Day 15: Price to Green River and Shirley on her Schwinn

When we left Price this morning we were not even 5 miles out of town when we saw the
most beautiful view of mountains with the sun filtering through clouds in visible,
vertical white rays. After at least the 3rd photo stop we were speculating: Could
these mountains already be the Rockies in Colorado? They were huge and dominant.
But as we got closer you could see that these were bit peaks - some over 10k feet -
but they were huge buttes with exposed cliff faces of multicolored rock. Gorgeous.
We were seeing the north end of the Canyon lands and heading to Green River, the
traditional crossroads for the old Spanish Trail, the railroad, pioneers and western
explorers.

It was a 67 mile ride today, and the first half was stop and gawk. We even saw an
antelope.

Then the landscape widened. We could clearly see the striated buttes on the left,
and the lower canyon lands beginning on the right. There were four of us who rode
in together in a good paceline against a strong headwind - Chris, Seattle Bob, Chuck
and I. We have a good system down at this point.

We rode on into Green River, a tiny town of 900. The plan was that I was going to
go with a group to Arches National park, but due to having a mental lapse and
forgetting that the time on my cell was Seattle I missed it. Oops. That's OK. I've
been and it turns out that a white water rafting trip was cancelled due to heavy
rain yesterday that caused mudslides that wiped out the road.

So instead I walked next door to the local city run Green River museum. Tons of info
about the first river exploration down the Green and Colorado Rivers. Very
enthusiastic and bored volunteers running the museum ... I was the only one there.
Chatted with them afterwards and they were helping me figure out the maps and
answering questions about the area. Like it's called the Green River because even
though it's muddy and red now when the melt and rain ends the mud settles and it
becomes Green.

Then walked down to the state park about 1.5 miles away. The ranger was a hoot and
talked with him for a while. Lots more info on the area - nice guy. Headed down to
the water and sat in he shade for a while and then headed back. And met Shirley
coming towards me on her Schwinn.

She had been sitting quietly while the friendly ranger had been talking. But we
went over to the shade and Shirley - who with her husband was volunteering as a camp
host for the summer - is an avid biker. She put over 2000 miles on her Schwinn from
Walmart last year, mostly between 5 and 7 am near her house. That's more outdoor
miles than I put on my new bike training for this ride. GO Shirley GO! She wants
to ride across Missouri for her 65th birthday and needs company. I hope she makes
it. She was awesome.

Dinner was another feed at another restaurant the specialized in quantity over
quality. Which was fine with me - I was hungry. Met a woman at dinner who was
taking a bus from New Jersey to Las Vegas to gamble for 4 days. They were stopping
along the way to check out the sites. She took one look at my legs - the bike tan
line - brown with a 3 inch strip of Seattle pasty white before the shorts start and
said "Oooh baby ... What did you do to your legs?". So then I had to show her my
even funnier glove tan lines with white hands and brown finger tips and wrists.
It's pretty clownish ... Think about how it will look when I'm done.

Right now we are sitting watching the first three days of video of the ride that the
Korean TV station ran. It was so nice of them to give us a rough cut. It's also
1.5 hours long otherwise I'd figure out how to load it up. But they have pretty
much everything on there - eating, riding, climbing. Getting lost.

Tomorrow we hit Colorado. 94 mile ride with some climbing.