Salt Lake City to Durango

My 17 hour train journey dropped me in Salt Lake City, as the sun rose over, somewhat unexpectedly, mountains. No lake in sight. I don’t research these things too well in advance. Unfortunately there wasn’t much sun visible either, as it was obscured behind quite a lot of rain clouds.

My bike had been boxed up before putting it on the train, so, after the damage my last bike took on the flight out to the US, I was understandably a little worried. Thankfully everything was fine. I managed to drag the box as far as the Greyhound bus terminal to put it back together and ride to my motel. I was hoping for a (very) early check in. Partly because I needed a shower and a bit more sleep, but mainly because it was the day of the England vs. USA game in the world cup and I was already sufficiently concerned for our performance that I planned to watch it on my own rather than in a bar where I was likely to be the only Englishman. I also had contingency plans in place to go hide under a rock for two weeks if we lost. As it was, I actually slept for so long that I missed the England goal.

It says something that, barring one calamitous piece of goalkeeping, we would have won the group and, despite our complete lack of pace and creativity through the core of the team, could have made it to the semi-finals, but I don’t think this should lessen the fact that our performances were well below the level most of us had probably expected a year ago.

The combination of rubbish whether, rubbish football and the fact that there only seemed to be about four people in the whole city weren’t combining to make Salt Lake City seem like the most appealing place in the world.

I went for a quick ride to explore, but I didn’t want to stay up too late, because I knew I had a 9am bus in the morning and my bike needed to be taken apart and boxed up again. Salt Lake City was founded by a group of Mormon’s and is still the headquarters of the church. The one thing I’d been told not to miss was the Temple and it was definitely the closest I’ve seen in the US to the grand old cathedrals of Europe.

My bus journey took me another couple of hundred miles down the road to Green River, in Eastern Utah, where I was essentially deposited at what seemed to be a truck stop in the desert. I knew I had a 50 mile ride with absolutely no services along the way, so thankfully there was a diner that had all you can eat spaghetti for lunch, yum.

That day I was heading for Moab, which has a reputation is a pretty cool little town in the desert with lots of opportunities for mountain biking and rafting. The main reason I was going, however, was Arches National Park, which is an amazing area where different types of rock and the way they each respond to the irresistible force of erosion has produced some spectacular rock formations. All of this takes place in front of the huge and snow capped La Sal mountain range, which forms part of the western Rockies.

To me the deserts have been by far most spectacular landscapes. Everything else has been similar to what we have at home or elsewhere I’ve been, albeit on a smaller scale. The deserts have been almost unreal. Too much to take in. Enough to make me wish I’d spent more time there, although I did get lucky because the heat wasn’t too severe. In fact, prior to today (but that’s a whole different story), the only time I’ve got really soaked on this trip was on the ride to Moab. The heavens opened, the hailstones were bruise inducing and in about 5 minutes the road was just swimming with water. A couple in an RV were very nice and slowed down to check I was ok, but by that stage I was already wetter than Marty Pellow and would just have got their car sopping wet too.

From Moab I was heading for Southern Colorado and on the way I got to see some truly desperate small towns. I read a book earlier in the trip by Thomas Frank about politics in Kansas and what leads a fundamentally working class state to continue to elect very conservative Republican politicians. One of his major points was that it’s a response to a perception of the Democrats as smug, academic and out of touch with the strong values held by people in Kansas, unfortunately this smug, academic and slightly taunting polemic was exactly that. Definitely one of these books written to amuse those who already agree with you. That said hidden in the rants are some interesting points. One of which is about the decline of many small towns in Kansas, which simply don’t produce anything, leaving correspondingly high rates of unemployment, where those that can get out do and the population gradually ages away to nothing. Some consider this a tragedy and a decline of a traditional way of life and maybe it is. What he claims characterises these towns is that the only businesses that seem to service are second hand shops. Having ridden through a number of similar areas in Eastern Utah and South Western Colorado, I am definitely starting to see what he was getting at.

The riding conditions here were a lot tougher than in California. The temperatures were higher, the sun stronger and, importantly, I’d made a jump to a higher altitude. Moab is at a higher altitude than Ben Nevis and the day I left I climbed another 3,000ft to above the 7,000 level and the Colorado plateau, and I haven’t really been below this since. Although I thought I adjusted pretty quickly, with hindsight I don’t think this was the case. After five days riding back to back, I felt like I needed a break, so I headed to Durango for a long weekend, because I thought it would be a bit livelier than anywhere else in the area.

Even someone who is as happy with their own company as I am wants to be sociable occasionally, so whenever I’m in somewhere that has a hostel I try to stay there. When I was in some of the bigger cities on the west coast this didn’t work that well, because I didn’t have a great deal in common with most of the people I met (aside from a few notable exceptions), because, for a start, I’d had a job at some point in my life. On the other hand, in the smaller towns I’ve met plenty of really nice people. The hostel in Durango in particular was probably the best I’ve ever stayed in. It felt more like a little house, which I guess it was, but to the point that you actively wanted to keep the place clean and tidy, because someone had obviously gone a lot of effort.

One top of that, I just lucked out and ended up there at the same time as a really good bunch of people. There was Daniel from Portland who had just finished an awesome 4 day ride road some of the mountains around Durango, Sean and Eric from Boulder who were having a long weekend there to do some mountain biking, Felix from Germany who finally gave me someone to talk to about the World Cup and Dan who was looking for somewhere to live in Durango whilst he was studying at the college, along with plenty more people besides.

Had a great weekend of local beers and watching football. The highlight though was mountain biking with Eric, Sean and Dan. I felt slightly spoilt to be honest, because my first proper experience of it was on a trail that I’m just not sure I’m going to be able to match in the UK. I was trying to find a weblink that describes it better than I could for anyone reading this who actually knows about mountain biking, but safe to say that I might well be buying a bike when I get back home.