Saturday: From Salt Lake City to Puncture City to Park City

Big up yourselves Blog Fans and buckle up for another Cycle USA installment. We woke up at the chronically lazy time of 7.20 to the sound of bacon sizzling in Josh's kitchen. He'd woken up, gone for a 4 mile run and come back to make up breakfast. Toast, Egg, Bacon and coffee for Ben. Headwig did the licking rounds and we geared up to ride through downtown Salt Lake City and take the scenic route towards the I-80 highway. We cycled around the streets leaning all about the Mormon settlers in Utah looking at Temple Square and the new library, interesting and nice looking stuff. We winded through the streets to lessen the impact of the 'big hill' that heads out of Salt Lake City. We headed out up through the hills through some beautiful scenery and some less beatufil elevation with Josh giving us running comentary aswell as getting the first picture of all 3 of us on the road at once which was proper lovely. See picture below which I cant rotate.

However, tradegy was to strike again for Jack as at the foot of the big descent of our ride with Josh he got yet another puncture. This put Jack at the top of the puncture league running away with it on 3 punctures, with Ben hot on his heels with 2. Josh put his hero hat on again and changed the inner tube and donated his better tyre levers as our 99p Tesco ones were whats known in the cycling community as rubbish. Myself and Ben looked on eating cereal bars and drinking Powerade heads a'shaking. We then began our few thousand feet 3 mile climb upto Parleys Peak and Jack was feeling 4 or 5 Utah beers from the night before. We laboured up to the top and hit the descent with avengence. But guess what, Ben, uncontent with second place in the puncture league went and got another one before we exited at Kimble Junction to meet Jeremy at the end of his 170 Mile race. As our recent wheel/tire escpades had exhausted our inner tube reserves Ben then had to walk about a mile upto the freeway exit to meet myself and Jack in McDondalds. We then wheeled all of our bike around the area to try and find the finnish line of the race to meet Jeremey. We got to the finish line and set about trying to sort out Bens new puncture. As we did I went wandering and managed to score 3 free pairs of 'Tour de Park City' socks as my 'cycling' socks both managed to get holes in cycling from my house in North Wales to Llanidoes in mid Wales and back before we even left. I was proper chuffed.

I came back with those and some free powerade and a smile on my face and watched some of the cyclists finish the race. Jeremey came in at about 8 hours 16 minutes (ish) and came a pretty commendable 7th place. While he sorted himself out we went to eat across the road at Maxwells East Coast Eatery, which incedentilly was very nice. While we were waiting for our food Ben went back and got his bike and cycled it back to make sure the tire hadn't gone down again. Relieved he returned to let us know it hadnt, but to deliver Jack with the news that he had yet another flat. We knew what this meant folks, Jack had returned to the top of the puncture league. Ben was wallowing in second place, to his delight. While this was going on the family that Jeremy had set us up to stay with intoduced themselves, Lora and Andy and the kids. We were passed a hand drawn map and a phone number as they had to get going and we carried on eating. So Jack then went and replaced yet another inner tube with a repaired inner tube and we met back up with Jeremey to organize going to the house and our ride tomorrow. We stocked up on a hoard of cereal bars and mix your own powerade and Jeremy drove us part of the way to the house we were staying. He parked his car up at the house and cycled back out to meet us to cycle us to the house. Bearing in mind he'd just cycled a 170 Mile race. Mental. As I was in front he met me first, then Jack appeared over the horizon, then we waited. And waited. And waited. No Ben. Where could he be? He didnt appear so we cycled off to the house where me and Jack got settled and showered and Jeremey got back in his trusty steed (Honda Civic) to go and find Ben.

They return half an hour after me and Jack go to the house with the following anicdote from Ben: "So I was coming down that descent bit and I hit like a pot hole in the ground and the inner tube exploded, I thought a gun had gone off. I didnt have anything on me, no inner tube, no tyre lever so I was just stuck there. So then a team of cyclists went past (from the same race Jeremey had competed in) and asked what was going on. I told them and they chucked me an inner tube and a gas canister but were hurrying because they were being chased by another team. As they were chucking the stuff down they got over taken and were gutted and just started trying to ride off quickly and catch them again. But I was still stuck because I havent got an adapter for the canister to pump the tire up. Then Jeremy turned up we got the tube in and the tire on and started pumping it up. Jeremey however pumped it up a little too much and, incredibly, managed to blow that inner tube up aswell. So he put the bike on the roof rack and drove to the house."

So this brings Ben roaring back to the summit of the puncture league with 5 punctures, Jack on 4 and Tom yet to enter the race.

Because of all this Andy had to then take me to the local bike shop where I bought 5 inner tubes to replenish our supply. A nice shop and an enjoyable chat on the automotive industry ensued before returning to the family home where dinner had been prepared for us - pasta big homemade pizza, salad and cookies and milk to finish. Being the hostess with the mostess Lora also washed our stuff and bagged up cookies for the next days ride for which we are truly grateful. Im writing this blog, and yesterdays magic entry on the family computer, a lovely little iMac number as we discuss why Wales isnt in England and we're all Brits. The twins have gone to bed, the airbed and couches are ready to go and the lights are about to go out. We're woring on getting more pictures up, bare with us.

Until next time blog fans, look after yourselves, and one another.

Tom.