deseret demons take saints to sinners by storm!

the event of the season has come and gone.

this last weekend peter and i participated in the saints to sinners bike relay. our team, the deseret demons, consisted of riders from all over. peter, elise, my uncle jon, and i were all locals. mark w. came from st. george, david b. from colorado, and my dad, john w., brian p., and bryan j. all came from california. if i do say so myself, we had a pretty awesome team.

bringing ten people together--many of whom did not previously know each other--all with different levels of riding experience, and many coming from out-of-state took a lot of logistical planning. we also wanted to really optimize our experience and support each rider, so it took a lot of planning to figure out who would be on the road when, who would be pacing whom, and in which cars each rider needed to be in and when. good thing we had detailed-oriented people on our team to figure everything out!

upon our team's arrival to utah on wednesday and thursday, we did our costco shopping, painted our car and RV, and got packed and ready for our 8:00am race start on friday. fyi, sending five grown men to costco to shop for a weekend of food will result in: more clif bars than we can eat, cinnamon rolls, enough gatorade to make you sick, and the additional potato chips, licorice, and someone bought some pretty gnarly looking vanilla-peach oatmeal in a can. gross. good thing my mom and i ran to the grocery store that evening to pick up plastic cups, plates, utensils, toilet paper, garbage bags, and paper towels.

8am (or rather 5:30am, which is when we woke up) came pretty quickly. we got our vehicles out to south jordan and made sure everything was ready to go for brian p. to start us off with the first leg of the race.

my mom and tina j. (also from california) were our team volunteers. and they were AWESOME. they really stepped it up big time and helped us out. they had to work at transition #2, which meant that they had to be out to Elberta (a very small town southwest of utah lake) by 6:45am and sit in the heat, with flies a-swarming around them for a good 5 hours. their jobs were to make sure all the riders had enough water and/or gatorade and to log the times of every rider's arrival into the transition. they were serious troopers. but i think that they enjoyed themselves--we walked up to their table and laid out all over it were the blueprints for my parent's new house, several home decor magazines, and tina's ipad. they really made the best of their situation and used their time sitting to have some fun! thanks again mom and tina, we really appreciate you guys being our team volunteers!

as the hours rolled on, we got more and more tired, more and more delirious, and more and more sick of eating bananas, dense carbs, and drinking gatorade. but it was sure a lot of fun. bryan j. shared lots of fun stories with us, for example, he told us about a bunch of scientists years ago that tried to make blood boil. and i think he even educated elise on varicose veins. jon h. won the award for the most driving--he seriously was the one to make sure that the vehicles always got to the transitions because everyone else was beyond coherence and any ability to drive. brian p. made sure everyone was always where they needed to be to get ready for their upcoming rides--he was definitely the brains behind the race. and mark won the award for being able to successfully complete strenuous legs of the race even after eating a greasy mcdonald's breakfast. and then there was my personal favorite inside joke of the weekend: grilled soup. yes, a few members of our team did in fact enjoy some chicken and stars soup that was "grilled to convection." beats slurping it down cold i guess :)

it really says a lot when ten people, many of whom were strangers to one another, can remain not only cordial, but in good spirits and enjoy each other's company even when it's 3:00am and everyone smells like rotten eggs. seriously. our vehicles were pretty stinky. but for some reason, when you are contributing to that terrible smell yourself, you really don't mind being around 9 other really stinky people.

and now i just need to give a shout-out to david b. he literally saved my life. for my third and last leg of the race, i was stuck with a KILLER climb right outside lake mead. it was well over 100 degrees outside and i felt like the heat was literally sucking the life out of me. combine that with the exhaustion i was feeling from riding two previous legs of the race and not sleeping all night. i was done for. and then david got out on the road with me and supported me up those terrible hills. if he hadn't gotten out there with me, i think i would have gotten off my bike, sat down on the ground and started crying. oh, and add to all of this that on saturday, david was celebrating his birthday! so thanks again, david :)

after a sleepless night, some sketchy descents in the middle of the night, and some unexpected climbs in the inexplicable heat of lake mead, we finally rolled into las vegas around 12:30pm on saturday afternoon. we rode over 500 miles (actually over 1,000 if you count the pacers we had on the road with the riders the whole time) and had no accidents or problems, and only one flat tire. i would call that a success. and we had a blast.

so . . . if you want to experience exhaustion beyond belief, the exhilaration of speeding downhill in the middle of a street in the middle of the night, and getting cozy with 9 other people in a couple of stinky cars, then you'd better start training! we can't wait to see more of our friends and family out on bikes next year at the saints to sinners bike relay!

and for your added enjoyment, don't miss this summer's blockbuster hit. coming to a theatre near you!