One week to go!

A week from today I'll hopefully be nearing Zion National Park. Two weeks from today I'll hopefully be home. WOOHOO!!!! Today has been a beautiful fall day, so far. I got up a little after 6am and watched the sun come up on the hills across the way from my window before getting out of bed and frying up some sweet potato pancakes for breakfast. Different, but tasty. It was an experiment from the Moosewood Cookbook. :)

By 8am I was on my way out the door with Bici to drive up to the turn-off for Virginia Lakes on 395. I parked in a little pull-out in front of an abandoned restaurant and set out (or should I say up?) on my bike ride for the day: 6 miles to Virginia Lakes, 6 miles back. Of that 6 miles on the way there, 5.5 of them were uphill. It was intense, and I was feeling the altitude the whole way, panting intermittently, but I made it up in about 50 minutes. On the way I was awed by the bright yellow aspens, their dry leaves crackling and clapping in the breeze as I rode by; I enjoyed the sight of a couple young and healthy deer crossing the road, leaping up over the embankment and off into the trees - they had escaped the hunters so far; I paused in my cadence to watch a large hawk stretch out its broad wings and coast just out of reach above me. It was a beautiful, if not incredibly difficult, ride.

 At the top, I chatted with a fisherman who was rather startled to see me there. "You rode your bike up here?" Yes. "All the way from the bottom?" Yes. "You rode up the hill! How many times did you stop?" I didn't. "Wow!" I wouldn't have been able to start again if I did. "That's true. When did you start?" About 9 o'clock. "Wow, so you must've made it up in about 45 minutes!" Fifty, yeah. "I bet that was tough." Yeah, but the way down is going to be awesome.

After finishing off my first water bottle and eating half a Clif Bar, I stretched out a bit, and hopped back on the bike. The way down was awesome. I reached a maximum speed of 40.1mph and coasted comfortably most of the way between 25 and 30 mph. On one flatter section I paused in my cadence to take a deep breath through my nose: I smelled autumn. There is a distinctive, leaf-decaying odor that I associate with fall but which doesn't really exist in Bodie. I breathed it in again and again before the road took a turn and began to plummet down at a steeper grade and I was back to pedaling and steering.

I rounded another corner and saw a deer far ahead on the road. But wait - if that was a deer, it was incredibly fat and shaggy. I got closer to it and realized it was a bear. You're supposed to yell when you see a bear. "Go on! Get outta here! Move along! That's right! Git on!" The bear looked straight at me, then turned and galloped into the trees, followed closely by two, smaller bears. Not only did I just see a bear in the wild for only the third time in my life, but I just ousted a momma bear and two cubs. On a bicycle. Rock on.

Back at Bodie, I've been relaxing the rest of the day. I took a shower, a nap, a bath; I called my mom; I cooked up my favorite soup so that I can eat it for supper a bit later. I have plans to do lots of laundry - to go through all my clothes and wash everything that needs washing so that I can pack it all clean. I expect to do at least two loads. Tonight I want to watch a movie and work on my quilt. I'm all about relaxing today. After all, it's my last weekend in Bodie. I ought to just soak it in.