Backwoods Utah

Another 98 miles in the books today. We did not have a lecture today, just stacked on the mileage, but did stop and talk with tourists who were intrigued by the many orange jerseys that they passed on the road. It's official: bike seats are not the most comfortable thing to sit on for 7.5 hours day after day. After readjusting my seat pitch angle this morning, I think I am finally getting close to minimizing my total body discomfort (to a bearable 6/10 in severity)! Utah has the most amazing scenery though. We started the day with our huge climb, grinding the gears for 2.5 hours up to the peak of 10,000. We spent most of the day cycling in snow covered terrain, sometimes with snow banks towering over our head. The temperature was warm enough though and each turn of the road revealed a different colored soil or different beautiful mountain range to keep our mind off our aching legs.

It was a day of near misses. I nearly got hit by a bowling ball sized rock as it tumbled down from the embankment above. Luckily the snow bank 3 ft way between the cliff and the road absorbed the impact instead of my leg and my bike. Then on our way into camp, we had to slam on our breaks to allow a heard of cattle to finish crossing the road (there seems to be a correlation between our century ride and encountering angered livestock on our 90+ mile). The heard was a little distraught at us interrupting them, but after some coaxing, they all shuffled off the road. Except, that is, for the alpha bull who stood firmly in the middle of the road with his horns staring at us. It was quite a stale mate for a long 30 seconds until an approaching car won the chicken battle against the bull and I promptly used the car as a shield to speed past the beefy foe. Some people are into running with the bulls. I guess I am into riding with them.

Our campsite was inside a sheltered embankment formed by a three sided plateau in Bryce Canyon. There are several impressive sized smokestack-shaped rocks jutting out in the skyline and smells from the Ponderosa pines. Hopefully it remains dry for us tonight and our ride tomorrow- although storms are predicted.

Welcome to Utah!

****I attempted to change the setting so that viewers can comment on my posts and these will also be visible on the website.****

Happy Easter!

My blog quality has deteriorated in the last two posts, but we tend to bog any free wifi service that we get down with 26 laptops all trying to connect at the same time so I have been unable to upload my pics- but will update when I can.

Yesterday was my support day and the first "bad weather day" of the ride. Our riders were gritting it out through a climb in 45 degree rain. Then as we got higher, the temp continued to drop and the rain turned to snow so we packed everyone up after 50 miles and thawed them out on our way to the fire station in Panaca, Nevada. We also noted how ironic it seemed to look out at a snow covered grown with cacti as the only foliage. Our host at Panaca was extremely generous to cook us a nice spaghetti meal and told us of some of the town history.

Today, we crossed into Utah and are currently staying at a church in Cedar Springs. Half of our crew drove ahead to host a world health day at the church. The other half, including myself, road 85 miles uphill into a relentless headwind. We stared the whole time at the snow covered mountains in the horizon that we will attempt to conquer tomorrow. We are currently at over 6,000 ft. Tomorrow we climb to 10,000 ft and have a 95 mile ride, but it is supposed to be extremely scenic (and extremely cold...and we are camping). I will certainly be without any internet/phone coverage tomorrow, but will attempt to catch up on the pics in a few days. Thanks everybody for the continued support.

Nowhere Nevada

We had a pretty routine day on the road yesterday (75 miles, fast paced, no mountains) from Vegas to Alamo, Nevada- a one stoplight town where we are overnighting at the high school. I didn't take my camera with me because there were threats of rain, otherwise I would have included a picture of a street sign saying "Warning- low flying aircraft". I guess I should also mention then that our fun fact for the day is that Alamo, Nevada is the closest town to Area 51. We will be getting into Utah shortly!

Surviving the desert

Viva Las Vegas!- and hello again civilization, cell phone service, and wifi. We biked over 250 miles the last 3 days through the Mojave Desert/Death Valley region, including a segment on the historic Route 66. It's been hot, hard, dusty, but very scenic. Several people are taking advantage of being in Las Vegas today by making some bike repairs and to shop for a hopefully more comfortable bicycle seat. The roads have been bumpy and chocked full of potholes, but that hasn't deterred some of our riders to cruise at 50+ mph during our descents (crazy- wear your helmets kids). We camped the last couple of nights in the desert with temps dropping into the 30s. One of the nights was an all-out dust storm so we corralled the vans into a semicircle to stave off the winds. These wild cattle on the other hand were not corralled- nor is this photo zoomed in. They were staring at me at mile 102 as I rolled into our campsite. They did not look pleased to have visitors and had quite large horns.

3/8/09- We had an 80 mile ride into Las Vegas which included going through Red Rock Canyon. The views of the mountains and stone formations here, as you can see, were just spectacular. It was hard to stay focused on the road, but also helped to distract from the lactic acid burn we were all experiencing after several days of tough riding. We have given several lectures to primary schools, churches, and medical schools which have all been very well received. Tomorrow we have an early rise and then more desert riding for a couple of days into Utah. More updates as wifi permits!

4/4/09: Up a Cali mountain- scary fun

Getting a feel for our day riding today would require a video camera as it was quite the test of one’s will. From past year’s experiences, this day was touted as one of the most difficult rides that we will encounter- 95 miles, 60 of them being up hill. We hit the road at sunrise (well, more like an hour after sunrise by the time we got everything loaded and said goodbye to our host families) and started climbing…..and climbing….and climbing…slowing to an altitude of 1 mile above sea level. We unanimously agreed that it was the hardest day of riding that anyone of us had experienced...yet. To put it in perspective Brad, our food zar extraordinaire and support team driver for the day, said that he was flooring our cargo van to make it up the mountain pass and was only going 15 miles per hour. We were all standing and cranking our lowest gears at times and barely moving. About the time our team’s morale was at its lowest, we would crest a peak and rejoice at the downhill approaching. Descending down a mountain is not exactly a time to relax though as we were approaching speeds of 40 mph on centimeters wide tire weaving in and out of potholes, dodging gravel, and keeping steady through the winds as we slingshot past eachother. Being a skier, I compare it to tucking down a black diamond for the whole run without turning- not exactly safe, but sure is a lot of fun!

The mountain claimed nearly half our riders, but for the other half, surrender was not an option. We made someone else throw in the white towel for us at the top of the mountain and called the day short (if 65 miles is short) due to time constraints as we had to press onward for our lecture to a Hispanic church community in Hesperia, California. I'm not sure what Hesperia means in Spanish, if anything, but "desperate desert town" would be appropriate.

I now have to be up in about 5 hours to ride 100 miles, but wanted to update my blog because we are camping out in the desert the next couple of nights until we get to Vegas. For the classrooms following along- Please see the attached video for a climate lesson. I worked quite hard as an amateur filmmaker to edit this film to include a classic desert element with the snowy mountains in the background. I hope it was worth it!

3/2/09: “Day 1 of riding- awesome”

Day 1 of riding was an truly a great day. We were on the road at 6:45am to officially start our ride across country. We had a brief ride down to the La Jolla beach for a photo op with the team dipping our wheels in the ocean. A group of dolphins decided that they wanted to be in the background. From there, we all mushed onward from San Diego to Laguna Beach, about 65 miles according to our bike computers. I wound up riding with the overly ambitious front group of 4 other riders. I say overly ambitious because we completely missed the street chalk saying “R4WH rest stop, turn left” and kept on trucking through the Camp Pendelton marine bass. Thankfully with cell phones, it’s difficult to be lost even in the middle of nowhere. The pic is of our exasperated group, out of food and water, waiting for the cargo vehicle to refuel us.

The terrain was so peaceful all day, rolling up and down hills, in and out of small beach towns. When we got to Laguna Beach, the Rotary Club there had lunch waiting for us on the beach. We then packed up and drove to Pasadena (outside of L.A.) where the families of this real nice, quaint street called “Bungalo Village” met us with all-out neighborhood pitch-in. Each family then took in two riders and gave us a soft surface to sleep on after our long day.

San Diego Retreat

We spent the first couple of days of our trip as a work retreat in San Diego. We learned what to expect in a typical day on the road. When riding, we learned how to communicate (via volleyball-like hand signals to point out hazards, slowing, etc...) and how to ride as a group. We went on a couple of scenic rides around La Jolla and the Torey Pines Golf Course area as a trust building exercise. When riding as a group and drafting (i.e. within 2 ft of the wheel in front of you) you can save 1/3 of your energy expenditure. The trade off is that if the person in front of you taps his/her breaks without telling you, you and the rest of the line goes crashing. We also learned how to manage our 3 support vehicles which we will be leap-frogging along the course making sure that all riders are doing okay and equipped with food/water. As you can imagine, this trip is a logistical nightmare and our leadership team has put in countless hours of prep. For the educational side, we spent a good deal of time creating and practicing the Powerpoint lectures that we will be delivering in our coast-to-coast lecture series.

The Jewish Community Center that hosted us was a museum/resort-like facility and was very gracious to put us up and feed us dinner during our stay. The group is meshing well. Many seem to be the "outdoorsy" type, although only a few of us have any significant road bike experience so our local "biking gurus" have handled several questions.