June 13, Day 13

June 13, Day 13
Salt Lake City to Provo, UT
Mileage: 66
Weather: Clear and sunny with the temperature between 50 and 75 degrees

Dear All,

Well, it's back on the bike. Before we tell you about today, we wanted to take a moment and thank Mark Mahoney. Mark was kind enough to contact a friend of his, Pete Collins, who lives in Salt Lake City. Pete gave us a call and offered to take us around the city on our off day and show us some of the places where he and Mark used to play many years ago. Unfortunately, John was suffering from a pretty good head cold and so we decided to lay low in the morning which was the time that Pete was available. Thanks Mark, we appreciate it and thanks Pete for the offer.
Today was a day of lots of lefts and rights. It was a little like riding from Buffalo to Kenmore to Williamsville to Kenmore to Buffalo to Kenmore to Williamsville etc. Effectively, we rode from Salt Lake City thru a whole bunch of suburbs that run from there to Provo. We rode on all back roads which was a break from the I-80, but the roads were a tad rough.

At one point on the ride we saw a real first; a paceline of baby buggies. Hope the picture shows it. When John pulled over to chase down that paceline, the mothers thought it was a hoot.

For those of you who ride bikes, the next sentence will mean something. Amy's legs were good today! Now, John has always thought that Amy's legs were good, but what this means is that she was very strong. For bikers there are some days when your legs feel great and some days when they feel heavy and just don't seem to go. Amy's knees are much better and it shows. John still has his head cold so he just hung on Amy's wheel for some of the ride except when the wind was in our nose when he took the lead.

Upon arrival at Provo we took a short bike tour of Brigham Young University and then took a small tour of the town in the process of finding the local bike shops (that's what bikers do).

Since there really wasn't much else going on today, we thought we would give you a better sense of what a day is like. We get up anywhere between 5:00 am and 6:00 am depending on the mileage. Breakfast follows and then there is “load time” which is when we load the suitcases onto the trailer. The load time is set for a specific time which can be as early as 6:15 am and as late as 7:30 am, again depending on the day's difficulty. After loading we head on down the road. Depending on the mileage, there may be one or two SAG (support and gear) stops where we can pick up some needed water and high carbohydrate snacks. Riders will arrive at our final destination for the day separated by as much as three hours, again depending on the mileage. We check in and John immediately plugs in the computer and starts to work on the blog which generally takes something like an hour and a half to put together. Amy acts as the editor-in-chief. At about 5:00 pm we have “route rap” during which we go over the next days route receiving information about construction and most importantly the climbs for the next day. Then it's off to dinner. We turn off the light between 8:30 pm and 9:00 pm (if we can keep our eyes open that late).

Thanks for reading. Your prayers to the weather gods have been helpful since we have faced strong head winds only a few times.

As always keep sending the good vibes.
Amy and John