Day 10

The long and winding road to Blanding
We knew that this was going to be a tough ride, and one that we might not make. So we decided to do the leap frog relay – this is where we have two riders on the road and the others drive 10 miles. After 40 minutes the next two riders take off from the van while the van waits for the two to arrive. Once they have arrived the van takes off for 10 miles and waits for the second two riders. The wait is 35 minutes this time, and the final two riders take off. The van keeps leap frogging the riders and this way we can keep going, eat while traveling, and keep up the pace. Felipe did a 36 minute 10 mile ride, which was not all downhill! At the same time we were all doing somewhere between 12 – 15 miles per hour. It also meant that we got a 20 mile break before riding again. The route was pretty flat too which helped.
Before we set out Angel shows us his wonderful leg tan! He’s definitely after a tan. So out through the Capital Reef National Park, still pretty awesome scenery, and on into the desert, literally. Our leap frog relay seemed to work and we were doing some good mileage. The scenery was desert but still with the canyons which are very impressive. ON one of my rides with Angel (I was tagged with him), we literally rode all the way though a canyon with a river running on the side of the road. Angel wanted to go and sit in it for a while, but no we had to keep up the pace, so on we went. Jack did stints on his own as one of Raymond’s spokes had broken. Felipe and Andriy were THE men, they really helped us keep a very good pace and were definitely the fastest two. Thank you both. Little communities went by and again we wondered who lived there and what they did, although I guess that many work on the land.
The river, which had been by the side of the road, disappeared, but within minutes turned into what looked like a huge lake, although we weren’t sure if it was. After rounding some bends and seeing a bridge in the distance, we went over the Dirty Devil River. A few miles later we went over another bridge with the Colorado River beneath – how cool was that? We had to be on the boundry of the Grand Canyon. However more importantly was that we had to keep going, although by now we knew that we wouldn’t make Blanding by dusk, we were still too far away. Plus the terrain had become more hilly with some steep inclines. However we kept going, but in the end with the two strong men riding the last leg that we could do, we finally succumbed, put the bikes into the van and drove 54 miles to Blanding. We had however ridden 118 miles doing leap frog relay. So now we knew that our system worked at least for the 100+ miles that we would have to do on some of our routes. We were disappointed that we had not ridden the full distance of this leg of the X America Bike Ride. We hope that you are all not too disappointed either.
Cheers BP