Kiki Bikes Across America

Wednesday, July 22nd – Blanding, UT to Hite, UT (Lake Powell)

After such a long day yesterday (I biked 7+ hours but waited in Monticello for 8.5 hours for Chase), we decided not to set an alarm last night, so that we could sleep as long as possible (until the sun came up). We both didn’t have much sleep the night before, so it was good to sleep. We woke up naturally due to the sun rising – got up at 7am and packed up and rolled out from Blanding around 8:30am.

We were heading for Lake Powell today and had a pretty long climb, 13 miles with some steep grades, as much as 10%. We just took it slow and kept on pedaling. Along the way, another cyclist (part-timer, named Mark) showed up and chatted with Chase for a bit (I was a good bit ahead on the hill climbing)…and I kept on going, and then eventually Mark said bye to Chase and caught up to me and we chatted for a bit. After reaching the top of the climb at 7,110 feet or so, I stopped and waited for Chase to catch up and we snacked a little and then started the 40ish mile descent down to Lake Powell. We thought it’d be a piece of cake, but it proved more difficult than we were expecting.

Climbing up over a smallish mountain enroute to Lake Powell

30 miles into the ride and just as we were descending from the big climb, the clouds above started to look a bit ugly. We saw the skies were changing really rapidly and then a few raindrops fell. Before we knew it, we were caught in a torrential downpour of rain and then hail – my first hailstorm on the trip, and hopefully the last one. It was pretty intense and lasted about 15 miles with us racing to outrun the storm 3 times. We were going about 20-25 mph to try to outrun the storm and we did, but then we ran into a couple of other touring cylists, Aaron and Seth. They started in Portland, Oregon and rode down to San Francisco and now are riding to Yorktown, VA. While chatting, of course the storm caught up and it started to hail again on us. We said our quick byes and then started pedaling fast to outrun the storm again – and we did. Finally, we were storm-free and past the ugly clouds.

Lake Powell, Utah

We still had 30+ miles to go and it was supposed to be primarily downhill, but it was more unhill than we knew or expected. The sun had come back out and we hit a few headwinds and it was pretty brutal. Chase was really beat – I had gone ahead a bit to try to get to the store before 5:30pm when it was supposed to close (according to the cyclists we met yesterday). I was just cranking as hard and fast as I could in hopes of making the store before it closed. About 5 miles from the store I decided to stop and wait for Chase, since it didn’t look like I’d get there in time – there was still one big hill to do, and I didn’t know how long it would be. A little while later Chase showed up and we climbed to the end and rode into Hite (Lake Powell) and stopped at the bathrooms to get water and clean up. We were so exhausted we just stayed outside the bathrooms. I have never seen two pathetic people so exhausted and drained from the day and the heat we endured. Chase was beyond pathetic and pooped – we looked like we could fall over and just go to sleep for hours on end. We continud to hydrate (we’d already gone through all of our water during the day – and then on top of that continued to drink a ton). I cleaned up in the bathroom and then started to cook shells and cheese for us. We split that and were still hungry, so I made fettucini with spaghetti and alfredo sauce mixed. We finished that off, cleaned off, and then moved our bikes behind the bathrooms and I set up the tent and crawled in and fell asleep till 3:15am.

Cooking outside of the bathrooms at Lake Powell

GPS Stats:
80.5 miles
06:57 moving time
11.6 avg speed
49.8 max speed

Computer Stats:
81.38 miles
06:48:51
11.9 avg speed
51.0 max speed