Day 15 -- Price, UT to Green River, UT

Miles: 66.21
Total Miles: 1063.20
Time: 4:34
Average Speed: 14.5 mph
Max Speed: 30.9 mph
Flats Today: 0
Total Flats: 3
Elevation Gain: 1227 ft
Weather: Strong head winds around 80 degrees

We started out the day with a great frame of mind, Wade even said Happy Father's Day to me. The staff told us that today was going to be a really easy day. We didn't load until 8:00 because it was going to be so easy. We got about 15 miles in, then our great friend hit us straight on. The wind came plowing into us, and it didn't stop for the rest of the day. Today was definitely not an easy day. Anyway, we were about 20 miles in when we saw a sign that said Cleveland on it. We were pretty sure that someone was trying to make a comparison between the Cleveland Browns and dinosaurs. It makes sense too: Both of them haven't had any success for as long as I can remember, and neither of them seem to have a very bright future. We agreed with the comparison, so we took a picture and moved on. Not much further down the road, we had a nice 7 percent grade downhill. I think we got up 16 mph on that one... and I was tired at the bottom. The wind can really drain you both mentally and physically. We just took it nice and easy at about 13 mph the rest of the way to the sag stop.

After the sag stop, the wind got stronger. We went from 13 mph to about 10 mph, and it was a hard 10 mph. We would stop about every 5 miles because we would see a nice rock formation to take a picture of... we weren't tired, we just had to take pictures!!! There was some cool mountains out there though. Besides the wind and the rock mountains, there wasn't much more. We did see some dry river beds, and those were kind of interesting. Luckily it was only 66 miles, or we would have struggled. The wind was so powerful, that when it randomly shifted to a side wind for 5 seconds, (trust me it does do that), Wade got blow about 2 yards onto the rumble strips and almost onto the road. It was hard to stop and take pictures because it would almost be blowing us over. The wind over here is much worse than Ohio wind, and it seems like it's always in our face. By the way, the shoulder was much wider today, but it was chip and seal, so it was rough. Fortunately, we had plenty of training on the chip and seal sides of the roads in Shelby County thanks to Bob Geuy "our favorite county engineer". We were used to our hands vibrating so much that they got numb. Nobody else was as prepared as we were for numb hands.

Anyway, we got through the wind and into Green River around 1:15. We stopped at a sandwich shop just before our hotel to get a sandwich and some ice cream. As we were waiting for our food, we got a call from one of the staff members saying that 2 spots on the Arches National Park Tour opened up. We wanted to go on that the whole time, but we weren't there to claim a spot yesterday because we were at Church. When they called, it was 1:45 and they were leaving at 2:00. We got our sandwich, ate it extremely fast, took off on our bikes at around 25 mph for the last 2 miles, got our room, got changed, and made it back into the lobby for loading by 2:00. We were very happy to be going on this trip to see those famous arches.

We had to ride in a van for about 50 miles to the Arches National Park, but when we got there, it was beautiful. Like everything else on this trip, the further we got, the more amazing the scenery got. Wade told me, "This is what I thought all of Utah looked like." We took a record number of pictures, and most of them were awesome. We'll show you a few, but if you weren't there, it would seem like we're taking pictures of the same rock. The whole park was beautiful... I could have stayed there for a couple of days just going through the park, there also was a lot of hiking trails. We were only there for 2 hours, but we did have to get back and eat supper. Wade has to eat... A lot.

Every month I attend a President's Circle meeting at Aileron. Chuck, the moderator of the group, always asks us for our word of the day. Since I won't be there, Wade and I came up with my Word for this meeting. Our word is WOW. Wow, it sure is beautiful out here. Wow, I sure am getting tired of the strong head winds. Wow, I really appreciate all the extra hard work that Jeff Puthoff and many others are doing to give me this opportunity. Jeff even left his family Disney World Vacation early and drove through the night to get back to work, thanks, Jeff. Wow, I really appreciate my wife and daughters in picking up my work and duties at home. Wow, I might be in trouble when they find out I really don't do anything and they might find out I am not needed. Anyway, Chuck and the rest of my friends at President Circle, my word is WOW.