Day 13 -- Salt Lake City, UT to Provo, UT

Miles: 61.85
Total Miles: 917.85
Time: 4:50
Average Speed: 12.8 mph
Max Speed: 41.8 mph
Flats Today: 0
Total Flats: 2
Elevation Gain: 2013 ft
Weather: Low wind around 80 degrees

We started out the ride around 7:30, and we found out that we have 4 new riders with us for this section of the trip. They'll be with the group until our next rest day in Pueblo, CO. Almost all of the riders started together today, and before we were even a mile in, one of the riders got hit by a car. We were at a traffic light, and they went as soon as the light turned green. They didn't even get halfway across the intersection when the light changed to red, and a car coming from the right hit one guy. He got smacked into the ground by the car, but he actually got up fairly quickly. All he had was scrapes, but his bike was destroyed. They need "M John, the traffic superhero" to set the timing right in the controller. He ended up riding an extra bike that the sag van had, and he's buying a new bike tonight.

Anyway, we moved on pass the accident and got onto a bike path. The bike path went through the airport and through a golf course. We had to open gates along the bike path to get through some fences. It was the most interesting bike path I've ever been on. We got off the bike path and got on some streets for awhile. After just 5 miles on the streets, we got on another bike path. This bike path was very busy with a bunch of other bikers and walkers. Wade and I had a competition to see who could get more people to say good morning back after we said good morning to them. Wade won because he's a little twerp that the old women liked better, but all together it cheered everyone up. It was great fun, and we had some great views of mountains behind us, so we had to take some pictures. After about 10 miles, we exited the bike path and got on some really busy roads.

Not that far into the busy roads, we came upon a stadium. In the distance we didn't know who played there, but when we got closer, it appeared to be a soccer stadium. We immediately knew it had to be Real Salt Lake's stadium, so we pulled into the parking lot and took some pictures. For all of you communists out there who don't care about soccer, Real Salt Lake was the MLS champions last year, so it was pretty cool to get some pictures there. Just a little further, we got some great views of the world's largest copper mine, so we took some of those pictures too. We rode on the busy roads all the way to the sag stop. We didn't stay very long at the sag stop because we knew we had more interesting things to come.

After the sag stop, we rode on some suburban rodes for awhile, but then we got on the weirdest street ever. It had 3 lanes on both sides, and they were all very busy. Along the side of the road was every chain restaurant you could think of plus some sandwich shops. We rode on this road for 10 miles, and the restaurants never ended. We probably saw 4 McDonald's on this one road, 3 Wendy's, 3 Burger Kings, and about 2 or 3 of every other chain. It was the never ending road of chain restaurants. We ended up stopping at a sandwich shop on a corner called The Italian Place. We went in with one of the riders, Jon, who went to BYU, and his friend, Bob, who also went to BYU. We started to order, then Bob said, "Give them half off." At first I thought he was just being obnoxious, but then they actually gave me half off. I was really confused for a second, then Jon told me to read the history of the store on the wall. As I was reading it, I found out that those 2 guys owned the store about 30 years ago when they graduated, and Bob still owns it now. It was really cool and they told us some very interesting stories about their adventures with the restaurant. We were on that restaurant road all the way into the campus of BYU.

We turned off of the crazy restaurant road, and immediately, we saw BYU's football stadium. We rode up to it, and into the parking lot. We saw that one of the gates was open, so we rode into the stadium, then we parked our bikes so that we could take some pictures. Then, we realized that we could walk all the way down to the field... so we did. We took about 2 pictures, then some big hefty guys came up to us. They said, "Hey, what are you guys doing here... do you want us to take a picture for you." We got a picture with the guys we were with, then we got some more pictures on our own. We talked to those big dudes for awhile, and they were all fathers of BYU football players. One of them was the father of BYU's tight end who just got drafted this year by the Baltimore Raven's in the 4th round. WOW, we felt really special being on BYU's field with those guys. Since we took so many pictures there, I put them at the bottom.

We eventually left the stadium, and went through BYU's campus. It wasn't anything special, but then we stopped at an ice cream shop. It had 36 flavors of ice cream to choose from, so we had a tough decision to make. We had our fill there, then we got back on our bikes and finished the last 5 miles to the hotel. One last thing... to all GOBA riders reading the blog, we don't want to hear complaining about the "hills of southeast Ohio," because we'll be in the Rockies. Just kidding... we would complain if we were there, so have fun and ride the century for us.