Kiki Bikes Across America

I woke up really early this morning after staying two nights at the Lazy Lizard Hostel in Moab for $9/night (not bad at all). Chase went out with a couple girls from the hostel and was having a good time and didn’t come back till 2:45 or so. Needless to say, he wasn’t ready to get up at 4:45 when my alarm went off (we had planned to get an early start as we’d heard it would be 100+ degrees today). I got up and asked Chase if he was coming. He said no and so I headed out on my own at 5:30 in the morning. I had to get to Monticello to pick up mail (a water pump that a friend got and mailed to me). I figured it couldn’t be a bad investment for getting across the desert in the heat – with hopes that we’d find water somewhere if there weren’t any service stops.

Lots o' water

I rode all morning and the first 15 or so miles were slightly sluggish and I hit a patch of construction on a hill, so had to bike on the shoulder as far over as possible with oncoming traffic in my lane – not very fun, but luckily I only had to deal with two rotations of oncoming traffic. After the first 15 miles it seemed like things picked up a bit. As I was riding down a hill, a car was parked below on the side of the road – as I rode by, a man was standing outside his car and started clapping and turns out he was from Washington DC (by looking at the license plates), so that was kind of neat. I’ve had a few encounters where people start applauding and really giving you thumbs up for riding across the country with all the heavy gear. It happened the other day when I was riding up the mountain to La Sal – a big semi truck was coming down the mountain as I was going up and both the driver and passenger started applauding as I pedaled up. They must have thought I was crazy since they shook their heads too with a funny smile on their faces.

I reached Monticello about 5 hours and 15 minutes later (pedal time) after climbing one fairly large hill (about 2 miles long) and maybe 6-7 % grade. Once at the top of the hill, it was all relatively flat or downhill into Monticello. I got there just a couple minutes before noon and went and picked up my mail and then met up with a couchsurfer that I’d been in touch with. Nicky and I went to grab lunch at the Peace Tree which had excellent paninis and macaroni salad!

After lunch, I went to the library to update the site a little and check email – then I got really sleepy (I’d only slept 4 hours prior to waking up). After the library, I packed up my computer and went out underneath a tree to take a cat nap for about 20 minutes or so. Then I walked down to the post office to mail a couple things and then just hung out at the Peace Tree waiting for Chase to show up. He finally appeared to town at 7pm, just as I was sending him a message that I was going to continue on to Blanding and would see him there. He arrived and wanted to eat so I stayed and we went to a pizza place and he got pizza and then we finally left there abotu 8:30pm after running into two other touring cyclists coming from San Francisco and were heading to Brooklyn.

We rode for about an hour and 45 minutes until we reached Blanding – we got there about 10:15pm, just 15 minutes before Subway closed. We got a sandwich and split it and then refilled water bottles – each of us has well over a gallon of water a piece in water bottles. Once refilled we went in search of a park or place to camp in town – explored the city park, but it was a bit out in the open, so we opted not to sleep there. Then rode to another park, but couldn’t really make out what was going on there – lots of low shrubs/bushes to the ground and red dirt, so that didn’t appeal too much either. Plus some cacti too – not too great for our tires. (Chase had a flat in the morning when he went out to his bike ready to leave Moab – apparently a thorn got caught in his tire).

Finally, we settled on camping behind a school under an overhang – we just rolled out our mats and sleeping bags on the cement and called it a night. It was actually quite pleasant and no one bothered us.

Our camping spot behind a school in Blanding

GPS Stats:
76.20 miles
07:20 moving time
10.4 avg speed
38.6 max speed

Computer Stats:
78.20 miles
07:19:49 moving time
10.6 avg speed
39.5 max speed
2,584.88 total pedaled miles to date