Day 14 -- Provo, UT to Price, UT

Miles: 74.74
Total Miles: 992.59
Time: 5:30
Average Speed: 13.6 mph
Max Speed: 30.6 mph
Flats Today: 1
Total Flats: 3
Elevation Gain: 3608 ft
Weather: Sunny and head winds again around 80 degrees

Many of the riders have expressed today in 2 words: "Narrow shoulder." Most of the day we rode on US Route 6, and the shoulder was 3 feet wide, at best. During some sections there wasn't any shoulder, and most of it was 2 feet wide. In addition, it had a rumble strip that took up about a foot of the shoulder, so most of the time we were riding on one foot of shoulder. It definitely made the ride more difficult and kept us more alert. Anyway, today we were the last riders to start out because I had a flat before we even left the hotel. I thought my tire was a little low on air, then I checked it, and low and behold, it was a flat. It's what the staff calls "A mysterious hotel flat." I bet Wade popped my tire because I was doing better at not getting flats. Oh well, we got out about 5 minutes after everyone else, and we caught quite a few of them because of an early road block. Almost 5 miles in, we had to ride on a dirt and gravel road for a whole mile, it was being reconstructed and you could tell it wasn't a Choice One job because of the low quality of the design. It was not good for our bikes at all, but then, just about a mile further, we had to ride through sand for a quarter of a mile. That was even worse on our bikes. Once we got past that, it was smooth sailing except for the nasty head winds. We turned from a side wind to a head wind, and it hit us hard. The wind was funneling through a valley, and it was hitting us straight on. We were pedaling as hard as we could, and we were only going about 9 mph. The wind is always so strong there that they have about 10 wind mills placed right outside the opening of the valley. We took a couple pictures of the windmills, and we even got a video on which you can hear the wind... but we can't promise that the video will upload.

After we got past about 5 miles of intense head winds, we got into some awesome scenery in the valley. There were hills on all sides of us, and sometimes we would be following a stream. We took a bunch of pictures in the valley, but they don't show the true beauty we experienced. We rode about 25 miles through the valley until we came to our sag stop.

After the stop, we began to climb. It was a nice steady 6 miles climb that had an average of a 5 percent grade, so the climbing part wasn't too bad. But, as I said earlier, the shoulder was terrible. We had to climb on one foot or less of shoulder most of the way up. I guess they couldn't call it the Cross Country Challenge if it wasn't a challenge. We made it up the hill fairly quickly, and we reached Soldier's Summit. It's always relieving when we see the summit sign because we know that all we can do now is go downhill. We took some pictures of the signs, then we headed down the hill.

For the first 8 miles of the downhill, we went uphill... Don't worry, I was confused too. It was like the rolling hills in Ohio, we would go down a bit, then up the same amount we just went down. The best part is that it was all against a strong head wind. These head winds are really making us strong. Anyway, after about 8 miles of rolling hills, we came upon a store out in the middle of nowhere. The staff told us to stop, so we did. It was a cute little store with snacks and antiques. It was in the town of Colton. We asked the lady at the store, and she told us that the town of Colton consisted of her family... and that's it... I guess there is a town smaller than Russia. We left the store and continued our "downhill."

After about 2 more miles, we actually got a downhill. It lasted about 8 miles, and we were cruising at about 15 mph. We didn't even need to put on our brakes... the headwinds were slowing us down. That was the hardest downhill ever. I never thought that I would be going down a 5 percent grade hill and have to pedal hard to be able to break 15 mph. To make it better, the shoulder was still only about a foot wide. It was a very difficult downhill.

When the downhill flattened out a bit, we started following a stream. Eventually, we found some nice rocks to sit on and eat our pb&j sandwiches as we watched the rapids. It was a nice lunch, and an even better view. After lunch, we started our downhill struggle again, but now, the rock formations were getting amazing. We took a ton of pictures, but there were so many awesome formations that we just couldn't get them all.

When we finally got out of the canyon, we just had less downhill and more head winds. We pace lined the rest of the way to our hotel after that. Overall, it was a day filled with many great views, but a terrible shoulder. In other news, I got an email from the office yesterday... my office is now a game room. I never thought my office could be so much fun and so multidimensional... I can't wait to get back and try out the new nap room, bathroom, and game room all in one. I never did any work in that thing anyways.