Seeing my mother Moya and sister Jennifer arrive in Monticello, Utah to meet me was having the sun break through the clouds. It was a joy and relief to find familiarity amid the long and lonely last days of this trek, now through austere desert. They drove hours from California to participate in the tour, as they annointed me with their smiling faces and hugs. When the three of us were united there in the stark Utah remoteness I felt the bonds between us shine like sunlighted quartz in the desert.

And so we camped, ate spaghetti Jennifer prepared at camp, made a bonfire, cycled through the desert, and made a day together that was, as Moya said, "one of the best days we ever had." After a night in tents, we hit the road. Moya drove ahead to select rest spots along the road as Jennifer and I sailed with a swiftness along the cactus and rock formation-lined road. Jen was a capable and strong rider, and kept up with me over a few hills without pause. With her on a shiny and sleek road bike, and me on the tired and battered 520, we rode alternately abreast and single file in the Utah wind, pointing out scenes along the way, chatting, pushing hard up hills, coasting fast down them. In the empty desert, Jennifer's presence was warm and radiant as we pedaled shoulder to shoulder along the road.

This Utah landscape is extraordinary and extreme. Never have open roads, in full light of the day, felt so lonely. The canyons are lined with oddly shaped rock formations, rocks that seemed melted, cliff faces that seemed carved, color striations that seemed painted. Here marks the first landscape in America which yielded complete silence. When the wind ceased, and I stood surrounded by the desert, I heard for the first time in years, nothing. Through those canyons the silence was tainted only by the sound of my spinning chain and wheels. When my mother and sister left, the lonely expanse of the desert was never so windswept and empty.

until later...