Length of the State of
We got up and ate at Subway,
a few blocks north of the motel.
However, it was a cold,
dreary day, threatening to rain. The
weather on the TV said that this day (Friday) would be rainy all over the
state, but it was supposed to clear up late in the afternoon. Personally, I was in favor of staying in
We stayed around
Quoting Star Trek, I said:
“May fortune favor the foolish,” and we started pedaling into the cold,
moderate head-wind at 11:00 AM.
For a long ways, it seemed
that our bet was working out. There were
occasional squall lines, and their rain was so light that we didn’t have to
stop. When we started the significant
climb at the
It was a
cold, and dreary day, across from Yuba Reservoir
A little later I felt a
drizzle of rain, and ahead was just a continuous squall-line of rain. Apparently it formed in-place. We were in the middle of nowhere, and there
was nothing to do but get out the plastic sheeting to make a shelter. We had lost our bet with the weather.
We got off the road in the
weeds and moist, sandy, soil, sitting on our ground-cloth plastic sheets, with
the big plastic sheet over us and the bicycles.
Waiting out
a storm under plastic sheeting, looking south
I noticed the moist, sandy
soil around us was quickly turning to mud, and we would have to wade through it
– even if we stayed dry ourselves. We
were sitting on the edge of the large sheet of plastic over us, letting the wind
hold it stretched over us and the bicycles.
After nearly an hour, the
wind suddenly shifted to more from the west, which upset the way we were braced
against the plastic with respect to the wind, and parts of the bicycles might
now get wet. But Malcolm thought the
wind-shift could be a good thing with respect to how much longer the rain would
last.
The rain did slow down a lot
(though it didn’t stop), and we decided to forge on north in the drizzle,
thinking it might be forming in-place over the hill we were on. We pedaled slowly so that we wouldn’t spray
water all over the bicycles and equipment, where we have no fenders.
As we went farther north,
and off the hill, our hopes seemed well founded, as the sky became more and
more clear. But the drizzle refused to
stop. I was amazed that all around us
for two miles in every direction, there was blue sky, with thin, wispy clouds,
yet it kept on drizzling rain. “Where is
it coming from?” I said loudly, in frustration, shaking my fist at the clear sky
above.
As the weather report had
predicted, by 4:30 PM the rain had pretty well ended, though we still
experienced a very light drizzle – perhaps picked up by passing vehicles and
suspended in the wind.
We went up and down (with
more up than down), crossing one alluvial fan after another. Finally, at the summit of one of those long
climbs, we pedaled into Levan at
We finally
made it to Levan
When we resumed our way
toward Nephi, it was even colder, and there were a few scattered snow showers
drifting though the valley.
There were more alluvial
fans to climb on the way to Nephi – the last one being at the south end of
Nephi. From Nephi, water flows northward
into Utah Lake, and from there into the Great Salt Lake, so we would finally be
going downhill on the morrow.
We made it
to Nephi
We got to the Safari Motel
in Nephi at 6:45 PM. As a kid growing up
in central Utah, I remembered seeing this particular motel when we drove
through Nephi on the way to Salt Lake City.
I finally had the opportunity to stay there.
We ate at a good Mexican
restaurant across the street from it.
On this day, we travelled
41.8 miles, with an average speed of 8.5 MPH.
The bicycles were moving for four hours and 54 minutes. It took us seven hours and 45 minutes to do
it.