Payson, Nephi, Fountain Green, Spring City

Rather than try to relate the entire last week on the road, I'll give you snapshots of the people and places who've collided with the SHAKE YOUR PEACE! Caravan:
Sarah Wagstaff is a meteorilogical phenomenon known popularly as ball lightning: a small orb of white heat that hovers freely through the countryside, electrifying whatever it touches. Sarah Wagstaff is 1/2 Tinkerbell, 1/2 Arnold Schwartzenegger. She's pixie, she's barbarian. She's 100% awesome. During the ride she told me about being a frontline wildland firefighter, a competitive gymnast, and her bicycle trip from Alaska to Florida last year. Me: "What was the longest bike trip you'd BEEN on before you did the Alaska to Florida trip?" Sarah: "Down the street to the store." In a nutshell: hardcore nut the size of a nutshell. Chew on it.

Matt Cline's 6'7 or something, and spent a bunch of time working as a river guide on the Snake (he prounounces it "snek"), and the Colorado, among other large creeks (which is "crick" to Matt). I basically loved hearing him say anything because he's gotta hella thick Utah accent - tounge curled way back in the mouth swallowing the consonants like they were grapes lobbed from 20 feet back. I call the way he talks Clinese (Kline-eeez).
Unfortunately for us, he eventually had to take off to lead a wilderness therapy group out in the desert for a week.
Once when we were riding down Hwy 6 Matt found a scary looking black knife laying among the exploded truck tires and roadkill. He picked it up, squinted out at the sagebrush and muttered in Clinese: "M'glad I gotta knife now. I been eyeing that sagebrush, now I can use this to start me a fire a little later." Me and Sarah just stood there in admiration.

My dad's basically an older much hipper version of me, but he's stronger, and has more grandchildren than I do - otherwise, same. Last summer, my dad and I took a 200+ mile walk along the "Camino de Santiago" in Northern Spain. Now we're biking twice that far through Central and Southern Utah, which is a lot like Spain, if you're having acid flashbacks.

Sarah's aunt and uncle put us up in Payson. They shared their raisin bran and bought us pizza and ignited the ping pong table like it was pongsoline.

In the morning we packed up and discovered there's plenty of ways to haul your shit, none of which require a car, all of which require being awesome: Sarah rocks the B.O.B. trailer, Matt rocks homemade bucket panniers & the fantastical mandolin/unicorn set-up.

How do you rock your bike? www.rockthebike.com check out how other people rock theirs!

At one point we accidentally pedaled 6 miles in the wrong direction, down Highway 6, til about 66 minutes into it we were like - Um... is that the Hotel California? I think we're going West, we want to be going South...... But in getting out into western Utah we stumbled upon the much sought after final resting place of the Arc of the Covenant. Don't tell Indiana Jones or the Nazi's though!
Actually, it was a yellow stone army fortress that the Mormon's had built back into the hillside in the mid 1800's when the US Calvary was going to invade those Mormon "religious insurgents" who were threatening the very morals and freedom of our beloved U-nited Stytes. The US Gov wasn't keen on the polygamy thing you see. They were shoutin: "It's 7 brides for SEVEN brothers!" Utah responded: "We don't care how you Yanks do it back East!" and sang: "If you can't beee, with the one you loooove, honey, love the 10 your with!"

Eventually though, "Operation One Wife 4evr" was succesful, and Utah decided to change their tune: "O beautiful, for spacious skies..." and now Utah's a state.

Cherry trees and sage perfumed the air with their own red and green songs, and the wind let it be known that it could give a shit about polygamy or monogamy - it was erotically rolling itself in every fuzzy nook and cranny of every foothill and fruitstand and bee-wing, splaying itself out on our faces and spinning the gnats around in salty tornados across the valleys.

We talked to some "necks" (that's Matt Cline-ese for "redneck") out in front of the Lisa's Country Kitchen when we got into Nephi that night at 10pm. They couldn't believe that we were carrying so much shit on these tiny little bicycles. I couldn't believe they were carrying hardly any shit in thier giant ass trucks. But we all had laughs and got along fine. The waitress came out to check out our beastful bikes and I took the opportunity to ask her what the kids around here did for fun. "Oh, we cruise the filleds. Steal stop signs. Hang around." I asked her what she meant by "filleds." "You know, the filleds, out in the filleds." We all realized at the same time she meant "fields." And we dug it. The Utah accent strikes again.

Here we are waking up in a filled.

As we labored up a red canyon, we passed a fine swimming hole. Matt and Sarah stripped down and went skinny dipping - mud going up almost to their knees as they waded in.
Our buddy Rachel Gianni joined us for a stretch in Fountain Green.

[the following is a SHAKE YOUR PEACE! story about grandma's and lemonade. If you don't like Norman Rockwell, skip this section: Her grandma and mom came out onto the porch and kindly asked us if we wanted some ice-cold homemade lemonade. Thinking I knew a thing or two I told Rachel's grandma: "I'll have just this much" holding my fingers two inches apart. "Are you sure?" Grandma said. "I'm sure," I said, and grandma just looked at me with one raised eyebrow. But she politely went in and brought us each out our glasses of lemonade.
I held the cold glass in my hand and sipped once. Rational thought left my brains, I automatically downed it as fast as a slap in the face, so stunned by it's shocking goodness I was just kind of bewildered, sheepishly looking down at the 2 naked ice cubes while my eyes scanned the bottom for any lemonade droplets that might still be beaded up somewhere behind them. Then I saw an old white hand close around the glass and lift it out of my hands. I watched as Grandma went back inside smiling and shaking her head, refilling it to the top this time.]

This is a video of the 4 of us cruising down Main St. in Fountain Green. It's a lot like Times Square in Manhattan, minus everything, plus sheep in people's yards.
Matt knew a "shortcut" that took us 7 miles out of the way. But thank God he did. 7 miles out of the way is a town called Mt. Pleasant. There's metal tables and chairs out in front of the "Sleaze Cafe," that are perfect for dirty bicyclists to sit in, to pull peanut butter and bread out of dusty panniers in, and to drink cool water in. We learned these things through experience, which, next to graffiti on the sides of freight trains, is a tip-top teacher.

While we talked about our plan of biking into Ephraim, in the span of 1 hour no less than 4 people from the local boarding high school came to convince us to play for them and the students. Every one of them independently offered us their house to stay in, food, company, conversation. The sheer generosity and goodness of the people convinced us we had to stick around. Who are these folks? What the hell's in this water? What is this place?
The answers are: The Wasatch Academy, trace minerals, and the smallest little liberal enclave in Utah around.

With tears in our eyes we bid adieu to dear Sarah Wagstaff, and Matt and I took off our shoes and walked out onto the campus commons, whose grass felt so nice and cold against our raisined feet. Enjoying the falling sun, and the energy of the high school kids skateboarding, and hanging out together, we threw frisbee with Vipp and Beckah - the science and environmental studies teachers. They picked us a large bouquet of kale and spinach from their school's garden for dinner that night, and Beckah told us about how she ran her diesel car on grease from the cafeteria. I love these people!

A dear friend of Matt's joined us named Summer Peterson. Summer is a large-animal veternarian and if I were a horse I'd definitely feel comfortable asking her to be my family's doctor. Hay! In her good company we rode through the beautiful valley toward her parents home in Spring City, 7 miles away. "The thing I love about this valley," said Matt, "is that it smells like turkeys."

[Honor-System Economics moment: We made a stop along the way at Joe Bennion's pottery shop, which he leaves open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, (he's usually not there) filled with thousands of dollars worth of his exquisite pottery, with nothing more than price stickers on the pieces, and a couple metal boxes where people can put their money and make their own change. In addition to being a professional potter, Joe also river guides in the Grand Canyon and the Colorado, and is a father to three lovely daughters. I got to meet - Adah 19 - earlier that day at Wasatch Academy, and I'd met - Zina 27? - who was involved with BYU Alternative Commencement. If I were Mormon, I'd ask them both on dates for sure!]

Matt and I ate a fine spinach, kale dinner with the gracious Peterson's, and stayed up late listening to Summer play Gillian Welch and other achey/beautiful/country music on her guitar and fiddle. Matt got lulled to sleep next to the big brown dog where he and the dog stayed til morning - Matt muttering Clinese in his sleep. I climbed up to the upstairs guest room/star observatory and slept on top of the sheets stead of in em. in my sleeping bag. Familiarity I guess. Summer probably slept out in the "filleds" with the rest of the country lullaby crooning spirits and nymphs...