Days 42, 43 and 44 – Cedar City and into Milford

Bad, Cycle OverRide! Bad! It’s been another couple of days without an update. We’ve been really diligent about trying to post updates daily. However, after nearly a month and a half on the road, sometimes it’s hard to get motivated to get a post up.

Really, even cleaning out all the water bottles at the end of each day is starting to seem like an insurmountable chore. Where’s the Pacific? I think we’re ready for it.

Speaking of water bottles… we’re only 48 hours away from Vegas at this point. And it can’t come soon enough. I’m out of CytoMax, I’m out of Heed, and I’m out of Tailwind. All that’s left is Accelerade. What’s different between the first 3 sports drinks and Accelerade? Good question. The first three are just carbs (aka: sugar) and electrolytes… think of them as high quality gatorade. Accelerade throws in one extra bit: protein. In theory, having some protein in the drink helps with the uptake of water and helps restore muscles as you ride. I’m not sure how true that is, but I will tell you what is true… cleaning that crap out of a bottle is a massive pain. It’s basically sugary milk… that stays in a water bottle all day… in the sun. By 6pm that night, it’s caked on the in inside like a thin layer of cheese. Yum. Even with a good bottle brush, the stuff is a pain.

Anyhoo, enough of that. On to the rides.

Two days ago we rode out of Boulder. Or rather, we rode out of Escalante. The route between the 2 towns had some pretty punishing climbs. And given how well we’ve been handling the Rockies/San Juans/whatever, it wasn’t a recipe for success. So we SAG’d up to Escalante and got on the bikes.

Needless to say, the landscape was amazing. This section of the ride continues to be breathtaking.

Then, out of nowhere, @internmike from PaulDotCom shows up. Seriously. Heidi was parked on the side of the road with the MCC waiting for JP and I on a downhill. Mike was going the other way doing some sightseeing, saw the MCC, and stopped. Craziness. Really, I don’t think the whole “we’re going to DefCon in a few days” thing had hit until we saw Mike.

We rode our segment to Bryce Canyon where we were supposed to stay for the night. However, late the evening prior I threw a lateral. We have a fair bit of pre-Vegas prep to do, and spending the night in a tourist-trap of a town wasn’t going to help that. So we drove up to Cedar City instead for a 2 night stint there.

On the way to Cedar City, we drove through Red Canyon. As you can see, it’s aptly named.

So Sunday, we rode a loop around Cedar City. It had _poured_ the night before so it was surprisingly humid. This section of Utah doesn’t get much rain, and the amount we’ve seen in the last few days has been really unusual. It was a nice ride with very little traffic. Most folks are definitely at church sunday morning in this neck of the country.

After the ride, more pre-DefCon shenanigans. We had lunch with @banasidhe and friends as she was cruising down I-15 to start setting up for B-sides Las Vegas. Now, things are seriously starting to feel like DefCon.

Today we rode out of Cedar City on the way to Milford, 56 miles away. The ride to Milford is pretty straightforward.. a long, slow climb through a pass, then back down the other side. Again, it had poured last night, so it was relatively humid for SW Utah.

About 17 miles in, there were some more petroglyphs off the road… a little too far off the road for JP and I to take the trip to see, but Heidi and the boys got a chance to check them out.

Around this time, Art made a break for Las Vegas. He’s got to get some work done on his car before it runs out of warranty in 3 days, so it’s now or never. While Art is in Vegas, Heidi and the MCC are the only SAG. As you can see, Terran is thrilled with all the waiting 😉

From what I can tell looking at the elevation map for the next 400 miles, Nevada is big sections of flat separated by ~1.5k’ climbs. Here we are on the flats, cruising along. We had an awesome tailwind today and put down some great times.

That’s not to say we didn’t stop to smell the roses… or in this case, sit awkwardly on a playground toy while Dax giggled like a mad baby. He REALLY loved this thing.

I mentioned the tailwind. As it turns out, the wind seems to be a constant thing here. They’ve even built these fancy wind thingies to make electricity. And they are HUGE. You can see them from at least 15 miles away.

Tomorrow we ride to Baker. There will be no cell service and who knows what the Internet will be like. The next day we ride to Ely then SAG to Vegas for DefCon. We’ll post updates as we can, but things may get sporadic until next Sunday when we resume the trek to the Pacific.