Day 2: Provo to Price, Utah 75 miles, 4200 ft of climb

Today's ride.  The sharp spike at mile 21 was actually much harder than the bigger climb up to Soldier Summit.

Found some things out about myself today.  I'm getting strong again on the climbs.  But I'm also not too thrilled about descents.  

The view coming out of the hotel parking lot.  We'll be climbing up into those mountains this afternoon.

I always like the beginning of each day's ride.  It's early.  There's a chill and crispness to the air.  Not a lot of cars on the road.  Just the stillness of my surroundings and the quiet beauty of the landscape.  The business of the day hasn't started.  It's almost like my own private time.

Morning on the outskirts of Provo, heading up into the canyons directly in front.

Today's ride took us through both Provo and Price Canyons.  The former included the climb up to Soldier Summit (7447 ft of elevation).  The latter included some very treacherous descents, owing to very gravelly and extremely narrow shoulders.  At times, the rumble strips took up the entire shoulder and had us riding on the edge of the road.  With semis rolling by (and, happily, giving us as wide a berth as possible), it made for a challenging day.

Wind turbines at the base of Provo Canyon.  Riders gauge the winds by the direction and speed of the turbines.  Fortunately for us, today the wind was from the west, nearly at our backs.

Looking back down Provo Canyon.  A slow, steady climb today to a very cold and windy summit.

We had an unusual situation when we got about eight miles from the top of the summit.  The highway was under construction and down to a single lane in either direction.  And no shoulders in either direction.  To adjust for this, our ride leaders assembled all the riders into two groups.  The fast group I mentioned yesterday was corralled when they got to the designated point just before the construction site.  We of the slower pace were assembled there half an hour later.  In both cases, the vans drove in front and in back of us forming our own little echelon as we rode, now protected from any cars or trucks, along the actual highway for the two miles of road construction.  

I spent a lot of time climbing up the summit just focused on the road in front of me.  When I heard the bleating of sheep down in the valley, I had to stop to take this picture.

In addition to hearing the sheep, I also stopped to take this shot when I heard the train struggling with the same climb.  Five locomotives in front and a couple more at the rear just to haul freight up and over the summit.

A couple of years ago, on the Mississippi ride, I was amazed how Rollie, the lawyer from Iowa and one of the stronger riders in our group, became sheepish when we'd hit a descent.  I didn't understand why a guy who showed such strength and power both on the flats and while climbing would take his downhill runs so slowly and with such caution.  Rollie had crashed the year before on a steep downhill stretch in Missouri and, by his own admission, it had unnerved him when hitting high speeds on his descents.  Today, I could really appreciate what Rollie was feeling.  I had felt some of this while descending during my Vermont rides, but out here in the West, the descents are much steeper and way much longer. Keeping my concentration on narrow, gravelly shoulders was both mandatory and, after about ten miles, mind numbing and exhausting.  Even on smooth surfaces, I started feeling my nerves as my speed approached 30 miles per hour.  I just didn't feel as comfortable as I had in past years when I'd fly downhill at nearly 40 miles an hour.  

Throughout today's ride, the canyon walls were all this sedimentary rock.  Even hundreds of feet above us, this was the rock formation.  In prehistoric times, this was all underwater in some great western ocean.

I was so focused on the road in front of me that I almost missed some breathtaking views all along the side of the road.  It was only due to the intervention of fellow riders who pointed out some amazing sights that allowed me to stop and take these shots.

Just an unreal rock formation.  We all kept thinking a strong wind would just knock it over

Dave Matthews sings about the space between.  This is what it looks like geologically.

I was trying to determine whether to negotiate the foot and a half of space between the edge of the shoulder and the rumble strips (and that 18 inches was generous -- at times there was nothing more than four or five inches of space) or pop back onto the edge of the highway.  I'd occasionally do the later, but only after checking for cars or trucks.  It became an on/off, on/off scenario for miles, all while trying to control my speed on the steady downhill run.

I love those two small outcroppings of rock that seem to defy gravity.

This area of Utah is big with paleontologists.  Provo and BYU may be Cougar country, but this is Raptor country.  Tons of fossils and dig sites and dinosaur museums.  Even our hotel has dinosaur bones in a lobby showcase.

I'm getting this blog edition out early tonight as Rocky Mountain Power & Light announced earlier today that it's cutting power to this entire area from 12-6 tomorrow morning as they make adjustments.  Thank goodness it's not going to be hot overnight.