July 20th, 2024
Grand Junction, CO to Moab, UT
106/127 miles, 2,500 ft elevation gain
I’ve been living through a lot of bests lately. Best ride of the summer. Best coffee of my life. Best hummus bagel. You name it.
Today I rode through what, by far, I consider the most extraordinary place on Earth. Best road. Best landscape. Worst heat exhaustion though.
We started the day off in Grand Junction, CO where Rebecca (who was on Driver Duty for the day) cooked delicious scrambled eggs to put in our bagels. I then headed off bright and early (code for before 8 A.M. – Spokes is no longer on the grind guys) to Fruita, our designated coffee town of the day. The route there was a beautifully paved bike path that followed the Colorado river – it was my first best of the day: best bike path on Spokes so far.
In Fruita, I stopped at a coffee shop and ordered the usual: a 12 oz. iced latte with almond milk. It was not the best I’ve had but the town was the most bike friendly we’d ever stopped in which compensated for it and made this stop a successful coffee stop. I also called my mom, which I’d been looking forward to doing for the first 15 miles. That call definitely put a smile on my face for the next 15 :) Other team members were not having the best day though: JD & Hank had started the route in the wrong direction and their bike GPS had misleadingly led them on a 20 miles detour and Sophia realized she had a flat before even leaving the house.
We then continued out of Fruita onto a blissfully empty road in the middle of sand dunes, where I had my best bike dance-off. I regularly dance on my bike while blasting club hits. According to the team, I listen to outdated club songs, but I don't care—I’m having fun. There was no sign indicating our entrance into Utah, but the border was easily identifiable: the paved road turned to gravel. We had arrived in the land of flats. Within 15 minutes, JD, Hank, and Jess had called Rebecca because they had flats.
After fixing all these flats, we headed to Cisco—a town where Thelma and Louise was partially filmed. Varsha fixed her flat (ik another one??) while we stopped to wait for the van. We all explored the town’s attractions—a car half buried and alien statues, and talked to one of the four permanent residents of Cisco.
After lunch (either bagels or burritos), we started back on the 128, which I soon discovered was the single most beautiful place I’d ever been in my life. We drifted through canyons, following the Colorado River. I did have to push through the last 10 miles because of heat exhaustion but stopping at JJ's Mercantile for sweet tea made everything better and allowed me to still enjoy the end of the ride.
We arrived in Moab where we cooked Mango Curry (yummy) and cleaned the kitchen box (less yummy - thanks Jess). After what had been the absolute most beautiful ride of the summer I ended up falling asleep on the ground, my thoughts drifting back to the canyons.
Hope that this was the best blog (jk),
Cleo
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