Day 9: August 19th, 2008 – Showers Best If Taken Unlawfully

Torrey --> Cannonville (6 miles west of Henrieville)

After eight days of riding, so many gallons of sweat had passed through my clothes that I nearly considered them washed. I thought I smelled fine, but in a phone call back home to Mom, she reminded me that perhaps I was like that stinky kid at school who was either oblivious or indifferent to his stank……... Oh the insight of a first grade teacher! Just in case, I decided to wash my clothes at the campground. In an effort to be thorough, I put every item of clothing I had in the wash, including the clothes off my back and the underwear off my saddle sore butt (I guarantee you would do the same if you only had two pairs of underpants and only one chance to wash them every week and a half…..) For the next hour and a half I strolled around the campground wearing nothing but a 2 ft X 3 ft, paper thin, blue, packlite towel that could easily squeeze into a clinched fist, much like a handkerchief in the hand of a magician. And to top off my new style, this particular Tuesday morning in Torrey happened to be the windiest on record. All in all, the inhabitants of Sand Creek Hostel and Campground were getting quite a show that morning.





Utah is not flat! I crested over a 9500 foot pass as I rode south towards Boulder and Escalante. I climbed out of the dessert and into an alpine paradise no different than what I experienced in high Colorado save the red, white, and orange rocks that made the valley floor. From the top of the climb I could see the entire rim of Capitol Reef N.P. Some parts of the climb exceeded a 14 percent grade and were certainly no fun until the ride down.



The descent took me onto a 6 mile stretch of road affectionately called The Hogback; it starts at the intersection of The Devil’s Backbone….. The Hogback is a poorly conceived excellently built strip of pavement that runs the rim of a narrow rock formation that separates two canyons that lead into Escalante. The two lane road is essentially one lane with double yellows painted down the middle. Any one of the foreign tourists need only to forget which side of the road he belonged on and I’d be freefalling for about 10 seconds while by body and bike plummeted 2500 ft to the canyon floor. So it was fair to say I rode swiftly and defensively into Escalante sometimes hitting speeds approaching 50 mph and always outlining the commanding abyss with the blacks of my tires. This was the most fun I’ve had since pee wee football!



The confines of the bike created days of one on one time with myself. Most of this time I spent thinking about something worthwhile, but on the climb out of Escalante Grand Staircase N. M. I had convinced myself that somewhere ahead on my route there was an ice cream truck that had run out of gas. In this fantasy, the truck driver ran up to my bike and begged me to join him in the refrigerated interior of his trailer to consume scores of delicious iced cream treats. FYI, an oasis of ice cream failed to appear at the top of any of the grueling climbs….




After I left the E. G. Staircase N. M., which we have good ole Bill Clinton to thank for preserving, it was staring to get dark and I was in need of water and a place to sleep. No town ahead (within reasonable distance) boasted a population beyond 200 and I was ready to call it quits for the day considering by bike was making some awful noises. The two brass screws that held my rack and panniers on to the bike had finally broken in half from the repetitive abuse from 789 miles of riding. The load was holding on due only to my sheer will and a few creatively placed zip ties. I wobbled through Henrieville, which turned out only to be a few houses scattered in the dessert night, and on to Cannonville, which had an open market and a KOA Campground!



I ate junk at the market while talking to the cashier. He was decked out in Boston everything; Red Sox hat, Celtics shorts, and a Beantown USA T-shirt. I asked where he was from(just to be a smart ass), and to my surprise he said he had never lived outside of Cannonville, Utah…..(Population 148.) This gentleman was obviously confused about how far away from Massachusetts he actually was, but he wasn’t completely lost as he did offer the great suggestion to stay underneath the bridge I had crossed coming into town. Rather than pay the 36 dollar KOA fee I just stole a shower from their bathhouse and walked back to my dry riverbed and ramen.

Day: 102.38 mi

Total: 789.71 mi

Elev. Climbed: 5200 ft

Elev. Difference: -1000 ft

Elev. Peak: 9600 ft

Day 8: August 18th, 2008 – Riding the Dirty Devil

Hite Recreation Area --> Torrey (40 Miles West of Hanksville)

After a meal of delicious apples and cinnamon oatmeal for breakfast, I rode up the road to the water spigot to fill my canteens. Jerry stopped by in his truck and told me that his wife Debbie would open the market for me two hours early! She might as well have been God and me Moses, and her Snickers bars and Pop Tarts………. Manna from heaven. Debbie told me about all the cyclists that had been through over the spring and summer but she was particularly surprised to see me considering I was the first rider in several weeks, I was alone, and one of only a handful she had ever heard of riding east to west.



So I said goodbye to Jerry and Debbie and rode across the Dirty Devil River that had been cutting through the White Canyon along my ride for the last 80 miles. A small Cessna followed me out of the canyon on the climb out and led me into a space of true nothingness on the way to Hanksville. Jerry sounded his siren as he passed me in his truck a few hours after I left Hite. Sadly, the screech of his siren was as close as I came to a real human conversation all morning. I finally pushed into Hanksville and consumed some nasty gas station calories for the first time in 150 miles. I got lots of scared looks in the gas station from those that saw me roll in from the incredibly desolate and distant east. I guess people don’t know what to say to a guy whose only obvious interest in punishing himself….



Another sweet national park lay ahead so I left the stares of Hanksville and moved on towards Capitol Reef National Park. While coasting through the canyons of the Park the Fremont River ran along the road falling into pools filled with European tourists. There were Belgians, French, British, Germans, and Swedes but not a single American. I stopped a particularly beautiful waterfall to take a dip and wash off in case I didn’t have the chance to later that night. There were five young children and their moms swimming below the roughly twenty foot falls. The moms, Pearl, Mary, and Jeanine, were from Minnesota and of course they had sweet Great Lake accents. After I swam for a bit and cooled off I pulled some tricks off the falls for the kids. They laughed and cheered as I flipped through the air off a cliff above the Fremont Falls. I said goodbye and headed back up to the road to grab my bike. On my way up the cliffs I met a beautiful young Belgian couple that had been enjoying my escapades from the cliffs above. In broken English, they ask me where I was biking to and were excited to hear I was headed to San Francisco because they were too.



I ran into the Belgians everywhere the rest of the day. We searched for petroglyphs on the walls of the canyons together, picked fruit from some roadside orchards together, and stopped at the very same viewpoints to take identical pictures. I really liked the Belgians and each time they got back in their car we said goodbye in an unsure way, unknowing if we would see each other again.

I pulled into the tiny but beautiful burg of Torrey without my beloved Belgians, and found a sweet little camping ground with showers! A bathroom! And soft grass camping sites! The desert had made me fairly dusty so these small comforts blew my mind. I walked down to a sweet Café and had a ridiculously delicious dinner compared to the Top Ramen that I was accustomed to. As I ate I listened in on the multilingual conversations of the foreign tourists surrounding me. I swear by the end of my dinner I could understand French. There I was in the middle of Utah seeking to take the pulse of America with my journey, and all I was learning was that the French don’t laugh like the guys named Pierre in cartoons, “hoh hoh hoh hoh.” But none the less, it was a great dinner and I had coasted easily through 103 miles for the day. I crawled into my tarp tent and passed out.

Day: 103.02 mi

Total: 687.33 mi

Elev. Climbed: 3900 ft

Elev. Difference: 3200 ft

Elev. Peak: 7000 ft

Day 7: August 17th, 2008 – Welcome to Nowhere. Population ME

Blanding --> Hite Recreation Area (Lake Powell)

I was so accustomed to lumpy soil being my bed that I was restless in the comfort of a hotel bed. I spent the night tossing and turning in that soft luxury. It seemed that my body was starting to enjoy the challenge of harsh conditions, and it was a damn good thing because I was in for a fresh new hell in the heat of the desert.

I headed into the 76 miles of no services with full packs of water and plenty of excitement. This land that had been referred to as vast nothingness was all but that. The outcroppings and formations that flanked the road in shades of red, orange, yellow, and white were magnificent to say the very least. I stopped to check out some 1100 year old cliff dwellings right off the side of the road and met two brothers, one a geologist the other an archeologist, traveling the country together after packing up their things from an excavation site they had been working for months in Arizona. They were very curious about my tour and they even recommended an ultra-light ancient Mayan micro-grain that was the lifeblood of their civilization and is now famed for its recovery capabilities. I guess people really are defined by what they study; doctors see sickness and health, teachers see ignorance and genius, athletes see winners and losers, and archeologist see ancient Mayan grains.

After leaving the brothers, I cut through a stone ridge the size of Samford Stadium into Comb Wash, a deep ravine offering surreal perspectives of the increasingly outlandish landscapes. The climb out of the Wash was blisteringly hot and contained grades over 14%, but after the climb I still hadn’t lost the desire to take the 30 mile detour into Natural Bridges National Park considering they had the only water for many miles. I filled up my plastic bag like canteens and rode the loop of the park that bordered the White Canyon. The White Canyon is as stunning as any canyon you’ll ever see and it formed the valley that I traveled all day to Glen Canyon and Lake Powell. While taking a picture of the Bears Ears, ironically a formation known to the ancients as one that caused mischievous deeds, my camera spontaneously broke.

It could have been the 106 degree heat, or maybe the hundreds of pictures I was taking, but that was the end of picture taking for the day. It is fitting that I couldn’t capture the rest of the day on camera because I doubt that any photo could do the scenery of the rest of the day justice. The images of the Martian like landscape of places like Fry Canyon, Jacob’s chair, and Cheese Box Butte belong in my mind alone.

After 102 miles of fighting wind, heat, and blistering sunburn so severe that it appeared that hundreds of drops of milky wax had dripped onto my forearms and quadriceps, I finally began the decent into Glen Canyon and the water that now fills it, Lake Powell.

Hite Recreation area offers the only service within a 150 mile span of Utah wasteland, and it would be my home for the night. The paradise known as Hite consists of a payphone, a barebones market open three hours a day, a well water spigot, and Jerry the Ranger who had passed me in his truck five hours before. It was odd knowing that Jerry, his wife, and I were the only people for about 70 miles in any direction. After a good talk with Jerry, I set up camp on the shore of the lake and took a well deserved dip in the enormous 186 mile black water of Lake Powell..

Day: 102.06 mi

Total: 584.31 mi

Elev. Climbed: 3000 ft

Elev. Difference: -2400 ft

Elev. Peak: 7100 ft

Day 6: August 16th, 2008 – Mormons of Monticello

Dolores --> Blanding


Carrie’s hammock was crazy comfortable. I would have never gotten up, but after the third apricot fell off the tree onto my forehead I was fairly ready to hit the rode. I wrote Carrie a note on the back of a receipt and left it on her porch since she had gone to a cookout in Durango the night before.


I rode out of Dolores towards the Anasazi cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde. Sunflowers flanked the road miles deep almost all the way into Utah, and far off solitary peaks dotted the horizon. Of course I stopped to take a picture at my first state crossing. It had taken me too many days to make it through Colorado and I was hoping to make it through Utah in a little more of a hurry, and considering I was feeling much more comfortable on the bike I though it was very doable.


Soon after the border I decided to reward myself with some Charleston Chews, a quart of iced tea, a half gallon of milk, and several pounds of fried chicken. Although this was a delicious decision it wasn’t the best for on bike performance, so I rolled fairly slowly into Monticello. I stopped in a beautifully green park, a rare sight in Utah, and laid in the grass and relaxed until I realized I was in the shadow of a library. I ran inside and checked my email for the first time in a week then hopped on the bike to book it to Blanding.


I made absolutely great time to Blanding and probably averaged 38 mph over that hour and a half, but once I got to Blanding I was faced with an 80 mile stretch of absolutely nothing. More out of fear for this uncertainty of what laid ahead than fatigue or lack of time, I stopped early for the night and headed to a Subway to get a bite to eat. After a fairly low key day the lameness continued while the subway employees rewrote their supervisor’s rules using a Book of Mormon that one of them just happened to be carrying in her purse……. Welcome to Utah!



I waited till dark so I could set up my tent under the cover of darkness in the town park, but a policeman who looked incredibly like Barney Fife had stationed himself in the park and obviously wasn’t going to permit my squatting. I rode the town for a bit looking for an alternate place to set up camp but I decided to stay in the Four Corners Inn and get some rest before I peddled myself across blank stretches of dessert for the next ten days.

Day: 83.25 mi

Total: 482.25 mi

Elev. Climbed: 600ft

Elev. Difference: -800 ft

Elev. Peak: 7300 ft

Day 5: August 15th, 2008 – “You should have been riding a tandem”

Telluride --> Dolores

Waking up in a soft bed in a nice hotel in ultra trendy Telluride just didn’t feel right, but I decided to go along with it and visit one of the town’s chic coffee shops for breakfast. After glancing in a few such shops I realized I would rather have a sweet bun at a 7 Eleven with ‘my people’, so I shot the bull with some dirt bikers outside the gas station as we munched on various Little Debbie products and guzzled dollar coffee. I realized I had become warped when, after I saw the bikers and thought they were nuts, they told me I had lost it… All through Colorado people were generally impressed with the distance I had to come rather than the hundreds of miles I had already traveled. I couldn’t wait to have folks start being less impressed with the road ahead of me!

After ‘breakfast’, I headed over Lizard Head Pass, elevation 10,222 ft. A van of old Texans was leapfrogging me the whole time. They’d get out at an overlook and I’d stop to take a picture and we’d chat for a minute or so then repeat the same procedure. After a while they just started yelling “Frisco or bust!” at me out their window, and eventually I just started yelling back, “Bust!!!” I also ran into a Chemist named Gene at the top of the pass. We talked about how the sciences shape the minds of their students and how that can develop into various life perspectives, and then on that note I rolled away down the pass.

As I descended I could see the red rocks of the Mesa Verde region slowly appearing. There was a strong wind blowing up slope that vastly limited what could have been a day of great distance. After Passing through Stoner I was fairly frustrated by the wind but I still managed to make it into Dolores. I stopped at a closed down gas station to examine my maps and see if I wanted to go any further that day. Two cowboys, Wes and Jameson, came by to question me about my travels. They were on their way to a bar and invited me to join, but I told them I wasn’t sure if I was staying in town. Then a young lady named Carrie came along and asked me if I was staying in Dolores that night. She had recently toured through Canada so she knew exactly how much a simile and a welcoming word or two meant. She invited me to stay in the hammock in her yard underneath an apricot tree, and I gladly accepted.

After a set up camp under the Apricot tree I headed back to meet Wes and Jameson at The Hollywood Bar. The place was an authentic old West saloon, complete with town drunks, Mr. CASH, and a boots and hat dress code. An elderly Native American woman and her daughter were milling around the bar with a rack of dream catchers and jewelry they were peddling to the fifteen or so ageing bar patrons slumped over their beers. I ordered the ribs on Wes’s recommendation, and while I ate I watched the Titans Preseason game against Oakland, which we took with a last minute field goal. After I had finished my meal I sat at the bar with Wes, the fully decked out old cowboy with a tattered Stetson, boots, and a cane, and chewed the fat until a group of young attractive women unexpectedly walked in, to which Wes said, “You should have been riding a tandem!” I still have no idea why Maria and the rest of those girls decided to come to that remote old bar in Dolores but I was pretty happy about it and after a few beers I thought about inviting the whole bar back to my apricot tree and hammock to get down.

Day: 67.6mi

Total: 399 mi

Elev. Climbed: 1400 ft

Elev. Difference: -2200 ft

Elev. Peak: 10222 ft

Day 4: August 14th, 2008 -- To-Hell-You-Ride

Black Canyon N.P. --> Telluride

I woke to a full set of stars that twinkled incessantly. At first I thought it was charming, until I realized they only twinkled because of the crust of dust around my eyes was blurring my vision...…some type of bathing needed to happen soon! I packed my sleeping bag in a hurry because I wanted to see the Canyon I had worked so hard for. I cruised an extra mile or two on the rim of the Black Canyon. Rudyard Kipling wrote of the Canyon;

" We entered a gorge, remote from the sun, where the rocks were two thousand feet sheer, and where a rock splintered river roared and howled ten feet below a track which seemed to have been built on the simple principle of dropping miscellaneous dirt into the river and pinning a few rails a-top. There was a glory and a wonder and a mystery about the mad ride, which I felt keenly…until I had to offer prayers for the safety of the train."

I rode along the Canyon rim for a few miles and stopped at Cathedral Rock to take some pictures and enjoy the view. On my way back to Audi I passed two leather clad old motorcyclists, who were fully aware of the climb up to the Canyon. Their greeting and goodbye was short; “looks like you forgot your motor on that thing.”

I rolled down the 12 miles to Montrose in a flash and stopped at yet another greasy mom and pop place for breakfast. The ‘truckers breakfast’ was by far the best meal I had eaten since leaving home, complete with large slices of fried cow and pig, various forms of potato, towering stacks of NAMF style pancakes, and more eggs than an Easter basket. After this monumental meal I headed to Ridgeway on what became an unusually trying ride. The compounded fatigue of 4 days was catching up with me, and I by the time I passed a large powder blue reservoir along the Uncompahgre River, I was ready to ditch my bike and hop in, at least that was the plan until I saw, “NO Swim! Stay ON BIKE.” Scrawled in spray-paint on the shoulder. So I pushed on to Ridgeway where I stopped in the pleasant valley at the foot of the San Juans to recoup.

In Ridgeway I was feeling pretty beat, I was barley thru half of the day and I had two major climbs ahead of me. I felt like I couldn’t keep pushing. So I called around to see who wanted to shoot the shit with me on the phone while I drank my Large $2.99 Coffee Icee. I had a great chat with Mom about the beginning of her school year and what I thought about my travels. After an hour or so I was good to go. Sometimes family and friends are simply the ace up your sleeve.

I tore through the next two huge climbs over Dallas Divide and managed not to get off my bike once for the entire 3500 foot climb. I was really pushing the limits of my climbing skills but had a new energy for it since Ridgeway. At one point I was on a high of some sort, as I started to feel like I could climb all day without rest. I knew I had truly reached a new level of what I was capable of, at least on a bike. I felt a serious sense of pride and at the same moment, on the road again in spray-paint, the letters read, “Lest we know what the day might bring.” And you know, I really connected with that. Only a few hours before I was sinking pretty hard, but there I was kicking ass on this mountain in a way I have never trained to do. I figured I never really can know what the day may hold, on a bike on a lonely highway or home amidst comfort in Nashville or Athens, but I should sure as hell get way out of my comfort zone and see what’s out there.

A good friend suggested I read some Kahlil Gibran so I brought his book, The Prophet, along for the ride. We had discussed this point before but once again I was finding new meaning to it far from home. Gibran says this of comfort;

“ …have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then the master…. Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.”

For all of those who wondered exactly what my motivation for this trip may have been, Gibran couldn’t have put it any better.

I have read about a habit of the bull in traditional Spanish bullfighting that mirrors this concept of comfort. Within the ring the bull has a spot called a ‘querencia’. The ‘querencia’ is his place of comfort and ‘safety’ to which he returns more frequently as he feels increasingly threatened. Ironically it is the predictability of his return to this spot of ‘safety’ that ultimately allows the matador to kill him. Now I’m not saying this is good reason to abandon your home and drift aimlessly throughout the world, but it is something to consider from time to time throughout life. Have I become too comfortable and lost sight of goals, hopes, dreams, and the true global reality, (that most of the world doesn’t even enjoy a fraction of the privilege and opportunity that I hold cheap)……?

I guess this answers the question about what I was thinking while I was riding…. I also thought plenty about Ice Cream.

SO…. after coming off the pass and through some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen, I ran into a mysterious hitchhiker I call Handlebars due to his sweet facial hair style. Handlebars told me the lay of the land for the next 20 or 30 miles and suggested I stay in Telluride (To-Hell-You-Ride).Cool fact: Telluride is referenced as ‘Hell’ due to the serious number of brothels and bars the town once held. It sounded like my sort of place so I took the 4 mile dead end detour and found the cheapest Inn in town (Sadly, unlike the brothel days, nothing is cheap in town anymore). Ivanka my Ukrainian Innkeeper showed me to my room where I took my first shower in four days (not including the Sprinkiller). I went to the brown dog for a few beers, a Hawaiian, and a viewing of a good ole Michael Phelps asswooping. 88.4 miles; not bad for all the climbing but a great day all together!

Total: 332.4 mi

Elev. Climbed: 5100 ft

Elev. Difference: 3500 ft

Elev. Peak: 9300 ft

Day 3: August 13th, 2008 – Audi is born on the Blue Mesa

Monarch Pass --> Black Canyon National Park (12 miles east of Montrose)


The night atop Monarch had been extremely cold. I woke several times to restart the fire and massage my feet back to a temperature I could bear. Since I rolled into camp around dusk the night before, I hadn’t been able to see the beauty that surrounded me while I slept. The last few hundred feet to the top were a welcome climb considering I knew I had a morning full of coasting awaiting me on the other side. Of course I stopped to take a picture with the Continental Divide sign at the summit then I headed down the backside towards Gunnison at a nice 45 MPH coast.


In Gunnison, I made a few stops at the Sonic, the Subway, and the local bike shop to top off the tire with a little O2, and then started the Blue Mesa Reservoir…. Life really comes full circle. When I came to Colorado for the first time when I was ten, my folks drove Amir and I along the same highway I was now traveling. Along the Blue Mesa I vaguely remember a large cycling race along the shores of the lake. Surely neither my parents nor I imagined that I would return to that place in such a fashion.


The Reservoir was beautiful and the volcanic spires that surrounded the western end were surreal. On the climb out of the res basin one of my panniers (saddlebags) was tossed from the bike. I stopped to reattach it and found that it was sitting atop a set of Audi rings that had been ripped from the car as it struck a close by guard rail. I was tired from the climb and needed some comic relief so I strapped the Audi symbol to the back of my bike. After three years of loyal service my Specialized Allez finally had a name, Audi was born.

I climbed for the next few hours over Cerro Summit and down towards the Black Canyon. About seven miles before Montrose I came to the junction that lead to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (Cool Fact: Gunnison was a surveyor that, in the early 1800s, was riddled by arrows and dismembered by Indians only weeks after passing through the region that now shares his name). Being the park junkie that I am I couldn’t resist the 5 mile detour to the park containing America’s steepest canyon. I figured it would be a downhill to the canyon….. Very wrong! The five mile stretch had roughly a 14% grade, but also a beautiful view of the San Juan Mountains where I would spend my next two days. I arrived at late dusk, pulled into the campground, took off my shoes, unfurled my sleeping bag, and passed out 30 seconds after getting off the saddle. 111.4 miles, my first hundred mile day had taken its toll.

Day: 111.4 mi

Total: 244.22 mi

Elev. Climbed: 2000 ft

Elev. Difference: -5100 ft

Elev. Peak: 8500 ft