Day 20 Willard to Salt Lake City 153km (actually 161.6km) Uphuill 5723ft Downhill 3201ft

It’s 9:30 Saturday evening as I start to work on this entry. John Vandersteen has invited us to join him at his sister’s place; Tom and Rita Cunningham. Now my parents would find this interesting. As we were playing the ‘dutch bingo’ game Rita found out that my maiden name was Dykxhoorn. When I mentioned that my parents were Tony & Corrie, Rita exclaimed that she knew them. Rita had spent 2 summers at my parent’s house when she was 16 & 17. She was doing field work to earn money so that she could finish her high school education. My parents were newlyweds at the time, and she remembers how sick my Mom was because she was expecting at the time. What a small world. Tom Cunningham, John Vandersteen and his sister, Rita Cunningham

Tom and Rita have generously opened their home to us. We’ve had wonderful showers (I’m even wearing one of Rita’s nighties because my pj’s are in the laundry) and they treated us to a ‘all you can eat buffet’ at a local restaurant. Boy, did we eat! Tomorrow we will attend their church in the morning and then head back to the park later in the afternoon so that we can set up our tents and attend the evening celebration service.

Now onto the day…

At peloton last evening it was announced that breakfast would be served from 6-7 a.m. so that everyone could get an early start to what promised to be a very long day. We have two climbs…the first one at mile 60 is just over 2000ft and the second one (which started as soon as we had the descent from the first climb) was around 1500 ft. The grades for these climbs ranged from 3-6%. Some cyclists have opted to only cycle to the church where Claire and Hildred provided a light lunch for us before we start the climb. This will give them a 100km day.

John and I were on sweep and that means we are to be the last ones out of the camp. If the climb was not done by 7pm, SAG was going to pick us up, so John was itching to go. I found him on his bike, helmet fastened, safety vest on circling the parking lot at 7 a.m. So I asked him what he was doing. John replied that our Sweep team leader had given him permission to leave early as long as he took a slow rider with him. So I joined him. Let’s not define the word ‘slow’ too much…does slow refer to bike speed or mental ability?!?. In my defense I will say that John and I unloaded the gear truck with some other cyclists on Friday afternoon and set up a lot of stuff before our actual sweep team came in and we also helped till late in the evening, when some others had retired for the night. We also reported for duty at 15 minutes earlier this morning then necessary. I’m still feeling a tad guilty but what’s done is done.

Today the map is rather challenging and John has promised that he won’t leave me. So off we went. Initially we had Dirk V, Pete W and Roger on our line. We set the pace easy (around 23km) in order to save our legs for the climb. After a McDonalds stop (to use the facilities) we left a few cyclists behind that had ordered coffee and continued on with Dirk. The 100km to the church seemed to fly by. We made it to the church within 4 hour and only had to turn around once because of a wrong turn. Pete, Louie, Barb and Gerry were still at the church when we arrived. They made a few more wrong turns then we did. We chatted with fellow cyclists and after a good ½ hour rest we headed out to tackle THE CLIMBS.

My goodness, as soon as we were out of the parking lot we had a short, very steep climb. Andy told me that at the top of this short and very, very difficult hill there was a sign pointing the direction to the airport. He contemplated throwing his bike in the ditch and buying a ticket home, but then remembered he didn’t have his passport on him, so he continued onward. Now remember John’s promise not to leave me….well, I lost him within 5 minutes of leaving the church! To his credit he was waiting for me at the top of the first climb and then he stuck with me for the reminder of the day.

I’m struggling to give you a description as to how hard today was and the only thing I can compare it to is childbirth. The pain starts off slowly but manageable (similarly to the first 100km of the day). Then the intense pain starts and it is relentless. Well that’s what the climbs were like. The climbs were doable but it was just such a long climb. The first one was around 12 miles or so. I just kept peddling, didn’t stop, just kept going and going till I reached the summit. Mountain Springs Community church had a booth up at the summit and were handing out gadorade and power bars. What a treat, I even scored a dark chocolate power bar. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I loooooooove dark chocolate!

The ride down from the first climb was fast and all to short. We began to climb almost immediately. The second climb was a tad shorter (8 miles) but again it seemed to never end. Temperature on my bike read just over 100F. Our final destination is Jordanelle State Park. all
We stopped at Walter’s SAG and were told that we had approx 10km to go…wrong, it was more like 10 miles! You can also imagine my cry of dismay when we turned onto Hwy 40 only to see another hill. I thought to myself, ‘you’ve got to be kidding’. I just didn’t think I had enough fuel in the legs to do it, but that good ‘ld stubborn streak of mine kicked in and I made it into camp shortly after 4 pm. Once I stopped peddling my body rebelled a tad. I realized that I had been drinking enough water but I hadn’t really eaten anything substantial since breakfast so the world was turning. I quickly sat down with my head between my knees, ate some cookies for instant sugar, had several pieces of watermelon and John refilled my water bottle with cranberry juice. Felt better within 5 minutes.

I’m so grateful that I didn’t have to set up my tent last evening. We will go back to the park on Sunday afternoon to do this job. We were all exhausted, glad to be in and very glad to be billeted (okay, ‘hosted’ for you Americans). The state park that we are staying at is rather spread out. It is a hike to the tents, a 10 minute hike to the showers and the gear truck and kitchen trucks are down a trail. So nothing is in close proximately except for our tents!

It was great to do our laundry, wonderful to converse and laugh with both Tom and Rita and John, Barb, and Louie this weekend.
P.S. Just a funny aside….apparently on Friday evening there was a mouse scurrying under Bob & his daughter Lisa Brouwer’s tent, then it went under Louie’s tent. He could feel it under his floor mat and was afraid it would chew thru his tent. I told him it was a free massage. Thank goodness the mouse didn’t make his way to mine, the whole camp would have heard me screaming.

And that’s a wrap. Till next time, Cynthia
P.S. Total bike time 7:15 Average speed 22km