Day 10 - Milford, Utah to Cedar City, Utah

56 miles / Day 10 of 54 / Milford, Utah to Cedar City, Utah

We've been pretty lucky throughout our first nine days with lodging, weather, etc. Today was a real testament to our willpower and our grit.

Lesson #29: Even your best laid plans can and will fall through. Don't let it get to you.

We woke up early after tenting in an abandoned parking lot on the edge of town. We only had 56 miles to go today and one mountain pass. Our plan was to get into Cedar City (yes, an actual city with 25,000+ people early in the afternoon, find a bike shop, get repairs and relax all afternoon. Our first real short day since Day 4.)

First things first, Seth had a punctured tube and first thing in the morning we had to replace it. Look for the trend here.

Once that was repaired, we were on the road through a country valley and I got a thorn in my tire 5 miles down the road and popped a tube. Had to re lace the tube. Flat count for the day = 2.

We were ascending our pass for the day and Seth blew his back tire. Flat count = 3. Once that was repaired, we got over the summit and on the descent, Seth popped ANOTHER tube on his back tire. Flat count for the day = 3.

After putting a new tube on his back tire, we were descending and Seth popped his back tire AGAIN. For those of you keeping score at home, that's 3 flats for Seth in a 30 mile stretch. You can't make this up, folks. At this time, we had no more tubes. Who would've thought that we would have four flats in one day? So, we tried patching an old tube and covering up the hole and that tire blew. Flat = 4 for the day.

It was getting to a really irritating point with so much bad luck and such a short distance to go that day.

Lesson #30: Sometimes your best medicine is laughter.

That's about all we could do after such a ridiculous day. Laugh it off and hope we could make it to Cedar City. After all, we have had such an amazing trip that it would take more than a horribly bad luck day to bring down our spirits. We had one more broken tube that we patched with super glue and Seth had to pump up his tire three times to prevent a slow leak and so we could limp to town.

Finally, we saw town about 12-15 miles away and then the winds came. Blowing in our face at 25-30 mph for the rest of our ride, it took us 2.5+ hours to make it that last 12 miles or so. Cedar City apparently REALLY didn't want us to come.

After such a crazy day we laughed about it, cut our losses, ponied up and bought our first cheap motel room of the trip for the night. We ordered pizzas and watched game 7 of the NBA finals. Author's Sidenote: Timmy Duncan how do you miss the bunny? Tony Parker why are you on the bench during crunch time? Manu Ginobli, why are you trying to make any passes down the stretch? Ugh,

It was good to shower, relax and get a bed for the night. Which brings me to the wise words of Aziz Ansari -

Lesson #31: Treat yo' self.