We definitely continued to improve on the bikes and I continued to have deep thoughts about evolving abilities and cognition, and memories that pop up out of nowhere. I’m working up a theory of how we are actually Westworld hosts and that’s why we keep coming back to Utah. In season three we'll meet a short smartass half-Jew and I'll realize I've been watching a documentary all this time and not fiction. I mentioned to Bill that there's nobody on Westworld who looks like me and he said, "you're right, they're all tall and good looking." Thanks, honey. He followed up with, "I mean, they're all young." Even better!
Tall, beautiful, young, badass robots
I finally figured out how to pair the keyboard just in time to go off the grid but at least I’ll be able to keep better notes for post-race blogging. The race directors carry a computer and drive it nightly to high spots with a signal, so there should be race updates here during the week:
http://www.geminiadventures.com/desert-rats-2018-racer-updates/
And now for a photo dump of the past two days:
Our sweet little campsite along the Colorado.
We revisited one of the rides we did together in 2004, Monitor and Merrimack. Those blobs are not M&M... there are giant rock walls that look like ships later on in the ride. This section was even steeper than it looks. We did a little free forming here cause it’s all rock and no tiny plant life to destroy, but those are tire tracks from the ATVs. I’m amazed vehicles can drive these routes.
My sweet enormous breakfast at Eklecticafe. I was healthier the other two days we ate here. Seaweed and brown rice one day, polenta with grilled veggies the other.
Bill with aforementioned vehicles. I think I saw those guys in DC for Rolling Thunder.
I see a rock that looks like Lenin. Zoom in, do you see him?
We had a few sprinkles of rain and a lot of cloud cover but never any storms.
Today we packed up camp, had breakfast, and moved into the same amazing AirBnB we stayed at last year (room for two in the bed, toilet, shower, even a washing machine to use!) and then went for a short ride right out of Moab.
orange orange orange orange I like orange
On second thought let’s park the bikes and walk from here.
What does the cow say 🎵🎶
this is a photo of Bill walking a portion we probably *could* have ridden.
this is a photo of Bill walking, one guy who was until recently biking, and one guy who is still impressively upright on his bike. To his right is a cliff edge.
Orangey orangeness, with cool patterns and contours
Then it was time for the race check-in and meeting which was a very different experience from last year. Actually it was virtually the same experience with all the same intros and lot of the same jokes but it definitely feels less intimidating listening to Reid try to scare you when you’ve done this before. Plus we already have friends this time, people who appeared in last year’s blog which you can find by hitting “older posts” at the bottom right. If you’re following this you should definitely read that because I’m sure I’ll be continually referring to stuff that happened last year.
I still can’t tell what’s up with my leg. It still hurts every day as I start walking or biking and then after a while I forget about it. That was how my pains went last year so once again it seems well within the realm of possibilities that 1) I can’t finish day one 2) it’s never an issue or 3) something in between. Also I haven’t done a single race since last October when I didn’t finish (ran 60k of a 100k before missing the time cutoff) and I have run far fewer training miles this year. I might be screwed. Hope I can find a couple trees in the desert to string up that hammock.
At the race check-in. I hope they don’t all start calling me Susan (though it is my name).