“Pleasant” is not the usual word I have used to describe previous bike rides in this blog, but our recent ride in Utah was very pleasant. Organized by Jason, our niece/nephew in law, who plotted the course, found the hotels to stay in and chose restaurants to eat in. The four bike riders had wonderful SAG support, AKA “The Spouses” or Don and Kathy.

After five days of riding, Kathy and I split off to visit National Parks while the rest of the family returned to Salt Lake City. More on those National Parks in a future post, but first, the bike ride:

Fish Lake to Capital Reef Lodge, near Torrey, Utah. When I finished riding the 40-mile route, I looked at my odometer to see how long it took: 2.5 hours. Impossible. With my usual pace – even with my electric-assisted bike – of 10 miles per hour, this could not be. But lots of long, downhill coasting shortened today’s ride. My sister, who has now ridden in all lower 48 states and is migrating to Canada routes this summer, called it “the fastest I have ever ridden 40 miles.” Three of us have electric assisted bikes, and Anne, our niece, has no need for any assistance to stay up front of the pack.

A quick ride tomorrow? Probably not. Jason warned us that we climb 3700 feet before the downhill into Boulder, Utah.

Torrey to Boulder, Utah: Jason was right. It was a day of climbing, up to 9,600 feet of elevation, and Jason forgot to supply oxygen bottles. But soon after that, a downhill stretch of almost 10 miles. My odometer does not record the top speed reached during a ride, a big disappointment on a day like this one where I may have broken the sound barrier. Six and eight percent downhill grades will do that.

On the long, slow way up, I kicked my electric assist up to “turbo,” the top end assistance (eco, touring and turbo) on one of the steeper hills, my first venture into turbo flight. I pedaled a few times, and the assist stopped assisting. Off my bike to investigate when engineer Anne, who the night before had passed a test online to earn her Arctic engineering credentials for Alaska, came by and prescribed the highly technical way to repair the assist: Turn it off. Turn it on. Off. On. Then it worked fine. A mystery to me for why it stopped. Shorted out? Overheated? A climb to far for Reddy Kilowatt? Thank heavens he came back to help as it would have been an unpleasant hill for me.

(To be continued)