I'm about to leave (2 hour drive) for the salt but it looks like the winds (in Wendover, anyway) are varying between 20 and 40 mph. Doesn't sound like good conditions to race bikes in. But I'll be there as soon as I get stuff thrown into the Burb.
The attached fotos aren't quite a bike-related, but it's the type of thing I spent shooting yesterday...and that's a whole nuther story. The shot that shows the "gardens" (Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah) gives ya an idea how much the terrain varied in altitude. The only way to get back to the entrance/exit (there's one other exit, but it's just as bad) is to either climb back up that hill or do a 2 mile forced march around the paths trying to dodge little old blue-haired ladies in golf carts. I spose I should have rented one myself. I didn't feel like giving Alan Ashton (the guy who got rich by selling Word Perfect to Novell) any more of my money, so I took the frontal assault route. Had to do it in 3 stages. I wasn't sure I was gonna make the last one. (Most people know about my heart trouble...but I've only got one functional coronary artery and a lot of my heart muscle is "dead." I get short of breath bending over to tie my shoes.) But I made it to the top and got the hell outta there. The climb was sorta like the obstacle/infiltration courses I went thru in basic training...but I was 19 then. Today I'm only about ten years older than my chronological age states...and I have that in writing in my medical records. BMW (bitch, moan, whine.)
Ohh...the garden foto makes it look like there were only a few cars present. Not the case. They were clustered in little clearings along pathways that sorta resembled a green (lotta water gets used in irrigating those lawns, trees and flowers...look at the very back of the shot...the desert and sagebrush is the natural landscape) corn maze. And the place was crammed with untamed house apes who, in typical Utah fashion, were allowed to run wild and create havoc wherever they went. I got to the point where I told one mother (brood mare, more or less) that if she ever lost her 5-year old son, all she had to do was look thru the lens of my camera and he'd be right there. Then there was a story one guy told me about an unsupervised kid rolling Coke bottles down the hoods of priceless classic cars....I'd go on with this rant, but I gotta split.
See ya on the salt,