Road Trip Adventure -- Part IV

Or so we thought.  It was about two in the morning when S woke me up.  The wind had gotten worse.  A glance to the west indicated that a storm was moving in.  The little offshoot road we had driven up to hide between the gravel piles was just the sort of road that washes out in a quick downpour.  Flipping through the local radio stations revealed that the incoming storm was a bad one, and all truckers had been ordered off the highways.

Well, great.

We closed up the camper, got back in the truck, and headed towards the interstate (the route we had initially decided against in an effort to avoid backtracking).

The interstate at night is often a lonely place.  The interstate at night when the truckers have all been ordered to pull over is The Twilight Zone.  It is a foreboding place, and S was fighting the wind the whole way into Little America, which is a truck stop that calls itself a town.  On the plus side, it was level, and we were pretty sure we weren't going to be attacked by Cyberdyne drones in the middle of the night.

The following morning we headed off for a historical tour of Fort Bridger, then drove the rest of the way into Park City to have dinner with S's family friends.  They were also kind enough to loan us two of their bathrooms for some real showers!

Park City, we discovered, has great mountain biking.  Through this and our prior trip, I had been on several rented mountain bikes, but none that I liked as much as the early-90s Trek ZX 970 that I got from Dad when he upgraded.  It's a steel-framed hardtail, and tracks like a dream.

At the bike shop in Park City, though, I rented a Scott Contessa Spark Plus, and it's the only one of all the bikes I've ridden that can give the Trek a run for its money.  (My favorite feature: the handlebar push-button lock-out for both the front and back shocks.)  The guys at the shop refused to sell it to us though!  S was beside himself.  "This is a bike shop, right?  And you make your money from selling bikes?  Do you often tell people who offer to buy one of your bikes that you will not sell it to them?"  It was comical.

After doing a bit of research on the bike, I learned that I was not the only person who was in awe of the machine.  That particular model sold like hotcakes, and there are very few available on the new-bike market.  Scott had not at that time announced the features for the next version of that bike, so people were snapping up the known commodity and not letting it go.  Including the bike shop.  Just my luck.

That night, we headed into Salt Lake City for dinner with A&L.  What a treat to have A's delicious Pakistani food again!  It wasn't long before he was extolling the virtues of SLC and trying to get us to move there.  He might be on to something!  It was a lovely night with old friends.