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Wednesday, July 16, 2008, Blanding, Utah, Campground
I didn’t sleep real well and woke up with a bad stomachache, which may have been the result of eating the last of the old cheddar cheese that had been waterlogged in the cooler and dried out repeatedly over the last few weeks. Plus my bum tooth was acting up and hurting too. Anyway, my stomach hurt, so I didn’t want to eat anything. I was tired from the hard hot climb from the day before and hadn’t recovered and I was sleepy-not a good combination heading into another hard day’s ride. We had a mostly uphill climb of 65 miles to Blanding, and we didn’t want a repeat of Tuesday’s heat wave experience, so we got up before the crack of dawn and left about 6:30 am. What made matters worse was Adriana wasn’t energetic either and needed a day’s rest-we all did. This has been the longest stretch of riding days without a break so far and the days have been hard. From the first couple of miles I was riding like it was the last few miles of a hundred mile trip. I dreaded every turn of the pedals and I was falling asleep with no energy at 4-5 mph. Everyone left us in the dust and I was watching the odometer click every hundredth of a mile every 10 seconds and wondering how long I could continue, being this exhausted before I hardly even started. The first 20 miles were murderous and seemingly never ending. I was literally almost falling asleep and would start to doze and weave. Finally at the second group stop, Debbie and Karin gave me two of their designer energy bars, plus I ate some watermelon and drank a lot. I started to feel a little better, but I was still tired. For the first 3-4 hours we had a parasol of cloud cover shielding us from Utah’s burning summer rays. But as the morning wore on, the cloud cover began to fray and give way to the sun which wilted us under its powerful rays, with magnifying glass intensity. The heat was beating us down, sweat was dripping from every pore and stinging our eyes; the only relief was the occasional breeze which turned the sweat to coolant allowing us to survive. Finally, we hit a couple of step downhill rides which cooled us off and allowed us to break our downhill speed twice-51 and then 52 mph. There was one real steep hot climb about 5 miles before Blanding, which we were determined to conquer without wimpering or walking, and we did. Finally, we limped in the last 3 miles and stopped at the first campground we saw, but it was going to charge us $50 (because of the kids) so we went around town and found one for only $14 a night with showers and grass. We met lots of new cross-country cyclists tonight-Celia and Wesley, a trio to S.F., and another couple. They all stayed at the campground with us. We celebrated John’s birthday again with the cyclists. They all sang “Happy Birthday.” We ate lots of hotdogs, chicken, chips, and took videos. Debbie interviewed our family members on tape. Everyone exchanged emails and blog addresses. The kids played at the camp playground and later ant night (about 11:30). Adriana, Becky, Paul, Vicky, John, and I wrote in our journals and laughed about Napoleon Dynamite scenes. 65 miles.