What followed Loa was more desert remoteness, 50 miles of empty terrain, off-route from the Western Express and headed northwest to Richfield. There were two mountain passes to scale, one at 8,300 feet elevation and the next at 7,800 feet elevation. It was dry and shadeless, the road flanked by expanses of sage brush. The climbs up the mountain passes were among the most arduous sections of pedaling I've faced. Ever present were very strong headwinds which made pedaling strenuous. A few times I stopped on the roadside and ate from the supply of bologna, bread and trail mix I'd cargoed. I took many breaks, including stops on the roadside to pump up the patched tube three times. A long downhill into Richfield helped. I drank the last of four water bottles I hauled along the leg as I neared Richfield. Two miles from town and the tire was deflated again, but this time the tube wouldn't hold air anymore, and so I pushed the 520 the rest of the way. I tried to hitchhike, careful to solicit only pickup trucks for hauling the 520, but to no avail. Eight or ten trucks drove by without stopping. It was dusk as the sun set behind the bare mountain range to the west at 8:30 p.m. In town a couple in a truck I asked directions from gave me a ride, with the 520 in the back, and I ended up at New West Motel for the cheap rates. I showered and had pizza and soda before sleep.

In the morning I scouted the town for the bicycle shop listed as being located on Main Street. On the walk I noticed that the town showed beginnings of the same blight I had seen in hundreds of similar small towns across America. Freshly closed storefronts, car dealerships, gas stations, convenience stores and restaurants, were all along the street. I stopped and grabbed a coffee-to-go at a small cafe and then continued along. I found no bicycle shop. I inquired at a sporting good store, where I was directed to Jorgensen's Honda, an auto and cycle dealership with a bicycle shop and mechanic on hand. I pushed the 520, with the flat tire and the broken spoke, the half mile to the shop and handed the 520 over to mechanic Jeff. He said the probable culprit for the puncture through the kevlar tires may indeed have been the thorn I suspected, which he called Goat Head thorn. He inspected the tires and removed a few more thorns deeply embedded in the tire. He also had the right size spoke on hand. When finished, the 520 was outfitted with heavy duty thorn-resistant inner tubes, a chain cleaning, a spoke, a new strap for the right pedal, a trued wheel, and a lube, and is ready to roll again. Jeff gave me a bottle of lube, a couple of extra spokes, and an extra tube, to take along with me. Then I returned to the room to do some work. I went to a grocery store later for chicken, beans, salad, bagel, and milk, for dinner back at the room.

Moya, Jennifer and I explored a site called Westwater Ruins, 1,000-year-old remnants of an Anasazi Indian village in eastern Utah. The Anasazi, ancestors of modern day Pueblo Indians, made a community there in the canyon. To access the ruins we hiked about a half of a mile over a broad dome of rock amid sparse flora, juniper and pine trees, cacti and tufts of desert grasses. The sun blazed on the rocks. Nearly devoid of sound, the three of us found we could talk to one another from quite a distance, our voices carrying in the ampitheater-like bowls and ledges of the place.

During our ride, Jennifer and I went off the road a bit to see a historical marker, which ended up being a fenced-in gravesite and a hand-made metal sign, explaining the story of a settler killed by Indians. The letters on the sign were each hand soldered or welded. There were spelling errors. The author used the word "calvary" for "cavalry," and someone corrected the mistake in black marker. Also in marker, someone changed the word "settle" to "steal." Jennifer and I laughed aloud at the rough-hewn sign.

Entering Fruita, I rode into an oasis where I picked apples in an orchard. The unlikely patch of green in the desert sprouts up in a canyon around the Fremont River. On the walls of the canyon are petraglyphs etched in the rock by ancient people who inhabited the oasis. At the orchards, people wander around through the trees to pick apples, then weigh them on a scale and put the payment through a slot in a box. I took four yellowish green apples, which cost me $1, and ate them over the next two days.

In the high-altitude desert everything is different. Riding into Utah was like coming into a power field of some sort. There is a sense foreboding amidst the vast distances of empty and arid desert, looming mountains, and odd rock formations, that invokes a certain seriousness. This place can kill. To range here, particularly on bicycle, requires some forethought about water supply, distances, emergency plans, lack of cell phone reception, the unshaded sun, and the frigid nights. Along the roads there are no houses, gas stations, or rest stops, just sage brush expanses and road. The seriousness of the land seems a subtle trait of people here. On the road, motorists don't bother waving, but stay focused on the road ahead.

I've had to do some work this week, and so took a room in Richfield for a couple of days. It's a small town, but served me well by having a competent bicycle shop, a cheap and quiet motel, WiFi, a large grocery store, the things I needed for a bit of reclusion. The detour off the ACA maps was worthwhile.

until later...

I replaced the broken spoke with one of the 700c spokes, which is too short, and as such remains too loose to do its job of keeping the wheel true. The wobble could be considered slight, yet apparent. I've gone 70 miles so far on the ill-fitting spoke, my front wheel wobbling out of true the whole way. Today on the 54-mile push from Bicknell to Richfield, Utah, I must ride again on the bad spoke. There is a bike shop in Richfield which today lies 52 miles away, where I must remedy the problem.

From Richfield I'll be on Interstate 70, and pedal a half day to reach Interstate 15, to begin the fast run to Las Vegas along the freeway. Riding on an interstate is not the first choice of most touring bicyclists, in fact it's generally shunned, but at this point it represents the fastest and safest way to get to the coast, which time and budget demand. Fortunely, bicycles are permitted on interstates in Utah, Nevada, Arizona and California. I'll take parallel roads when I can. The highway won't be as peaceful or scenic as along the former route, but I've done my share of America's backroads and don't lament a dash for the end on the fast, and mostly flat and down hill interstates from Richfield, Utah, to Barstow, California.

My mother Moya, on her way home from visiting me in Utah, reported that the entirety of I-15 along the aforementioned route is more or less bicycle friendly, with several sections of narrow shoulder at Virgin River Gorge, Arizona, representing the only challenging spots between Cedar City, Utah, and Las Vegas.

I rode two times with a cyclist from New York City named Luke who I met in Telluride. A Marine Lieutenant, the 26-year-old from the Lower East Side is traversing the Western Express to San Francisco. We cranked out miles through Utah on two seperate occassions, once before the Mom and Jennifer visit, and once after. It was the stretch of miles before Torrey where I had just finished addressing the broken spoke problem that Luke appeared, coasting over a hill in my direction. It was good to have another cyclist with me, not only for drafting in the fierce headwinds we faced, but for company on those dual 60-mile rides.

Since entering Utah, three months into this thing, the nature of the trek has changed. I pedal each day mechanically, robotically, aiming only for the end. What was once a trek of discovery, is now a challenge of endurance. Yet, that has not diminished the rich experience or intent, as I acknowldge fatigue as necessary and inevitable on such a journey. In these remote stretches of Utah a new perspective has dawned, in which the epic nature of this three-month endeavor is more apparant than ever. It is hard to fathom how far I've come, how many people I've met, how many places I've seen, how many miles I' ve pedaled, how many days I've been out here. Yet I still have 600 miles to go, from here in Bicknell, Utah, where I am writing from a motel room, to Los Angeles. There will of course be another few hundred miles to Santa Cruz, but to reach the ocean will mark the significant continental crossing I've endeavored for since May. All this resolves the day when the Pacific Ocean makes the horizon, and the 520 is across America.

until later...

At Dolores tonight I will camp again, and hopefully...

(interruption)

It's now late afternoon and I am still in Telluride, where I secured a camping spot for the next two nights. Things change fast out here on the road. Here is what happened: As I was writing that first paragraph, I stepped outside to check on the 520, which was leaned against a railing at the entrance of the coffeeshop. I retrieved a map from the handlebar bag, to check the day's route, and a man of about 55 or 60 approached with a question.

"Where ya coming from?"

I went into my spiel, honed of two month's practice, and found myself in a conversation with the man, who introduced himself as Jim, a physicist from Arizona. The white-haired, sandals and khaki shorts-clad man said he was also the owner of a Trek 520 on which he had toured across Europe and Colorado.

"Great bike," Jim said.

Jim was staying in Telluride with his two kids, hiking and soaking in the grandeur of the mountains. He eased my mind about Lizard Head Pass, which I will climb on Wednesday afternoon.

"It's not that bad," he said. "You'll reach a crest where you think it's the top but it isnt, the summit comes a little further ahead, just so you know."

As is typical for me on this tour, the conversation soon spiraled away into tangents, and soon Jim and I were discussing physics, faith, and life. About life, we took stabs at its meaning, cause and effect.

"It's not about having a big house," noted Jim. "It's about the relationships you have inside that house."

I explained to Jim how I recently glimpsed the real brevity of our exisitence here, and the new trajectory the realization had spurred for me. He described himself as a scientist, a researcher with a PhD who was open to the spiritual, who believed in God, who experienced the blessings of belief, and who could see past "the idea that we can figure out the universe. Listen, if the laws of physics govern the universe and its creation, we still need to understand how the laws of physics came into being."

Jim had experienced an incredibly tough personal and professional challenge recently. A traumatic legal accusation of which he was innocent of yet which had held him a hostage to worry and angst for four years. It rocked him, hard. "Here I was, telling the truth, and I had to pay thousands of dollars, go through depositions, be accused of all manner of things, in order to prove my innocence," he confessed. He was eventually vindicated, but the experience seemed to have tinged this sensitive and affable soul, and I could see the reverberations of the trauma in his eyes as he relived it. "There is true evil in the world," he determined. "And America is sick, there is a sickness here that, well, it's everywhere."

I agreed that there is evil and sickness in the world, and no doubt in America, but I offered that there is also nothing to fear.

"I understand that," Jim said. "What is that chapter of the Bible? The one that outlines how senseless our pursuits are?"

"Ecclesiastes," I said. "It's the Old Testament, and it assures us that 'Everything is Meaningless.'"

"That's it," Jim said. "Let me tell you a story. A couple of years ago I drove to visit a friend who lived a day's drive away in another state. I didn't call him to say I was coming, because it was something I often did. On the way, I decided to stop and visit a certain natural site I had always wanted to see, and I decided to take a hike there. Well, by coincidence, at that same time my friend, the one I was on my way to visit, called my wife to ask to speak to me, and my wife said 'Jim came to visit you.'"

In panic, after several hours went by, and not knowing where Jim was, his wife and friend organized a search party to find him. "When I returned home everyone was shocked," he explained. "There were 30 people with backpacks ready to search the mountains for me. When I got home they were upset with me, but they were really relieved that I was alive and well. It showed me how much people cared about me. Let me tell you, after what I've been through professionally and personally, I can say that the only thing that matters in this life is the love you have for your family and friends, everything else is meaningless."

By the time Jim and I had completed the wide arc of our exchange, it was too late in the day to make Dolores, and so I mulled staying in Telluride another night. I was loathe to do so because of the frigid night temperatures of this high elevation, a real bane for primitive camping. Having phone-related work to accomplish in the next two days, and with the better part of the day waned away in discussion with my new friend, I determined it wise to stay in Telluride where I could rely on cell phone service and plentiful WiFi connections to enable the work. And so I'm here for two more nights. Lizard Head Pass, Utah, and the rest of the west, can wait.

To solve the problem of the frigid night temperatures I will surely face again, I went to a spot in town where there is a bin called the Free Box, where people drop off unwanted clothing, objects, supplies, materials and odd and ends for others to claim and use for free. I saw people perusing the bin when I arrived, and so I did the same. I needed to find something that would keep me warm when the temperature sinks to 45 degrees fahrenheit at night. Just under some childrens' clothing I found a big blanket. I took the blanket back to my campsite. I'll return the blanket to the Free Box when I pedal out of town on Wednesday afternoon.

Telluride exists for fun. There is no other purpose to visit or stay here. In the mid 1800s it was a town of brothels. There were supposedely hundreds of prostitutes at work. These days the fun comes in tamer, but no less exhilerating, fashion. There is fun on the ski slopes, fun on the mountain biking and hiking trails, and fun in the town's bars, restaurants, cafes and gift shops.

Named for tellurium, an metalloid found along gold and silver deposits which has been mined here since the 1800s, the 5,000-population town is trapped in a box canyon, with only one road going in and out. Towering rock-faced mountains surround the town, where ski trails are veined all throughout the Ponderosa pine-covered slopes. Gondolas and ski lifts cut along the mountain faces. The main thoroughfare through town, Colorado Avenue, is lined with high-end shops all catered to the outdoorsy, wealthy, hip, and fun-seeking tourists which flock here by the thousands throughout the seasons. The town is about ten blocks long and six blocks wide. Homes are quaint in a modern Switzerland mountain cottage type of style. Architects, it seems, contend to exhibit the most angular and daring designs possible. Many are ski-lodge condos featuring natural wood finishes and high-arched roofs intended to deflect the big snows the town faces in winter. The restaurants, all filled with retirees in designer dresses or polo shirts, pressed khaki pants, and shiny loafers, look plucked straight out of SoHo in Manhattan, or West Palm Beach, Florida. Interspersed are cafes and coffeeshops targeting the young ski, bike and hike crowd, where reggae music and the scent of espresso wafts. There is wealth here, both in monetary and experiential measure, all invested in the pursuit of leisure. Telluride serves that purpose singularly. I wander around on the 520 feeling at once right at home and completely out of my element.

On the way into Telluride yesterday I met a man named Damon. A very friendly and charismatic man who gave me a ride the last few miles into town, showed me around, and offered to give me access as a guest to a luxury spa at a mountaintop hotel of which he is a member. A real estater, Damon has been in Telluride for several years. He was among the nicest people I've met thus far on the trek, and we found a fast and easy freindship between us. I took Damon up on his offer for the spa, and so today rode a gondola high up and over a slope to Mountain Village, a town at the summit of the box canyon that surrounds Telluride. I enjoyed lounging around in a robe, sitting in a steam room and a dry sauna, and pampering myself with lotions, aftershave and other luxury amenities of the place. I felt a bit silly in such undeserved luxury. This was as high as high luxury gets, and I was, of course, an imposter. But afterward, closely shaved, ultra clean, and smelling of eucalyptus aftershave, I descended back into town on the gondola and walked around like a tourist.

Day 2:

The blanket served me well last night. I slept thoroughly and warmly in the tent, wrapped in my fleece sleeping bag and Free Box blanket and wearing my hooded sweatshirt and pants. I awoke at 6 a.m. and slipped through the woods to the shower where I paid three dollars in quarters for a five minute hot shower. I coasted into town on the 520 with my breath fogging in the chilled air, where I'm now in a cafe called Baked in Telluride, swilling coffee and thinking ahead to the telephone interview I will conduct this afternoon as part of my work.

The sun is angling in over the mountain peaks and starting to warm things up. Here with my coffee, I read the town newspaper, Telluride Daily Planet. There is a story on the front page today about a 74-year-old woman killed by a bear in nearby Ouray, Colorado. She reportedly had fed bears for years from her front porch, and last week one of them attacked and killed her. I took interest in this story since I am camping on the edge of the Rocky Mountain wilderness, not far away from Ouray, in my little tent, set up just feet from a stream called Bear Creek.

This week I will meet up with my sister, Jennifer, and mother, Moya, in Utah. We will ride together, Jen on a borrowed road bike, and Mom in an SUV, for a week or so as I head west through Utah. They are accompanying me to show support for this trek, to honor our lost cousin Rich, and to share in the experience of travel and discovery out here on the road. I am honored they are taking time off from work to participate with me. We will have a good time.

We are inching closer to a total of $1,500 raised thus far. It would seem at this point that the $4,000 goal seems unattainable since the trek is nearly two-thirds complete. It matters not, as I am astonished, grateful and impressed with the amount we've raised thus far.

I have committed to the decision to abandon the Western Express route in favor of a shorter, faster, and safer route along Interstate 15 from Cedar City, Utah, to the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles. From Cedar City, the prescribed Western Express route would take me 800 miles on Route 50 through the Nevada desert, over eight steep mountain passes, and across several barren stretches of terrain without services for 100 miles or more. While the route along Interstate 15 would include only 400 miles to the Pacific Ocean, over much more horizontal terrain, with many more towns and services along the way. The 800-mile Route 50 option, with mountain climbs taken into consideration, would realistically take three weeks to complete, while the 400-mile I-15 option may be finished in ten days or so. This would mean a difference in expenses of hundreds of dollars. It would also be safer, as the remote stretches of Nevada present the threat of running out of water enroute. On I-15, with Las Vegas as a mid-way point, water and services will be more abundant.

I will, perhaps, aim for the Santa Monica pier as my new finish line. Coasting out along that pier to the Pacific Ocean would be a fitting end to this trek.

until later...