Tour of Utah

I hope everyone had a great weekend.  Brad and I made the most of ours!  We got an early start to our day on Saturday and headed out for a ride.  We biked up City Creek Canyon this time.  It's a 5.7 mile ride up the canyon, but it's quite a bit steeper than Emigration Canyon.  The last mile of the climb was HARD!  The ride was convenient since on odd days the canyon road is closed to cars, so a lot of people were out with their dogs, on bikes, and there was even a trail running race going on.  Unfortunately, we had to obey the speed limit on the way down which was 15 mph...our hands hurt from braking almost as bad as our legs hurt from climbing.  After our ride, we ran some quick errands and picked up some meat to make our own beef jerky.  Our landlords left behind their dehydrator and Brad and I are both beef jerky lovers.  I used to own a dehydrator in college and we actually used to make beef jerky in our dorm (anyone remember that in JB?).  Anyways, Brad mixed together two different marinades for the beef and we let it sit in the fridge overnight.  We then jumped on our bikes and headed to see the Tour of Utah.  The Tour is said to be one of the top 3 best professional bike races in the country.  It has 5 stages and let me tell you, it's intense!  The last stage is from Park City to Snowbird - so after descending from Park City, the riders have to climb Little Cottonwood Canyon which has 8-12 % grades!  We got to watch stage 4, which was a 7.4 mile loop that the riders raced around 11 times.  Part of the course was not far from our house, so we biked over and stationed ourselves under the shade of a tree.  Spectators next to us told us to be really careful and not to sit too close to the curb since the riders come flying downhill around the corner and are only inches away from the curb (precisely where we were sitting).  Our spectator neighbors also told us we had found really good seats to watch the stage and they were absolutely right!  When the lead pack came around the corner, it was amazing!  They were flying!  Soon after they flew past us, their support cars came flying around the corner at insane (dangerous) speeds.  About a minute later, the peloton came flying by and even more support cars for them.  It was very exciting and totally caused goosebumps for me.  We stayed to watch 3 or 4 more laps in that area before moving up to the President's Circle on the University's campus where we could see the riders climb a hill.  As the race went on the peloton moved closer to the lead group as well as more riders fell off the peloton pack.  We're not sure if there was a crash or if people were just hurting, but I felt so bad for these lonely riders trying to finish the stage on their own.  I have some video of the event for all you blog readers!

Above is the lead pack.

Here's the peloton!

Here's the lead pack climbing in the President's Circle.

And then down the other side.

On Saturday night, Brad and I ventured out to try sushi in SLC.  The place we tried, Kyoto was very busy and without reservations they could only seat us at the sushi bar - which was fine with us!  I'll be honest, the sushi wasn't anywhere near as good as it is in Providence, but the eel roll was decent.  Brad liked the sushi better than I did, so I may use this year to try different (non-sushi) items on Japenese menus.

On Sunday, Brad and I ventured out for another ride on our road bikes (Brad's mtb bike was getting tuned) and we did Emigration Canyon again.  We really worked the downhill and had a lot of fun flying down the canyon's 7+ miles.  Later on while Brad's beef jerky was dehydrating, we went to the pool to catch some rays and swim some laps.

Brad's beef jerky in the process of dehydrating.

The weekend isn't yet over, but I think Brad and I made the most of our weekend.  We're about to make some beef satays for dinner and then relax for the rest of the night to prepare us for the week ahead.  Our 5 am wake up call is SOOO early, but I hope this week will be a bit easier for me than last week.