The ride ended with a "runaway bike cliff crevice" on a steep downhill 12 miles out of Escalante and 16 miles before Boulder Utah on highway 12. If you look at this topography on Google Earth, there's street view of the entire route, but it will only show you so much. I'd point out the lack of guard rails, the narrow shoulders on the road, the cliffs all matching in color. From the lookout view at the top, you can watch the cars, trucks, semis, tourbuses, motor homes wind their way down the 8% grade. It's a mix of highly experienced professional drivers, locals, and highly inexperienced vacationers driving massive machines on a road that carried mail by burros until 1948.
At that lookout, we had a lovely chat with some of these travellers, waited for the traffic to clear, and proceeded cautiously down the canyon. Around the corner, around the corner... I had to stop. I was getting nervous. A combination of the white cliffs that wasn't showing contrast, the steep cliff side with no guard rails, a freshly paved road that was almost too smooth. I slowed to a stop. I'd feel better if I walked down the steepest part. So I did. I was able to get this great pic of Mike ahead of me. He waited for me, the road leveled out, and I clipped in. Another corner. Picked up speed. Grabbed my brakes. And something wasn't right. My brakes felt like old 1980s rim brakes, slowing me down a bit, but not stopping me like 2013 disc brake technology. I looked ahead- another tight corner, and a steep decent after that. Still no guard rails on the corner. I couldn't hear any cars on the road in either direction- silence. I'm thinking fast about the best way out of this situation. There was a slot in the sandstone cliff up ahead, a place to nose my front tire in to park it. I steered across the lanes, into my spot. When the tire made contact, I made sure I kept my head from bouncing against the wall. My shoulder hit after the bounce- I leaned into the wall to clip out. And there I was- standing still with my bike. It wasn't a fall, and I was calm about it. The plan went as best as it possibly could- stop the bike, don't crash. Simple.
Mike pulled up suddenly and he was confused. Watching me cut across the lanes didn't make any sense. He was too far back to hear my expletives. He made sure I was okay- he saw me bounce up off the seat a little, but not much. At first he estimated I must not have been going faster than 5 miles an hour. I looked at the tire- I figured I may have popped it, but it was fine and the rim was straight. Then I noticed the blue paint on the fender. And the cliff. And the wheel wouldn't roll. Bent forks. The pedals were in way of the tire turning. This wasn't good. Mike recognized right away the ride was over for me. I considered removing the fender, but that was going to still require sitting down somewhere else and working at it.
So we walked the rest of the canyon. All I could think was how dumb of me not to check my brake pads earlier. We were just talking about replacing tires (mine were still original) and we check the air pressure and oil the chain daily. This is a problem with a spontaneous trip- this was an oversight.
I'm not mentally beating myself up about this oversight too much- it's very much still a novice mistake. I'm proud to have ridden a new bicycle to the point of wearing stuff out- how many new bicycles get less than 1000 miles, let alone 6,000 miles? However, a little more planning it probably would have been on the checklist.
But, who is to say that the brakes probably passed that initial check? We estimated we had done 40,000 feet of decent to that point, including a 30 mile downhill two days before, and a steep downhill into Bryce Canyon with no problems whatsoever. No squeaky wear indicator like a car. And, that's probably why they didn't work as well as they should have. Hindsight.
Kind strangers gave us a ride the rest of the 16 miles to Boulder, where we were meeting my aunt and her friends for lunch. On the ride, we realized that road was harrowingly narrow. It didn't get better.
My aunt called my uncle, he met us with his truck. We went back to their house. Found a rental car place open in Cedar City on Sunday. Ate dinner. Slept at their friend's place. My aunt and uncle took us to Cedar City the next day, bikes in the rental car, and our trip ended as it had started- a goodby from friends, thanking them for hospitality, and a long car ride to talk.
Was there some sort of fate or higher power giving us signs to get off the road? I can't say. Two weeks was a great adventure. Utah's 12 isn't really for bicycles. Spontaneous trips have risk (well-planned ones can too). Research for road trips can take some mystery out, which is both good and bad. I read up a lot about the Southern Tier route before our first ride, and there were sections I felt pretty knowledgeable about because of past cyclists journals. Had I done a similar amount of reading about the Western Express route, maybe I wouldn't have been so surprised about the challenge. Would I have not attempted it? That's hard to say. I think a little bit of my own research could be a better thing. Having information is smart. But going with incomplete bits of information will always happen. Restaurants may be closed. Roads can be detoured. Weather patterns change in an instant. What somebody else may write a terrible review for could be right up your ally. Something that came highly recommended by a local wasn't our cup of tea at all. But that's all the adventure.
I'm not sure when Alma will be fixed, but Fern (my mountain bike) will be on more dirt paths with the kids this summer, and Dolce the road bike will be out for some quick backcountry roads with Mike while he's still in town, so I'll keep updating this with some of our local rides.
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