Day 12: Nevada, With Less Mountains

Course: Baker, NV to Delta, UT

Distance: 100 miles

Terrain: Sustaining hills, bumpy roads.

Conditions: Headwind

I awoke knowing that this day was probably going to be difficult on account of how terrible the conditions were the day before. We took off and headed up a 2.5 mile hill and then went right back down it, in order to make the day a century ride. I’m still wondering why people voted for that. Afterwards, we met at the Utah/Nevada state border to take pictures. We then took off for Delta. At that point, we all pretty much hated Nevada and were ready to leave. However, we had no idea that Utah would be pretty much the exact same.

It started off with optimism, and then it slowly faded to annoyance. We had been riding for about 50 miles when we finally saw a black paved road. My pace line cheered, but when we hit the black top, it was even bumpier than the last road. I like massages, but not ones that hurt for a really long time. The deceptive black top road was off and on until the end of the ride.

At about mile 60 we were all starving and pretty tired of Clif bars to hold us over. You can only eat so many before they’re synonymous with dog food. We pulled up to a crew stop, and a crewmember told us that the next stop would be lunch. We found some hidden energy and booked it to the next stop, only to find a single van with nothing to eat but more Clif bars. They told us that lunch was actually the next stop. We had spent the last of our hopes on that crew stop, so making it to lunch was pretty difficult. However, once we made it there and got food in our stomachs, the rest of the ride panned out OK. Arriving in Delta, I wanted to get off of the bike more than ever before.

The rest of the day was pretty casual. We all went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and enjoyed some bonding time.