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For those of you who have been asking where I'm at, here's a rather belated post I wrote and never published ...
I've just spent 2 days trying to cycle from Hurricane to Cedar City, a disance of only 40 something miles, and guess where I am? back in St George, right where I started.
The first time I set off from Hurricane, I gave up after about an hour and a half, just 6 miles down the road at Toquerville, a small town with a church and a Fedex, but not much else. The headwind was so strong that I was getting blown over when standing still, and I was averaging 4 miles per hour going along the flats. I sat it out behind the church for a few hours to see if the wind would die down, and had a really interesting chat to a local guy who came by to read the church's power usage, but at about 1pm I gave the day up as lost, turned heel and headed back to Hurricane for another night. With the wind behind me, it took me just 25 minutes to get back to Hurricance, and I barely turned
Utah Roads
The things I'll miss a pedal.
I set off again the next morning and managed to retrace the previous days route in only 35 minutes, and I was just starting to celebrate when the first gusts of wind started blowing again. Within minutes it was blowing a gale, and it took me nearly another hour to cycle the last 2 or 3 miles out to the freeway junction, and I was beat.
After reassessing my situation for a while, I knew there was no services between me and Cedar City from the guy I was chatting to yesterday, and I knew I wasn't going to make it there at 3 miles an hour, so I decided to see if I could thumb a lift up to Cedar City.
Two hours later, it became pretty apparent that that wasn't going to happen.
So, I sat there on a rock in what seemed the middle of nowhere, getting fairly chilled from the strong cold northerly wind blowing through, and I stared at a map of Utah trying to think of what to do, and all I could think of was that scene in Forrest Gump when he stopped running and turned to
Sheltering behing a church
Such beautiful blue skies, so why the wind??? the people behind him and said "
I'm pretty tired... I think I'll go home now".
More pragmatically, realising I wouldn't make it to Cedar City and not being able to face another night in Hurricane, I decided to take the sailboat option ... I turned left instead of right and cycled the 27 miles back to St George, with the wind behind me. That at least was fun.
At St George I attempted to go to plan B: Pack the bike up, hire a car for a couple of weeks and slowly drive to Denver, Colorado having a bit of a break from cycling. I found a car rental company which was happy to do this, but when I went back to book the car later in the day, they informed me that they had just hired the vehicle out to someone else, and could only do me a return rental due to car stocks. The manager was really nice, he let me use their phone to contact Hertz and the other car companies but no one would do a one way rental, so a bit defeated I headed back to my hotel to consider options.
And
A turning point
Can't go forward, won't go back, and nobody wants to give me a lift. that's what I've been doing for the last 24 hours. The way I see it, my fundamental problem is that with all the extra gear I'm carrying on the bike, my panniers are like sails, and whenever I head into the wind, I just can't go forward. If I was fitter, I'd probably do a lot better, but I'm not. So I've looked at what I might be able to ship home ... but other than this netbook, I'm not exactly carrying much surplus gear unless I decide to remove the tenting option and get rid of my tent, thermarest and cooking stove, but I need this stuff to cycle back down the west coast to use the biker hiker sites.
As I couldn't drive to Denver, I thought I might catch a bus there, and base myself there for a week or two, doing lots of one day trips to build up my fitness and try again, but my heart just isn't in it. I thought I might head back to California and do something similar, but I can't think of where I might want to go there either. I've also looked at just shipping the bike home
St George Hotel
My sailboat, sorry bike. and continuing on without it for a month or two, but again when I sit down and think about what I'd do, I just keep coming back to the thought that I'd just be here to see if my headspace improves, and that's when I found myself on the qantas website looking at early flights home ...
... and that's what happened. I came home, ain't that a surpise.
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