Saturday, July 28th: OGDEN, UT or… No granny and no stopping!

Today my human must climb Sardine Pass – I wonder how yesterday’s ride is treating her legs. This morning the TV is showing Olympic road cycling. It will be hard to get her away from the screen. While she gets the Sweet Machine all ready she watches how the British team works together to get Cavendish to the arrival line. What about the Belgians – she asks me. Well – the only name I’ve heard so far is Gilbert – who tried to escape from the peloton – but has been captured again. Come on boss, we need to get going! We have a long day ahead! So without knowing who won the race we started our daily ride again. A Gatorade stop before the climb and off we go.

 I believe my human has all the adrenaline the cyclists oversea in London have. She just keeps on going. There is no stopping her on the climb. A cyclist without load joins her for a while – offering her a shower at his house (that’s a no – no, boss!!! You know the saying: save water – shower together!) On top of the pass my human does a timid victory dance – not wanting to distract the car drivers. The new road surface on the downhill into Brigham City is wonderful. 

Here, we used to navigate between potholes and debris on the road. Now, the surface is smooth and the noise is reduced! Wonderful for my ears! Finally we reach Brigham City: all that we have climbed from Missoula to Yellowstone is now lost again. Know that we will have to climb all the way to 9000 ft again the next week, if we want to reach Fish Lake. Now my human needs to be clever and stop for water at every chance she gets – the first one being the Burger drive in. A float cools her inside organs while I enjoy sitting in the shade. The traffic is not too bad on this Saturday afternoon, which is good since the shoulder on this stretch of US 89 does not exist.

 We pass Willard bay and also our shower opportunity. At Far West (there is a town with that name) the gas station is a must stop. Here my woman parks Sweet Machine under  a tree in shade while we get to go into the air-conditioned building. It does feel nice to cool down a bit! Gradually we see more houses and stores and the traffic picks up as we get closer to Ogden. We will sleep at a new location and it is a bit of a search before we get there – with our dinner in our bags.