Friday, July 26th, 2024
Capitol Reef, UT → Escalante, UT
78.4 mi, 7,365 ft
Today was a proper whirlwind. JD said it best: “Colorado’s floor is higher than Utah’s floor. However, the ceiling for Utah is infinite.”
Though Colorado remains my favorite, Utah has an incredibly diverse landscape. I was surprised to find a National Forest, a mountain ridge, and the desert all in one day. Spoiler, if any road says scenic byway, get ready to climb for your life. The mountain ridge was especially ridiculous. Cliffs greeted us on both sides, a narrow strip of road our tightrope across this divide. I moved from the shoulder to the center of the road. Sorry to the drivers, I wanted to avoid falling off the edge as I sped down at 40 mph.
This morning, I woke up groggy at 4:30 am to catch an online visa appointment with a consulate in New York. I took the video call from a Days Inn just outside the National Park.
As Sherry and Brad, two of our wonderful hosts from Illinois told us, the last few weeks of the bike trip is when reality begins slipping back in, and our minds begin wandering from cycling to what life looks like after. In many ways, I feel that this next year has been on my mind the entire summer, competing for attention. My meetings, applications, and commitments exist concurrently with Spokes, something I’ve found challenging to balance. Some days the balance goes haywire, and I find myself pedaling before the sun is up to beat the 2-hour difference to Eastern Time Zone.
The climbs were reasonable, I just had to slowly pedal my way through. Some sections were 10-13% grade uphill. There was a surprisingly scary 14% 4-mile downhill.
Previous Spokes’ teams had told us of a coffee shop, Kiva, that we had to visit. Nestled in the canyon with panoramic views of the valley, we enjoyed raspberry lemonades, iced Americanos, and pastries. Cleo said she can picture herself back in this shop some years in the future with her family. This trip has bit me in a hundred places. I have an itch to come back to so many places and spend proper time here beyond the slow tumble through these roads.
After Kiva, we faced the first accident of Spokes. This is still in-progress as I write. Cleo broke her arm. Luckily, she didn’t sustain a concussion. She is the speediest of our team with the intensity and ability to dislocate fear to beat the clock. This means: no brakes on downhills. The strategy proved disastrous in the latter half of the day when she skidded off the road at a high speed. This resulted in a trip to the hospital where she got the bad news. 4 weeks of recovery. We’re not sure if this means she’s going home or staying in the car with us until San Francisco. Every Spokes team in recent years has sustained some injury. This statistic has little to do with team makeup and everything to do with the abundance of risks, however innocuously dressed, that we face. We joked many weeks earlier that Cleo was our team’s “Statue of Liberty,” France’s gift to America. American roads, please don’t take our Statue of Liberty.
For JD’s birthday dinner, we went to a pizza place in town that ROCKED my world. The Kalamata olive tapenade / goat cheese / prosciutto / slow roasted tomato combo atop sourdough pizza dough broke my brain. The most revolutionary, mind-blowing meal of Spokes for me so far. I’m excited to perfect pizza someday when I have my own place. The dough resembled a focaccia, different from the soft dough I’ve come to love. Two camps, equally valid.
On the bike back from dinner, Rebecca and I stopped by what turned out to be a rodeo. We heard someone talking over the intercom from the side of the road. Naturally, we followed. The first rodeo we visited in Colorado Springs was high production. This was local, grassroots. U-12 horse racing. Little kids on ponies dressed in American flags and ponytails. All the children in the crowd were dressed in jeans and plaid, small spurs on their boots jingling through the gravel lot.
Before the summer began, I picked up Cosmo*, my Specialized bike, from Landry’s in Boston. Mark taught me how to clip-in in the parking lot. There, we had an insightful conversation about gratitude. He had qualified for the Boston Marathon and was looking forward to finishing another in a long list of races. I asked how he felt, expecting an answer about endurance and health. Instead, Mark said he was grateful. Paraphrasing here: “I spend months and months training for this self-involved pursuit of physicality and mentality. For one, I’m lucky to be in good health and condition, not everyone has the capability to do this. But the other more important part is that I have so many people in my life, also my job has the appropriate flexibility, that support me in this self-centered pursuit of growth. Because of work, family, and other commitments, some people who want to train just can’t. The same goes for you biking across the country.” Spokes, however difficult, asks only one thing: pedal. I remind myself often that I asked to be in this position, battling mountains and lightning storms. I am lucky to have family and friends who support me in this pursuit of self. Thank you. Love, at its purest, is an affirmation of personhood.
*I named my bike Cosmo after the cat at the Moab library. He would wander in and out of the library before the pandemic. The librarians and staff fed him, later finding out that his former family had left him behind when they moved from Moab. So, the staff took Cosmo in. Now he’s a local celebrity. He has a nook. He wanders around indoors and outdoors. He has a line of merch, a column of the local newspaper, and bookmarks. The newest bookmark is publicity for Moab’s “How Far Can Cosmo Go” challenge. The instructions: “Help us send Cosmo the Library Cat on as many literary & real-life adventures as possible this summer! Take a picture of your Cosmo bookmark on an adventure, whether out-and-about or in a book.” So, I’ll plan to take Cosmo to San Francisco. Most importantly, Cosmo makes me feel that reinvention is something that we are all worthy of. One is entitled to many happy lives encased in this one. Cosmo is one well-loved cat, with at least one life worthy of celebrity and lots of books.
Sophia, I am always in awe of your well written and very detailed description of your day! Bravo! I am always grateful for my ability to move about as I do, albeit, in the classroom and at home.
I hope to one day try your pizza!! 🍕