Saturday is now winding up. It was long and hot and a large majority of the group had success today. Some fools (a bunch of 19 and 20 year olds who went out for pancake breakfast in Ogden at 7 am) were on the road at quarter past 5 this morning. They pretty much had to start biking with winter parkas because it gets cold in the desert overnight, then carry the jacket for the rest of the day. Each to their own I suppose. I rolled out of camp soon after 7 am anticipating that Nathan and Tyler would catch me in about half an hour (they were leaving 5 minutes after me) and I would appreciate the longer warm up. I ended up riding the first hour alone and still no sign of the boys. By that time we were entering the town/city of Bountiful. The road was tree lined and in the shade, the hills were gentle and rolling and the pavement was excellent. With beautiful roads like this it’s no surprise that there were locals out for a Saturday morning ride as well. I opted to ride with some of them for a few stretches. It meant that I was cruising along at 25 mph (40 kph) for a solid 45 minutes and really meant that Tyler an Nathan were never going to catch me. On the flip side it did mean that I did get to have a few more fantastic conversations about the tour, the local cycling scene, my church, poverty and the like. That was far better than finding those guys anyways. It was fantastic and by the time I had reached the outskirts of Salt Lake City I decided to just finish with the push into town and forget about joining up with any other tour-cyclists for that portion of the ride. I plugged a song in my head an hammered down for another 45 minutes, reaching SLC with an average speed of 29 kph.

Great is the Lord and worthy of glory,

Great is the Lord and worthy of praise,

Great is the Lord,

Now lift up your voice,

Now lift up your voice;

Great is the Lord!

Great is the Lord,

He is holy and just,

by His power we trust in His love.

Great is the Lord,

He is faithful and true,

by His mercy He proves He is love.

Upon entering SLC my route was blocked by a parked train and a friendly Harley Davidson rider informed me it could be parked for anywhere between 5 minutes and an hour, I opted for the detour and by the time I was back en-route there were other cyclists who had opted to wait who were already ahead. So be it, I had guaranteed that my day would exceed 100 miles now an I didn’t have to do the extra mileage on any big climbs.

First CRC in SLC hosted us for refreshments in their basement before the climb began as we headed out of town, I didn’t get the order of my stops in town correct and went there first, I should have made my stop at the Mormon Temple first and the church second, it would have been shorter. Oh well, more mileage again. The stop at the temple was kinda what I expected, some really well kept gardens, some fancy buildings and plenty of tourists walking around with cameras around their necks wondering why there was some dude decked out in spandex walking around. It would have been better I’m sure if I’d gone on a tour but the aforementioned spandex and more than 5000 feet of climbing still to do that day dissuaded me from that notion.

I returned to the church, now guaranteeing myself more than 170 kms on the day and found Nathan, Eritia and Hilena just getting set to roll out, I joined them for the climb which really just meant we left at the same time and agreed to meet up at the top. Hill climbing is really and every-man-for-himself kind of activity and by the time we had left the city we were already spread out over a couple hundred meters. Nathan is only 160 lbs and no-one could stick with him up the hill.

The first climb was called emigrations canyon and was more of a steep valley than a canyon but that was OK with me, it gave us the ability to see where we were going which is something I am more and more realizing that I appreciate. Lots of the other cyclists say how much they hate it when they can see how far they’ve got to go, I think it’s the best thing we could get. The grade was very manageable and we had patches of share and the ends of the driveways to the half million dollar homes along the road. It was very obvious that we were entering a rather affluent part of the country. Besides Bountiful earlier that morning and a couple of rich suburbs of Boise we really haven’t seen a whole ton of wealth this summer. When we talk about poverty so many times each day the wealth of an area is something you quickly notice from the seat of your bike. We make jokes sometimes about our campsite looking like as refugee camp with 150 people lined up bowls in hand to get dinner. Really though more often than not this week our patch of town has been the wealthiest, thousand dollar bikes in the fields and hundred dollar tents set up amongst them, often clotheslines can be seen with more than a thousand dollars worth of cycling shorts hanging on them (that’s only 10 pairs of bibs if you were wondering how long these clotheslines are). Really though, we’ve spent a lot of time being wealthy in surroundings that are less so. Today was the polar opposite.

Oh yeah, Emigrations Canyon, that’s where I was at. This road was also chock full of recreational cyclists flying up and down the hill, well mostly flying down the hill because they’re locals and are smart enough to climb up in the morning and come downhill in the afternoon when it’s getting hot. There must be a huge shop in town that sells only specialized because it was certainly the majority brand out there. There were a couple really sweet bikes spotted too, people riding HED Jet wheels (90 mm I think) on a 2007 Felt DA for a quick jaunt up the mountain, again the wealth of the area was apparent.

The top of the pass greeted us with the other half of FCRC’s refreshments for the day, gatorade, powerbars and water. The latest joke is that Canadians should spell it Gatourade, I don’t think it’ll catch on though. We then took off down the other side of the pass and hooked up with the interstate. It was freshly paved and black as night. The heat was rising off of it and it was steeper than the first pass. This valley (Parley’s Canyon) was broader and had less shade, well no shade at all, and the sun was even higher in the sky. Within about 10 minutes of getting on that road I had sweat beading on my skin and actually flowing down my arms and legs. All of the sunscreen from my face ended up in my eyes and I started to loose a good amount of water due to tears as well. the three bottles I had filled up were empty in 45 minutes, luckily that meant I was also at the summit; six thousand seven hundred feet or something like that, the highest we’d been on the tour to date.

The roll down from the summit to the campground wasn’t quite just a roll down. We still had plenty of climbing to do but it was all quite a bit tamer. We caught up with Hans Doef and Laura Holtrop in Park city and rode with them for the remainder of the day. Just as we left town and were pretty sure it was a 3 km coast down to the state park we saw our last nemesis for the day, a 5 % mile long hill. The comments were of the flavour that shall not be repeated here.

Camp here is pretty cool, we’ve got a picnic shelter for eating next to the mobile kitchen and our tents are in the walk-in campsites across a bay in the lake. We spent a bit of time down by the lake reading in the shade this afternoon, more laziness is planned for tomorrow and there is a church service planned for the park tomorrow evening. Monday we get started with the Rockies (we crossed Wasatch today they’re apparently independent from the Rockies) and another fantastic week will begin. It’s hard to believe we’re already three weeks in, this one seemed to go fast. Each day that you spend more than 6 hours on the bike there isn’t a whole lot of other stuff that gets accomplished, it means that the days really go by quick.

The night before the big day (155 kms and 5700 feet of climbing) I decided to film camp.

Today was a hot one, 105 kms and maybe a grand total of 500 meters of it was in the shade. Days like today it’s tough to drink enough water because it gets hot so fast. I drank 6 bottles of water so hot that it could have been tea today. The ride started with a few hills which occurred before the heat hit but after the 2 hour mark we were out on the salt flats of Utah and the sun was out in full force. I had to drop off Reuben and Nick who I had joined for about 45 minutes and hooked on with a paceline traveling at 28 kph into the headwind. Steph, Julia, Julie and Katrina, I think it was the slowest I’d been traveling on flat ground thus far this summer but I was really working to keep the pace. They were mean to me but I wasn’t about to tackle the headwind alone so I put up with their punishment and evilness for about an hour. That got me to town and I left the bullies in favour of solitude.

After an ice cream stop it was just a short roll down the final hill to the state park that we’re staying at this evening. There’s a lake here and pretty much everyone has been in for a swim already. We had this great idea to swim out to the island which didn’t seem very far away when we started but 500 yards of head up front crawl was tougher than I thought. The backs of my shoulders have done a grand total of zero work in the last three weeks apparently and weren’t afraid to notify me of the fact.

Discussion around camp has covered a few topics in the past 24 hours. Some guys hit up a local pizza eating challenge with 80 kilometers left to ride yesterday. Two successfully consumed the 15 inch pizza and liter of pop within the hour. The porta-potty that trails behind one of the support vehicles came loose from the hitch while on the road yesterday, no spilling occurred, all the weight is at the bottom and it never tipped. Snowville had a municipal ban on serving alcohol (we’re in Utah remember!). The main topic of discussion however, has been Saturday’s ride into Park City. We’re set to ride 100 kms south to Salt Lake city and check out the temple, we’ll then turn left and head uphill for another 50 kms and gain more elevation than we have yet in one day. It is slightly longer than we’ve ever done before. It’s slightly more climbing than we’ve ever done before. The temperature is forecast to be slightly hotter than we’ve ever had to ride in before. This ride will make this week slightly longer than any of our previous weeks. It should be quite the day! I have a feeling that some people will decide that this means they need to wake up slightly earlier than they ever have before.

Note: The youtube video that didn’t work yesterday works today. I also am reported to have made a guest appearance on Bill Wybenga’s Blog

Dave Raakman is writing a newsletter on behalf of the SeatoSea Bike tour each week, and week #3 would be one of those weeks… Here’s the link!.

I set out today at the same time as Johnny Pierce, Marc VanOtteren (Michigan) and John Vanderveen (AB) around 7:30. We took our time across the first 20 flat kilometers and when another crew including Manley Barda, Tyler Buitenwerf and Nathan Beach cruised by and invited me to join them I stepped up the pace. They however stopped to wait at the first water stop halfway up the hill and I had no interest in waiting with them so kept pedalling and completed the hill on my own. I caught Eritia and Brian Garrit at the top of the climb and descended with them. Brian and I headed into Malta together, he let me know that he’s got some of his family reading my blog, Hi!

After chatting with some locals in Malta I picked up a cup of coffee for 50 cents at the gas station and then headed south. There was a huge pack of riders all pointed in the same direction, the largest I’ve seen yet on the tour. Video of the momentous occasion below:

After topping off water bottles the pack broke into half dozen subsets and Eritia and myself were both feeling rather fresh and didn’t bother trying to join any pace-lines. We ascended the next climb which was rather gradual but just seemed to go on and on forever. The headwind picked up towards the end and we were really working to hold 25 kph. The road was dead straight for many miles at a time and we had a heat mirage to watch as we rode.

After reaching the summit at around 100 kms we entered Utah. That’s a first time for me. To be honest it looks a lot like southern Idaho so far. Beautiful plains of sagebrush stretching off into the distance and medium sized mountains with patches of trees off in the distance. I quite enjoyed the scenery today, some are getting sick of the desert, I’m still happy to continue enjoying it at least until Saturday when we start into the Rockies.

We peeled off down the gentle decline for the next 25 miles into Snowville and I held a pace of 38 kph through a stiff sidewind. Eritia parked right in the draft over my left shoulder and for the next hour we watched as our destination grew slowly closer and closer. It’s not often that you can see where you’re going for a whole hour at once. I enjoyed it.

We had beat the gear truck into camp and arrived 2 minutes after Hans Doef and Aaron Carpenter (who we could see for about half an hour but couldn’t seem to catch. We pulled into the local cafe, dumped half a salt shaker into our glasses of water and ordered some fries. When the truck showed up we unloaded and got to work setting up. The shower we built here consists of one of our dinner tents shrouded in a tarp with a hose hanging from the roof. The temperature of the hose water is manageable but still garnered a few “Oh shit this is cold” comments from some of the more elderly men. Considering the fact that early on this summer some of the women were commenting on the “learning curve” about the communal showers in the change rooms today’s takes the cake. A dozen naked guys lined up in a hundred square foot tent to take their turn under the hose moves beyond learning to just plain laughing. I think we’ll only have potentially two more such shower situations.

The forecast said 94 degrees, and when you’re not travelling very quickly the breeze doesn’t cool you down as nicely as when you’re cruising along. I could really tell the difference between our pace of 38 kph and the 25 we did while taking in a bit of food. I can imagine that the 15-20 kph pace would be sweltering. I’ve overheard some comments while sitting here and typing that the support crew has had a rough day. That basically means that some of the weaker riders are having a tough go of it today and many are still out there as of 5pm while I’m writing this. Others have arrived and are pretty beat from the day. Len Riersma (Ohio) was rather tired at the end of the day and didn’t make it very far past setting up his tent before crashing, his feet still protruding from the tent. (photo below)

P.S. Thanks for the notes of encouragement via email.They’re… well… encouraging… you can also say hi by posting a comment on the website here.

Yesterday I suggested that people were learning how to sleep in. Well that went out the window this morning as rustling began at ten to five in the morning. I crawled out of my tent after pretending to sleep for another 80 minutes at 6:10 and had pretty much missed out on breakfast. Probably 100 people had already been through the breakfast line which was supposed to begin at 6:00 am. I guess the early risers have figured out how to get breakfast themselves from the pantry.

I was feeling physically energetic and charged up but mentally blasted flat as a pancake this morning and figured I’d ride by myself for the morning and try and group up at lunch time. I hopped aboard my bike around 7:20 am and rolled out of town. The wind wasn’t really for me or against me, the pavement was acceptable and the grade was ever so slightly downhill, a few hundred feet over the first 40 kilometers. After leaving town I held the pace around 38 to 40 kph for the first hour and rolled up to a local dairy farm who was hosting us for milk and a tour having turned the “fresh legs” into burning ones and turned the “mentally drained” in the other direction. God watches out for us!

The stop at the dairy was followed up by a stop at the Reformed Church of America in Twin Falls Idaho. They had subs, ice cream, more milk and watermelon. We then headed out to check out Shoshone Falls which is a pretty impressive (photos in Week 3 gallery) and then wrapped up the final 50 kilometers of the day. Julie told us that there were 10 or 15 people still ahead of us when we stopped to fill water bottles. That certainly wasn’t the case though as afer we passed 6 people and kept pressing onwards we arrived at camp before anyone else. That was a first for me. It’s been within a couple minutes before but never actually first arrivals. Also with me for the last stretch were Eritia and Marc VanOtternen (Michigan).

Wednesday nights around camp are highlighted by a vespers service put on by Hans Doef. They’re quickly becoming a highlight of the week, a few songs,a bit of scripture, some meditations on the theme of the evening and a bit of prayer. This evening the reading was from Isaiah 35 and couldn’t have been more appropriate as we pondered the parts of the creation that we’re traveling through.

The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the LORD,
the splendor of our God.

We’re in the middle of a desert this week and without the irrigation we see in the fields every day all there would be is sagebrush. It’s a huge wonder that the desert blooms with the addition of a bit of water (enough so that McCain has a french fry factory here to process all those Idaho Potatoes). Henry drew the parallel that we’re a pretty sorry bunch of dead grass and sagebrush as well without the addition of a little purpose in our lives, that we don’t have anything more going for us than mere desert without Jesus Christ.

I began recruiting for the first “Josh Hosted” (as opposed to the other two “Reuben hosted” detours) detour of the summer last Wednesday and at some points during the weekend it seemed as though there was potential for almost 30 people to ride in it. Detouring from the prescribed route took a bit of a hit last week when the 16 extra kilometers as promised ballooned into 105 extra kilometers under Reuben’s guidance. We left camp this morning with 9 individuals around 7:30. Myself, Jon Elzinga, John Vanderveen, Marty Minnesma, Alex VanGeest (Alberta), Art Smit (Ontario), Tyler Buitenwerf (Michigan) and Ryan Bruxvoort (Indiana). Numbers were down partly because of the heat, the length and difficulty of rides coming up later this week and the potential for the trip to turn into a bit longer than promised.

The cause of the detour was Bruneau Dunes State Park which is home to North America’s Largest freestanding Dunes. What exactly that means is up for debate as I’ve been told numerous times that “The dunes from my state are the biggest in the country” and none of those riders are from Idaho. So, Michigan, Indiana and Colorado all have the biggest dunes in the United states and the exact means by which you measure them to come out the winner is prescribed differently in each state. I’m sure there most be 50 cases of “the largest dunes in america” each with a different means by which to measure. In any case, we visited the biggest dunes between Mountain Home and Gooding Idaho today. They were indeed impressive and after climbing one of the smallest ones we were completely beat and out of breath. Dune climbing is a full body workout in case you aren’t aware. Pictures of the adventure are pending as my batteries died after taking the group shot and I don’t have very much photographic evidence of our dune jumping and running.

After stocking up on water we headed back towards the route hoping to catch up with the sweep team so that our water could be provided by SeatoSea support people. We did indeed succeed in that task but once we were back on route our desire to keep up the pace died quickly and we dawdled for the rest of the day taking naps, soaking feet in irrigation ditches, climbing up on top of the longneck dinosaur in Bliss and eating food. Oh did I say we ate a huge amount of food today? When it’s warm I typically don’t feel like eating very much but I did exactly the opposite today, consuming nearly 2500 calories while on the ride. The internal cooling mechanism probably takes more fuel than I had guessed because other than the hour to the dunes (average speed 36 kph) and the hour leaving the dunes to get back on course (average speed 31 kph with big headwind) we really weren’t putting out much power.

I surpassed the 1000 mile mark for this trip today around 3:05 pm.

And another interesting note: Nick Ellens clocked 96 kph today while drafting a 10 passenger van down a hill. It doesn’t count as breaking John’’s record of 84 because he had motor assistance but it is scary fast! I got 74 today while sitting up but had my bag on the front which makes me prone to speed wobbling so I acted as a big draft for the other guys to rip down the edge of the valley towards the snake river.

We’ve had a couple of hot days after leaving Boise. Monday I rode with the sweep team meaning that we had to take up the back of the pack and ensure that everyone makes their way to camp in one piece. Our morning began at quarter to six. Since the time change from pacific to mountain time there have been a few more people keeping somewhat respectable hours and breakfast is actually starting around 6 am instead of gettting pressured into beginning earlier and earlier each morning as it was for some of the first two weeks. After taking down camp and loading the trucks with all of the communal gear and each rider’s personal gear we rolled across the street to Starbucks and gave everyone another half our of head start so that everyone would be at least a full hour down the road before we got out of camp.

Well “a good hour out of camp” apparently doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of catching up with the last rider within the next hour. That would be the story of the day but it wasn’t all bad. We parked under an interstate overpass in the shade to give another 45 minutes of head start to the trailing riders and proceeded to catch up in the next 11 miles. We then took an hour for lunch in an air conditioned truck stop and caught up by the next patch of shade. From there on in to town the 45 minute head start was capable of holding out and there was not a fourth catch of the day. Spending 7 hours out on the road really takes a lot out of you. Even though it’s not the same as covering 200 kilometers in 7 hours the drain from being out in the sun that long is more comparable to the 200 kilometer ride than it is to the 100 kilometer ride if it were done at my pace. It’s the riders who spend all day every day out on the road like that who are putting out the most effort this summer. Those of us who are blasting along and doing detours a few times a week hardly have anything to really measure that against except for these days when riding sweep.

I did tack on a run Monday evening having not been able to run Sunday night (they closed the showers at 8 pm and I wasn’t about to try and sleep sweaty in these temperatures) but kept it to a half hour as a detour was anticipated for Tuesday.

A quick update on stats thus far:

I’ve put in 1378 kilometers in the past two weeks. A total seat time of 50 hours and 17 minutes, which puts my average speed around 27.5 kilometers per hour.

The celebration service in a downtown park this morning in Boise was lots of fun. The message was one about peace, which if you’re reading the Shifting Gears devotional is the theme for the upcoming week. A couple items for prayer:

• Strength: This week will likely be the most challenging yet. We’re still heading through the desert and temperatures are hot. The daily rides are also longer (averaging 120 kms per day this week) and as a result most riders will not be able to finish before the heat of the day as we were able to do this past week.
• Patience: Not only for long rides and long hills, and maybe Saturday’s challenging ride will require that… Actually though, as the daily riding is turning more and more into a routine the less natural it is to make concessions for this and that. A spirit of camaraderie among the cyclists depends heavily on our intention to do so.

We’re planning another detour on Tuesday to visit some sand dunes that are a bit off course, I’ll of course keep you posted on how that materializes. I hope to write again soon but this is all for now.

The tour organizers are putting out a weekly newsletter. I’ll be posting links each week… Here is number 3.