The Battle of Broken Saddle
My beautiful wife Chris flew in from the Bay Area to join me in Salt Lake City for our rest day yesterday. We had a simply glorious time doing laundry as well as shopping at Target for various ointments, creams, and deodorants. Also, we searched numerous Salt Lake City bike shops (unsuccessfully) for a specific tire pump bracket. If that doesn't spell romantic, I don't know what does. Then to top it all off, we finished the day with an utterly mediocre meal at one of our favorite Salt Lake City restaurants. All in all, it added up to a fabulous romantic getaway never to be forgotten.
We said our goodbyes this morning as she got into her rental car and sped off to catch her flight back to Oakland. There was no time to waste, she had a pedicure scheduled for 3:00 P.M. back in Alamo, CA.
After a moment of silent reflection, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and focused on the task before me, a 66-mile bike ride to the city of Provo, UT, home to the campus of Brigham Young University.
At the suggestion of my good friend, the renowned contemporary philosopher Matt Robertson, I bought a go cam from Amazon to chronicle my biking adventures. The camera arrived at the hotel yesterday, and I mounted it on my bike. As of this writing, I've still not figured out how to transfer the pictures and videos I took today into my computer and into this blog. Stay tuned, I'll figure it out.
Until then, you'll just have to visualize in your mind the majestic, snowy peaks of the Wasatch Mountains. The beautiful meadows. The vast blue skies. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Joseph Smith, Mitt Romney, The Osmond Family, Donny and Marie, and the blood, sweat, and tears of fourteen lonely bike riders as they fight past pain and suffering in their quest to ride from sea to shining sea. Gosh, a sentence like that can really take your breath away. Or make you roll your eyes at just how self-absorbed and melodramatic a 62-year-old first-time blogger can be.
It was a beautiful morning as we left our hotel, which was located around the Salt Lake City airport. Most of the day we spent riding on bike paths with a few suburban streets thrown in. The Wasatch Mountain range was on our left all day as I rode along with my new friends, Ken from Jacksonville Florida and Doug from Petaluma, California.
At about mile fifteen, I went over a bump, I felt a snap and heard a crack. I didn't know what to make of it, but when I looked under my seat, I could see that one of the rails on my bike saddle had snapped off. My saddle was broken. My first thought was, "Thank God I wasn't impaled! How would I explain THAT to my wife?"
A broken saddle may sound like a small inconvenience to most, but to a long-distance bike rider, the prospect of having to change saddles in the middle of a ride is not a pleasing thought. Fortunately, due to my past training in the ever-changing field of lounge entertainment, I remained cool and calm as I rode to the next SAG stop. While I ate a granola bar and refilled my water bottles, Jim, the tour director, replaced my saddle with a temporary one that the tour company had in the truck. I stopped into a Scheels sporting goods store on our route to buy a new saddle, but I was unsuccessful.
I rode the remaining miles to Provo with the replacement seat. Avid cyclist will tell you that every rider has a specific design in a saddle that works best for him or her. The choice of a saddle is a very personal one, and one's backside gets used to a saddle only after many miles of riding. That is why they make saddles in so many different sizes and shapes.
During the final miles to the hotel today, my posterior was telling me that it did not particularly care for this new saddle I was riding on. After arriving at the hotel, I called around to a few bike shops in Provo to see who might have my particular bicycle saddle. Mark, our mechanic, drove me in the support van to a shop that said they had my saddle, but in fact, they did not have it. I quickly did what any logical cyclist would do, I called my wife. Upon hearing of my predicament, she sprung into action. On my bike shelf at home, she immediately located an identical saddle to the one that I broke. She then raced down to our local Fed Ex drop off location and attempted to overnight the seat to me at tomorrow's destination. But alas it is Friday, and overnight delivery to a remote town in Utah is not possible. So I bought another saddle with similar dimensions to my saddle, and I'll ride with that for the next three days until my replacement saddle arrives on Monday.
We will see how it goes on tomorrow's ride, which includes over 4000 feet of climbing.
Dinner was at the Sizzler Restaurant across the street from our hotel. I enjoyed their extensive salad bar along with a steak and some chicken soup, all very satisfying indeed. It was a beautiful mild evening in Provo. Tomorrow we climb again.
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