Not the Ride I Had Planned

Today I rode the ride which has been haunting me to do for a couple of weeks now. Or, at least I did most of the ride. More on that later.
First we (Coach Girl, Ragla, Binlaw, and I) rode up Provo Canyon.
Here we are (except me, someone had to take the picture) by Bridal Veil Falls. In case you're wondering, they're holding their bikes because I made them stand in the weeds, and they were worried about sticker weeds puncturing their tires. Rio is looking lonely on the right.

We turned off at the Sundance turn, and climbed the Alpine Loop. It felt better than usual. I didn't HAVE to stop, but stopped anyway at Sundance to get new bottles out of Sling's truck. He just got hired on at Sundance, so it was really convenient to have a cooler with fresh bottles waiting there.

Here I am with Ragla in front of Sundance. The rock we're standing by actually says "Sundance" on it, you just can't see it in the picture.


Ragla wasn't feeling good, so I rode the rest of the way to the top with her. I stopped several times to take photos, and let her get ahead of me so I could catch back up. It rained on us on the way up, and an ambulance passed us (which worried us thinking it could be Coach Girl or Binlaw, who had ridden ahead). Pretty exciting stuff. We found out later that the ambulances were there for a biker who had gone down on the slick, wet road and gave himself a concussion and some road rash on his face.

View of the back of Mount Timpanogos on the way up the Alpine Loop -- so beautiful!


The view looking down at Sundance:



A little higher up. You can see in this picture that it had started to rain:



The way down was wet, but the brakes worked good. It's scary enough riding down the Alpine Loop without the rain...very narrow windy roads, with barely enough room for one car. The wet roads did not help the anxiety factor.

Here's the view on the other side of the Alpine Loop (the American Fork side). Judging by this picture, you probably no longer believe me that it had been raining. You can see the road at the bottom of the photo, the road where I was headed. Yes, it's as steep as it looks:



Ragla and I had considered skipping Traverse, but since we both felt good coming out of American Fork Canyon, we continued. It was a hot climb, but not miserable. Binlaw rode ahead, I rode alone in the middle, and Coach Girl and Ragla rode at the back.

Here's the view of the Utah Valley side:



By the time we got to the top of Traverse Ridge, Ragla was really sick. I stayed with her while she threw up and called her DH to come rescue us. Coach Girl and Binlaw decided they couldn't wait and went on ahead, down the Suncrest (Salt Lake) side. I was kinda glad I didn't have to go down that side today. It's scary fast with a cross wind that tries to blow you into traffic. Plus, in order to get back to my side of the valley, you have to go on the freeway frontage road which is way too narrow with way too many huge cement and dump trucks thundering along.

Anyway, here's a picture of the Salt Lake Valley from the top of Suncrest.


Also, I don't know why this tickled me so, but at the time, I thought it was really funny. I found it in the restroom at the top the Traverse Ridge.


Like I didn't know how to wash my hands and maybe I might think the toilet was where I should clean up.

I'm not giving my numbers today because they're laughable.