MONDAY day 22, SALT LAKE TO DUCHESNE

THis picture is from Sunday night when we had large gusts of winds coming up over the water, and some scattered showers. Thunder was heard in the distance, but it stayed away.

The covers in Park City.

Today, we left camp around 7:30…and we soon named ourselves the J- team.
The route today was rather long, quite the challenge due to all the climbing, but beautiful for the visual. We had lovely cloud cover which made riding your bike on a challenging day that much nicer for we didn’t have to also think about how hot we were.
THE J-team started with Jessica, Jeff, Joshua, Jenna, Julia (me) and Hilena, who was soon named Jilena just so that she was not ‘one of these things does not belong here.’
The night prior to the ride we receive a map with our directions and as well the elevations thereby enabling us to know how much climbing there is and what is in store for us that day. Unfortunately for this Monday there was no such map, leaving us a little in the wary for what was in store. We were told it was another ‘pass’ through the mountains, and that most definitely means climbing.

This is what we saw, when we took a look back as per what where we came from...or WHAT WE CLIMBED...yes a little tuckered when at the summit...but ready to pedal on.

The ride started out on the highway with an amazing downhill…blowing by above 60k an hour…which is chilly at 7 am…with a turn off the highway we started a 6-8% climb for about 800 ft. From the top of the climb we could see out over Jordanelle state park and see where we had camped just an hour earlier. On with the ride, Hilena had a flat at 8:50, where Jenna and I stopped to keep her company….it took her until 9:26 to complete the task…meanwhile Jenna and I had already perused the area, and tried to coerce some ‘snobby horses’ to come eat the delicious grass we had picked. They had no need or interest in us. We went back to help Hilena, but she was intent on completing it herself. By now, our group had come to a trio….but later we caught up with Josh, who stayed with us for the rest of the day. Continuing on with this leg of the trip, we started out at a good pace, but were soon feeling the effects of horrible optical illusions. WE were slowing down incredibly but couldn’t understand why. Our rear tires felt flat, my legs felt like jell-o, and my bottom like lead. We were climbing…we reached Walter Vink’s oasis at the 50k mark and we still had 12k to climb. This climb was no easy deal, we were doing 8-10% easily, IN GRANNY GEAR…at least I was, and reach the summit of a daunting 9485 ft…what a climb for the morning…..but next came the descent…and lovely as it was I only reached 74k an hour, due to curves in the road…and possibly fear of crashing if going any faster.
We reached a town of Hanna, whereupon we decided to stop for snacks and coffee, and for some PIE. With in minutes this small little café was overloaded with us sea to sea-ers…and Joan was serving water and pie like she worked there all her life (she is one of the cyclists). Certain pie flavours were sold out within the hour, and those further behind in the ride were going to be out of luck.

Shawn and Brent, zooming by, as i was on the otherside of the road trying to coerce some horses to me....while waiting for Hilena to change her tire...

Leaving the café we still had no idea of what was in store for us, besides what the trucker I had been talking too had said. He was right, another 8% climb…and then rolling hills all the way to Corey who was 30k from the end point. At Corey’s Jenna noticed a flat tire…and we ended up changing that there, and it took her only 15 minutes…yeah Jenna…(with the help of some nice boys). We turned from Corey’s stop to head into a head wind…what a day… that last bit, with climbing was nuts on our minds and as well as our bodies. Needless to say we made it into camp, with delays, and stops at the SAG’s, by 5pm…..long day.
Setting up tents we had a race, because how else do you keep the spirit of fun with tents going…and then changed into bathing suits…for we were going SWIMMING at the local pool that had it open for us. Supper, shower, peleton…small groups…try to email…and then bed is how it went….