From Ogden to Snowville, it's a straight road, along the I-84 highway, which is actually the I-15 highway from Ogden to around Tremonton. Nothing special, no twists or turns, but just a bit of hills. Naturally, as I pulled out of my hotel, I discovered a flat front tire, repaired it, and had a second start at 8:20am. To avoid unfriendly police, I took side highways through the suburbanly populated stretch from Ogden to Tremonton. I passed by farms, small towns, and gas stations. I smelled manure, animal feed, and the petrichor from the night's storm. I got on the highway, which had areas with pleasant rumble strips, and areas with interfering rumble strips.
Flanked by large grassy hills, I climbed for parts of the way, and descended for others. An hour before I pulled into town, strong headwinds started, and a few minutes before arriving at Snowville, it started to rain. The rain felt like little needles in the strong wind, amplified by the downhill frenzy to get to town before getting wet. I ate at the local diner, where the only vegetarian options were pies and a veggie omelette, and, due to continued rain and an expected cold night, checked into the only motel in a 40 mile radius.
The ride itself was enjoyable, and unremarkable. I think that the most exciting thing that happened to me today during the ride was that I tried a new chocolate bar, a Heath bar, which is a kind of hard toffee with chocolate on the outside. Had this day been day 3 or 4, I would have salivated at these hills, and marveled at my 120km achievement. I'd have written about how incredibly cold it is, and how extreme the wind and rain were.
There's something both ungraspable, and minimizing about the scale of the ride. On the one hand, it's hard for me to zoom out and see the whole ride as one thing. Such a feat would amount to zooming out and seeing the entire US as one thing, which it's not. I can't summarize the ride, or visualize the continuous transition from one geography to the next. It's so subtle. On the other hand, everything seems muted in comparison to the extremes I've seen on this ride. Today's hills are nice, but they aren't like the mountains of Moab. The rain was harsh, but not like the floods of Louisiana. The winds are strong, but not like that horrible day in Texas. It's cold, but not like in Cuba, NM. What's 120km when I've already done 4,000? I think the only thing this area really stands out in is very overpriced hotels.
So yes, the road to Snowville was somewhere in the middle of all of these extremes. But it's those extremes that taught me how to handle today with ease. It seems like I have a few more days of this.
As a graduate student in mathematics, it's rare that I interact with little kids. Students don't count. Sometimes I'd be doing something bike related, or walk into a store with a helmet on, and a family would start asking me questions. The standard talk that, frankly, is sometimes annoying to deal with when I'm on the phone or trying to rush somewhere. But when a kid is around, I try to tell at least one story.
I like talking to kids. If a kid is riding a bike in a front yard, I tell them they've got a nice bike, or tell them to keep riding. I want to inspire them to pick up arms against their suburban automibilist overlords, and to join the bike revolution.
The motel I checked into today was owned by a small family, a mother, three little girls, and her sister. The girls were no older than 10, and followed their mother wherever she went. I checked in, and one of the girls liked my wallet, so I told her she could have all the money inside (I ran out of cash... Gotta go to an ATM soon...), but forgot I had some Canadian money in there.
And so, we (the family and I) got chatting about Canadian money, and I told them about all the cool tricks that it does. Of course, I told the girls to try to rip up the $20 bill, and they couldn't. I told them about the windows, and the holograms, and the new $10 with Viola Desmond on it. I didn't tell them that the banknotes smelled like maple syrup. Then I showed them what is probably my favourite trick. The happy queen/sad queen trick. I gave one of them the $5 bill, and the other the $10 one. The third girl was gone, but I hope that her sisters shared. What's $15 CAD worth to me? What's it worth to them?
To my international friends, you should know that this trick works with any banknote with a face on it, but there's something particularly special about the queen... Something about her facial expression that makes this trick just work that much better. The trick is just folding the banknote along the following crease pattern:
Where the solid lines mean that the fold should "pop out" at you, and the dashed line means that it should "pop in." You just want to crease it, then hold both ends of the banknote, and tilt it towards you and away from you (i.e., along the axis between your hands). The queen should smile and frown as you tilt the banknote back and forth.
I have never met anyone who did not at least chuckle at this. I still laugh every time I see it, and I do this so often that I carry around Canadian money just to do this trick at every available opportunity.
Today I biked for 124km over the course of six and a half hours. My total uphill today was 764m, which surprised me, considering I thought it was going to be completely flat.