We all love dinosaurs, right? If you don't already love dinosaurs then you better make yourself right with the Dinosaur! Else be prepared to face a wrath that will leave you quaking in your pedals from ice pelted from the heavens, or thrust about like a stick by the mighty breath of the South-Southwest wind demon! I've always thought this was Mormon country, but now I know its Dinosaur country.
Thankfully today's stage from Vernal Utah to Rangely Colorado was an easy day - I'm not sure I could have handled it if it was a hard day. 83 miles, 3600' elevation gain - it certainly looks comparatively light on paper. Yes, the forecast called for "scattered thundershowers" but we'd dodge those, I was sure. The chances of getting caught in a storm seemed especially remote when I saw a number of fellow riders carrying a ton of rain gear into a beautiful and warm morning. Nothing like having an umbrella to ensure clear skies, no? No!
We crossed the Green River and briefly were in the Unitah and Ouray Reservation.
A wiser man with knowledge of the ways of the Great Dinosaur would have been able to divine the omen when we saw a vision from Independence Day (the movie) in the south:
Our conversation as we reached the first rest stop was how successful we'd been in avoiding the rain storms we could see in the distance.
It was all hubris in the eyes of the Dinosaur. For it was not 10 seconds after I took to the road again that I felt the chill dread of a few raindrops. "Its clear up the road ahead" I said to myself, "No need to return to the shelter of the rest stop. I'll outrun it." What I thought was an evasive move turned out to be what Veronica B says the Air Force calls the intercept move.
Wind and rain. Hard wind and heavy rain. Lightening in the distance followed by thunder. Hail. Wait! Is that hail bouncing off the tops of my cycling gloves? Of course the road always seemed to be turning uphill, into the wind and toward darker skies. And of course there is no shelter of any kind out there (unless you consider oil well tanks shelter).
As was the case in my post for Day 6, the only way I could warm up was to pedal harder to generate heat. I glanced at my bike computer temperature readout while it was hailing and it said 50°. So that was good (on Day 6 it was 40°). During the very thickest of it I reached a 1 mile descent dropping 350'. Nothing to do but hit it, right? If going 35 mph in these conditions wasn't going to warm me up, it would certainly get me through it faster.
Finally the Great Dinosaur relented as he did with Noah. Looking back at the fields of punishment:
The temperature read 60° as soon as the rain was not falling.
After a few miles of scampering along with many a worried glance over the shoulder, the route hung a hard left onto a tiny country road which turned that adversarial wind to an ally. With a few raindrops still being carried by the wind, I could make a precise measurement of the wind speed: as my speed increased on the gradually descending road, drops were hitting my back. When I got to 25 mph they were evenly distributed, but at higher speeds the drops were hitting the front of my jersey, indicating that I was outrunning the wind.
The tiny country road ahead and back:
It was only later that I began to understand that we were in the Dinosaur's domain.
The obsequious locals know how to appease the Great One with idols
And craven images:
At the local ice cream shop I was informed that the local post office could, on request, stamp outgoing mail with "Mailed from Dinosaur Colorado". I was told this was "especially nice for the grandchildren." That's when I was sure I was dealing with a typical religion, always looking to indoctrinate the next generation with a fascination of dinosaurs.
However my newfound piety was not yet sufficient. Many miles lay ahead across the White River drainage
That photo doesn't look very windy, does it? To make the tale more convincing, here is some footage of the situation once we'd clawed our way into Rangely.
No comments:
Post a Comment