Pedal for Peace 2008

It’s 6:38 in the morning and Pete and I just had round one with the "DELUXE" Continental breakfast at the Best Western here in Monticello, Utah! Now it’s back to bed until 8:45 so we can hit it for round two and all the free processed food we can eat before it closes @ 9!!  Pete and I are enjoying some well deserved rest here @ the BW after our 3 day blast through Utah where we covered 85+ miles a day through the hilliest (and most beautiful) terrain we’ve encountered. The first day brought us from Escalante to Torrey where we climbed Boulder mountain–30 straight miles of uphill with one section of 4 miles @ a 14% grade!! We climbed 4,500 feet in elevation up to 9,600–not our highest pass (that’s yet to come at Monarch pass in the CO @ 11,300) but one of the most beautiful parts of the ride so far. While the beauty of the scenery sure didn’t pedal the bikes for us, the white birch forests, the running streams, and the deer on the side of the road sure made the pedaling easier!

  We went UP that hill!

Did I mention that the terrain in Utah is varied?! Because the next day, after the running water and green grass, just 5 miles into our ride we were back in the desert–107 degrees! (And while 107 is "cool" compared to the 118 in Glamis, CA–it sure does up the h2o intake!) From Torrey to Hite was our next days push–99.1 miles! We rode 50 miles to Hanksville and got there @ 2pm. Looking at the map, we saw that we had 127 miles to go with only one stop for water between the two!!!! It was 50 miles between Hanksville and Hite, and as I said "when there’s no choice, the choice is easy" so we loaded up on 2 days worth of food and 1 day worth of water, and started our blast @ 4pm through the desert. We got the 50 miles to Hite, but we rolled in @ 10pm with our reflector vests on and headlights blarin’. There was a great ranger station with a water fountain and park benches where we set up shop for the night.

The next day was 74 miles with no services…. with a 50 mile uphill at a 5% grade!!!!!!! Did we mention that there was the most insane headwind EVER for the climb?  (Yes, the climb really was FIFTY miles!!!!) At one point, Pete and I were up out of the saddle pedaling as hard as we could, we looked down, and we were only going 3.5 mph!!!!!! We were in the saddle for 9 hours and 4 minutes that day and had to go 8 miles off route to get water at the 40 mile mark. One amazing thing about the day was this family from texas who stopped and gave us each a litre of ice-cold water!

 THAT was a big climb!

So now we are resting. We are getting a hotel every 1000 miles and we’re 1200 miles into this journey. That was our celebration yesterday and today–6 straight hours of useless TV doing nothing in the BW!  Pete says: "Thanks to my family who take care of me with amazing birthday gifts (the hotel). I’m gonna get my $70 worth with the free continental breakfast alone… nevermind the 12 showers I will take in 12 hours and the amount of soap and shampoo I will use up!!! IPOD and phone will be fully charged and so will I!!"

I gotta thank my family for all the help with the long-distance website finagaling to get the donation link all set up and ready to go–it is!! Thanks to everyone whos left us words of support and encouragment, it means so much to us to read those messages–it keeps us going!! Sorry if I haven’t had a chance to e-mail or reply to any messages, it’s really busy out here on the road–thank you for the support!

We’re 20 miles from the CO border… bring on Colorado!\

One more story from Pete’s e-mail to friends:

Oh..,. I can’t sign off without first sharing with you all the "Sprinkler Incident!" So last night we came into the town of Blanding UT after 3 days of nothing but riding through Timbuktoo up and down mountains. We met the nice lady who runs the camp ground (yeah we splurged $9 each). She asked us to pitch our tent in a certain location. When she wasn’t looking we chose a different sweet spot with super soft green grass behind a big RV where she wouldn’t see us. We set up shop after the most intense 3 days ever and ate then passed out. At 3:30 am the biggest freakin’ thunder shower I have ever heard was pounding at our tent. As we have yet to see a rain drop since leaving the east coast, we just leave stuff uncovered all night. So I blasted out of the tent to get stuff like my electrical chargers and whatnot.. Thinking "it doesn’t rain out here in the west!" I exited the tent. As I did I got punch-sprayed in the privates by a powerful blast of water!! The electronic sprinklers were going off like the 4th of July fireworks and we couldn’t have chosen a more central location to get hit by ALL of them. I first thought.. Somehow able to stay on my feet I thought, "If I can hold this one and keep it from oscillating, Patch can move the bikes, tent, and stuff out of waters way." So I grabbed it and didn’t let it rotate. Then I noticed the sprinkler I was holding was one of 6!!! AAAHHH so we just grabbed everything and brought it out to the gravel road and finished the night sleeping there on the small compact Utah stones! That was our big night of rest! YEEHHHAAWW!!

We are loving this adventure and love that we can never predict what will happen next!!!

Again… thank you all for your kind words and amazing support. Please keep the guestbook and inbox full of love.  We have nothing but love and gratitude encompassing our entire beings right now!!

Mom I am 1/5 of the way home!!!!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 9:12 am and is filed under update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.