Bike Ride to Page

Kabito to Page: 37.6 miles

Total mileage: 2773.8 miles

This morning we got to sleep in until 7 which is UNHEARD OF in the Bike and Build world. All of us enjoyed the extra sleep and it definitely showed when we got out on the road.

 

I headed out with Jay, Tova, Holly and Chika and we got off to a slow start thanks to a head wind. None of us, however, were concerned because even if it kept up, the mileage was pretty short. As a card carrying member of the in pain train, I had the group pull over around mile 12 for a quick stretch break. As I was getting my hamstring stretch on, the rest of the group climbed up this super cool rock formats on to reenact The Lion King.

From there we kicked it up a notch. The rolling hills had started and we knew that eventually we would be doing some major descending (we started at 6000 ish and would be going down to 4200). I was pulling and totally in the zone; before I knew it we had been going 27 mph and the only person behind me was Jay. The two of us continued to crush the rest of the hills and about 10 miles outside of town we came into some major descents. As I was cruising down, with some major scenery and my flag blowing I could not think of anything more American.

Jay and I were the second group to show up to the host and after we unpacked the trailer and took a quick rinse off we headed out to get some real world things done. First stop was lunch and we housed some deli sandwiches. After that we split up to do some errands and then met up at the church.

The group was trying to put together a trip to the chain which was a swimming hole before the major dam. Apparently the dam was the precursor to the Hoover dam. We both had to stop at Walmart to pick up a few things before we headed back into the desert. Just as we were headings it on the road, Jay discovered that he had a flat tire. Unfortunaly we were in the parking lot for over an hour trying to get it fixed. Three tubes and one very small air pump later (I left my road morph at the church and Jay just had his dinky one) we were back on the road. At this point I was so tired that I was pretty determined to head back to the church, but Jay convinced me that I should go and see the dam because I would never be back in Page again ... well played Jay.

We headed down to the water, literally down a huge hill, and just before the dam there was the turn off for the chain. Due to a very gravely road, we decided to lock our bikes up and walk the rest of the way down. About ten minutes into the walk we started to joke about how we should totally hitchhike downtothe water and as fate would have it, a range rover came up over the rest of the hill. We flagged it down, hopped in and headed off to the water.

We spent about 45 minutes swimming and jumping off the cliff sides with Alex and Steph; once we started to feel a bit crispy, we decided that it would be a good idea to head back. The other two had biked down so they headed off and we started the long, steep walk to the top. Not to make thestorymore dramatic, but the sun was very hot and Jay had just run out of water. Thankfully another pickup truck was coming up the hill and the man very nicely agreed to take us up to the top. On the way up we collected Alex and Steph and were also able to convince this very nice man to take us back up the very, very steep hill to the host. Please keep in mind dear readers that this is the first time, well I guess second time if you count the ride up and down, I have ever done such a thing. Sorry Mom.

The rest of the afternoon was a combination of napping and writing up blog posts that I could not post due to spotty internet.

 

Posted with Blogsy