk, and then we ride, and then we walk some more. Sometimes I ride and Johnny walks and we move along at the same speed. That doesn't seem right.

It is 2005 and the year that brings me to midlife; the big 4-O; from here on social norms would peg me as "over the hill" (how ironic, that cliché. Right now, alternately lying on, walking on and riding along this road in the middle of the night on a mountainside in Utah, I wanted nothing more than to be, literally, over the hill). What I discovered was less profound than what I had hoped: even the very best energy bars taste like cardboard after the eighth or ninth one; the most high-dollar chamois and copious amounts of chamois cream won't keep your butt from becoming numb, chafed and bruised after 22 hours in the saddle; Kokopelli is just mean.

It all started a full day before, at midnight in Loma, Colorado, just west of Fruita. There, in the glow of the full moon, the four of us - Gary, Johnny, Rod and myself - clipped into our mountain bikes and rolled onto the sweet singletrack of the Fruita loops, the first segment of the 142-mile Kokopelli's Trail and our plan to ride it straight through in one shot. As it was my idea that convened this group of adventure seekers here in the desert, I paraphrased Forrest Gump, "And so, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little ride." A little ride, indeed.

The brilliant moonlight was directly overhead as we ascended up to Mary's loop, a path that would take us through the bluffs along the Colorado River. We knew this portion of the ride would be some of the toughest and slowest, so we rode with patience and care, preserving the limited battery supply for our lights whenever possible.

We had purposely chosen this weekend because of the full moon, allowing us to ride without lights for much of the easier sections. We also knew the landscape was sure to be surreal, and it didn't disappoint. The beacon in the clear night sky washed down on the desert like a first snowfall and provided sights that shouldn't have existed at night: huge rock walls with giant boulders and desert flora like a movie screen to our right; below us, meandering white lines marking other classic Fruita rides like Horsethief Bench and Steve's Loop. Tomorrow, no doubt, hundreds of riders would tackle the drops, ledges, curves and climbs; but tonight, we were as alone as four sailors adrift at sea.

The murky brown waters of the Colorado River, hundreds of feet below, sparkled like flakes of gold in the soft light. A bark echoed from far off in the distance. A jet skimmed overhead, breaking the muted sky with flashes of red and white. Light from a campsite brought attention to an otherwise faceless portion of the topography. The riding was all at once smooth and serene, rugged and reckless. Light from our bar-mounted lamps flashed back and forth across the trail. Breathing was marked, pedals clicked against rocks. It was what we had all come for.

We covered only 13 miles in the first 3 hours. Not a good start. Getting to our sag wagon at Dewey Bridge, the approximate halfway point, by 8:00 or 9:00am was not going to happen. And so began a night...and a day...and another night, of excitement, misery, jubilation and suffering.

We lumbered through Rabbit Valley somewhere around 4:00am. By 5:30, the moon was down and so, too, was the temperature. Someone once noted that it's always darkest before the dawn; it's seemingly coldest at that time, too.

Finally, the desert sun broke the horizon and began to warm our backs. As we slogged along somewhere near mile 50, or 60, or 75, or 90, I really don't know, questions began popping into my head, "Whatin the world am I doing out here?" Why can't I be content with a nice two or three hour ride like normal mountain bikers?" And, of course, "How did I manage to talk three of my friends into this?" I wondered if I would have three fewer friends by the end.

We coasted into our halfway point at Dewey Bridge just after 11:00am. Like rabid dogs, we feasted on sandwiches and chips and cookies and energy drinks. We sought out the shade and rested as best we could. The talk was limited. We knew the task that lay ahead. Gary and I agreed that the first 72 miles of this ride were already harder than the entire White Rim Trail near Moab, another classic epic ride we had done years earlier. No one was ready to retreat from the challenge at this point but, unfortunately, three-fourths of the total climbing was yet to come.

With full bellies, clean chamois and a fresh slathering of chafe cream, we began the first of three huge climbs into the vicinity of the La Sal Mountains. The jeep road wasn't particularly overwhelming or difficult, but the combination of the constant grade, intense heat and golf-ball sized rocks littering the soft road bed made riding tenuous and frustrating. Five miles into the climb, I knew Gary was struggling. Walking many of the longer pitches, the grim statistics must have filled his head: three mph, another 65 miles, a 6am finish, 5am if we're lucky. Each of us had been awake now for more than 30 hours, and fatigue was settling in. We stopped for a rest.

"Guys, I think it's about over for me," Gary said quietly and unsurely as we dismounted at the top of a huge ridge. "I'm just not sure I can make it." His demeanor - the voice, the body language, the carefully chosen words - made it painfully obvious that what he was really doing was asking us to talk him out of it. He needed a morale boost. He needed one of us to pat him on the back and say, "No way, Gary, you'll get through this. We're with you."

But none of us could do it.

Because despite the tedium and difficulty of this ride, we all had only one goal: to finish. This ride had weakened the fortitude of our group. It had become an individual and isolated personal challenge for us all. We were keenly aware that we couldn't rely on the others for more than a shared energy gel, some spare water or perhaps a cleat bolt. The resilience and drive to continue had slowly become a deeply individual decision.

It was embarrassing almost, none of us willing or able to offer up more than a shallow attempt to talk Gary into continuing, though I know it wouldn't have been difficult to do. What was sure to be a long night would have been an even longer night as a group of four, I selfishly reasoned. I hated myself a little bit for agreeing, but I gave Gary a consolatory hug and we watched as he rolled slowly back down the road. I knew he was disappointed beyond measure and I shared in his grief. Gary and I had vowed to "Kick some Kokopelli a@#!" in email correspondence before the ride. Never upset the riding gods, I guess.

So Johnny, Rod and I quietly got back in the saddle and continued up the long road, perhaps a bit envious that Gary would soon be enjoying a beer and a burger, relaxing in a Moab motel room. Our discomfort and envy, though, was likely not on par with his disappointment.

We climbed and climbed and climbed some more, passing rattlesnakes and rabbits. I know we made it into the fir and aspen forests of the La Sal's, but by then the western sky was no more than a fading orange flicker, and darkness once again surrounded us.

Our journey had long since stopped resembling any kind of fun. Johnny was puking up energy bars. Our lights were fading with each passing moment. Of course, walking slowly uphill next to your bike doesn't necessitate light. This adventure had turned to diligence and persistence and frustration and fleeting bouts of anger. We were not a particularly friendly bunch.

Perhaps there is some measure of guilt in all men who bask in the comfort of our everyday lives. It was Thoreau, I believe, who said "All men lead lives of quiet desperation." Here we were on our $2,500 bikes with our high-tech biking gear and all the fancy energy bars and gels and powders we could ever need. We would enjoy terrific meals before and after this ride and drive our nice cars and trucks back to the luxury of our homes and our cable TV and our iPods. Was this comfort leading us to seek our own quiet desperation, or was it the cause?

Perhaps it is because of this comfort that we seek to inflict pain or despair or outright suffering, in the hopes that we can erase the indignity we have for the opulence of our lives. We're surely smart enough to know that these self-induced aches are not in the same realm as those experienced by the hurricane or tsunami victim, and surely not even worth comparing to a starving child in a third-world country or the soldier fighting in a faraway war. But perhaps some primordial instinct causes certain men to seek an understanding of how we might react when faced with adversity, even modest adversity that can easily be overcome or simply ended on a whim. At nearly any moment on this ride I could direct my bike out to a main highway, hitch a ride back to my car, and end the whole thing. The starving child and the soldier are not granted the same kind of choice. Their suffering is authentic and no fault of their own. My self-induced pain is really pathetic in comparison, as it should be.

So perhaps it is that guilt which motivates me to push on. Perhaps, for whatever morbid reason, I can share in a bit of human anguish. Maybe, when I get done, I will do something real to help that hurricane victim or that starving child. But for now, I need to suffer some more, even if I don't fully understand why. I hate it, but some small, powerful part of me still requires it.

Which brings me back to that dark, blustery and winding road in the mountain desert of southeastern Utah. We've completed over 120 miles with nearly 13,000 feet of climbing, much of it done off the bikes. By midnight, we've been awake for over 42 hours and have come to this proverbial crossroads. My riding partners are battling demons similar to mine. "Where the @#*^ is the top of this *%#&@ road," Johnny exclaims with equal parts irritation and bewilderment, much out of character for one of his soft-spoken demeanor. My own tongue has become equally acidic and volatile, when I actually find the energy to speak. Certain words sound odd coming out of my mouth, but it has become the norm for our threesome over the last six or eight hours, something I'm sure none of us are proud of.

Finally, our bikes drop out of the forest onto Sand Flats road, the last vestiges of actual riding that would take us straight into Moab. Ten miles, downhill. I sing to keep myself awake; something by Crash Test Dummies. I continue to curse even the smallest rise in the road. With the moon our only light, we virtually fly through the snaking turns. It's all I can do to keep my eyes open. I'm both frightened and strangely amused that I might actually fall asleep while riding my bike at this speed. When I do, will I crash into this rocky wall on my right, or plunge off the precipice to my left? "Remind everyone not to tell my wife," I think to myself.

Before we left for this ride, I wondered if the sleep deprivation would cause hallucinations. When, out of the corner of my eye, I see a black hang glider streaking out of the sky to my north, I have my answer. As quickly as it's there, of course, it's gone. I smile just a little bit. I guess I've gotten what I came for.

Devin Allen is an avid mountain biker and general outdoors person living in Colorado Springs. He still doesn't quite understand his reasons for embarking on this ride, but is already planning something similar for his first full year as a forty-something. He can be reached at devin_allen@hotmail.com.