Ride of the Century!!!!!!

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Day 11 - Mother’s Day 5/14/06 - Happy Mother’s Day to all the
Mothers!
Baker, NV - Minersville, UT.
Total Miles: 101.8 First Century (100mi Ride) For Everyone in the group (775mi to date)

We got an earlier start than the past few days (on the
road by 7:30). Lots of excitement today! First of
all we bid farewell to Nevada and entered Utah - this
was celebrated with the ceremonial photo shoot near
the welcome signs for both states (since we entered
Nevada on a lonely desert road we didn’t get the
opportunity and had to make up for it now). Today’s
climbs were a bit more tough than usual. It wasn’t
the actual climbing but rather the motivation required
to start the climb out of a scorching hot basin filled
with road kill, knowing what will be on the other side
of that range, another scorching hot basing reeking of
road kill, followed by, of course, another climb …
Utah seems to be a state of illusions as well. It’s
hard to tell you’re climbing; it seems like it’s just
taking a whole lot of effort to travel on flat land.
The distances and grades are super trippy - flats look
like downhills and vice versa. Roads 30 miles away
look like they’re about 5. Everything is perfectly
straight. Today these illusions, or with the heat,
perhaps delusions, are particularly dispiriting. We
were all hurting going over Frisco Pass, the looming
thunderstorm nipped at our butts and kept us moving.
We passed the old abandoned mining town of Frisco
which produced $60 million of minerals during its
short life in the late 1800’s. Where did all that
money go? We managed to beat the afternoon
thunderheads and enjoyed another fantastic dinner
(sadly, without our Moms). We were, however, able to
call them … luckily (very unexpectedly) there was cell
service in Milford. We passed more cows on the side
of the road (who again let us know loud and clear
that, no, they were not happy to see us and would like
us to please be on our way - cows are funny sounding
when they’re mad - they stare at us and moo and grunt
all aggressively, then they turn and run away like
cowards, it’s amazing how fast they can run and funny
how skittish they are considering they could kick the
you know what out of all of us.
Tomorrow should be a short mellow ride out to Cedar
City (we’ll bivy in the park tonight, the lady behind
the Texaco station called her husband, the sheriff,
who said it was okay). Tris will leave us there (sad)
and hopefully we’ll take a rest day. Arthur’s a
raging stallion, an absolute animal in the saddle -
we’ll see if we can keep him still for a full 24 hours
… it’ll be a challenge, Daniel and I will have to pen
him in.

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Comments

[chewtoy]

animals!
you guys are legends in my book already. I always knew that Arthur was a stallion!