Inertia

Getting into a sizable town or city seems to mean I’ll be there for a lil while. I planned on two nights in Kanab but ended up tacking on a third. Though I relocated from the AirBnb to a campground to save some money. I was waiting on a couple of packages, including new chain, cassette, and emergency cassette lock ring tool. That took a little while to figure out exactly how to use, but I succeeded in getting the old cassette off and putting a new one on. Now that the cassette and chain are both new, should reliable use of all of my gears ::fingers crossed::

I probably won’t make it too far today, seeing as it is already 3p. But I’ll get moving and out of town and camp on some BLM land, then attack the big climb I have coming up (4700’+) tomorrow, up to Crawford Pass.

As I was packing up my bike, a van pulled into the tent site area…they were having the same difficulty figuring out the numbering as I was. Turns out there is a yurt-in-progress in one of the tent sites, so while the map shows 7, there really are only 6. In any case, we chatted for quite a while. They’re a couple from Spain who have been traveling in their van for about 8 months if I recall…they’re heading to Zion, and then up in the direction I’m headed, so perhaps our paths will cross again! I’m excited to eat the mango they gave me in exchange for two bananas that I didn’t want to carry…and to try this recipe for a backcountry Spanish omelet.

I also heard from someone who is a couple weeks ahead of me, in northern Utah, that he had to reroute around some pretty substantial snow up in the mountains. So we will see what the next few weeks have in store…I