Salt Lake City

Holy crows!  I’ve made it to Salt Lake City.  Here’s the view I saw when I rounded the corner from the area west of Bountiful as I began to follow the course of the Jordan river into the city.

The sun was starting to get low (you can see the long shadows on the road) and the swampy and scrubby land all around became golden in that light.  It had been a hard day, and I felt a sudden sense of relief and catharsis to be able to finally see the end of my journey (almost) rising up ahead.  I let out a big whoooooop, which I’m pretty sure that no one could hear, but I’m fine with the idea that someone did.  At this point everyone thinks I’m insane anyway.

The day had been hard.  It wasn’t the most physically demanding of the trip (that would have to be the ride from Prairie City to Vale in Oregon) but it wasn’t too far off in terms of how I felt at the end.  The milage was slightly on the long side, but not too bad — a respectable 85 miles.  And there was one mountain pass.   I had to ascend out of Logan, Utah and over the north end of the Wasatch back down into the Salt Lake basin.    This pass was made worse by the altitude since at well over 6,000 feet it was my highest climb yet, even though the total gain involved was under 2,000 feet.  Despite having been above 4500 feet for a while now, It’s pretty hard to climb up there, and the sun is extremely harsh.  I’m trying to be very careful about sun exposure right now — I’d managed to badly sunburn my lower lip earlier in the trip and it has remained an irritated mess (and caused other mouth problems.)  I’ve amassed a collection of several ointments to deal with the issue, but none seem to be working that well.

There were other small annoyances today which added to the slog.  For the first 40 miles, traffic was a real problem.  Though US 89 over the mountains had nice wide interstate-style shoulders, those immediately disappeared in Box Elder County south of Brigham City.  There were a few sketchy parts with no shoulder before I got on a suitable road, and I’m glad I was clear-headed and experienced enough to handle them.  For the last 50 miles or so, the wind was a real bummer.  It blew in my face at about 10-15 miles/hour, cutting my speed by about 2-3 mph and adding a lot of effort to every mile.  In the few places where the road was sheltered from sun and wind giant clouds of gnats lurked.  These stuck to my clothes, arms and glasses in a thickening matte which I soon gave up trying to scrape off.

On the other hand, there were good moments too.  For the last 30 miles into the city I was away from traffic entirely on a great deserted bike trail.  Thanks Salt Lake City!  And I saw the most beautiful formation of migrating geese descend in a glorious chevron over the Mantua Reservoir as I sped down the backside of the mountain pass I’d just climbed.  But by the time I rolled into SLC I was pretty burned out, and ready for a break and a sushi burrito with my friend Rachel.  Today is all about sleeping and catching up on a bit of work.  Tomorrow I’ll load up the bike one final time for the 35 mile ride up the hill to Park City, where I’ll spend a week with my co-workers.  Maybe I’ll post some kind of summary at some point, but for now I’m going to get busy resting.