Etter Olson 2020 Look Back

Perhaps like everyone, we had PLANS for 2020: international research (a collaboration with a Palestinian cycling club), bike tours, laid back bikepacking trips and more intense races. We planned to ride around things (Great Salt Lake, the Cedar Mountains, and Minnesota), through things (really big trees in Big Sur and the arches around Moab), across things (the Flint Hills of Kansas and the state of Utah) and over things (clear sandstone in Capitol Reef and endless gravel roads of the West Desert). In short, we hoped to ride the Waheela Cs through as many adventures as we could.

Perhaps we should have taken the first day of our March tour through Big Sur as an indication of what was to come.

Central Coast Tour (March 2-8)

We left Fairfax in the cold, and by the time we had crossed the bridge into San Francisco, it had started raining, and raining hard. The state needed the rain, we didn’t. We took 6 days to ride from Fairfax to Santa Monica. Rolling along the beaches, over bridges, and through the forests of Big Sur. News of the pandemic chased us down the coast. On the last day of the tour, we learned that our spring break (we’re both professors) would be extended and we would be teaching remotely for the rest of the semester. We sat on the Santa Monica pier contemplating our return to Salt Lake City. Should we just keep riding? Skip the drive home and head to Vegas by bike? Alas, there was work to do, courses to prep. As we left LA, we heard news that restaurants would start closing. In Vegas, we saw people crowding the sidewalks for the last time as casinos closed the next day. We made it home just as travel and gathering restrictions were put in place here. We settled in to bend the curve and keep ourselves, and those around us, safe.

#TWCC2020 (July 11-18)

As everything got cancelled, we started dreaming up things that we could do close to home, and ways to try to bring other people into the adventure without actually riding together. We needed something to plan for, something to train for. The answer? This Week Contains Centuries. We’d ride 7 centuries in 7 days. For most of them, we’d leave from the front door (and sometimes swing back home to check on our foster dog who we weren’t sure could be left alone for so long) and we’d finish each day with a beer on the patio of a local brewery or some ice cream from the local ice cream shop. We encouraged people to plan their own big rides that week and make per mile pledges to organizations focused on racial equity, justice, and representation. And so, with the plan in place, we took 7 rides in 7 days, each of them just over 100 miles long. In a year that seemed to go on forever, we put 7 centuries into a week.

Emigration Near the Equinox (September 20)56

The year dragged on. Summer turned toward fall and in that moment of balance, with 12 hours of night and 12 hours of day, I (Brent) asked a question. How many times could I ride up and down Emigration Canyon between sunrise and sunset? The climb is a staple for cyclists in Salt Lake, not super steep or super long (7.6 miles and 1,286 feet of elevation gain) and the road had been closed all summer while they repaved it. At dawn, I left the park at the base of the canyon and started climbing, and descending, and climbing, and descending. Twelve hours later I stopped with an answer to his question: just over 10.

Stupid Pony Gravel Race (October 2)

Two weeks later, 28 or so other riders and I waited, hidden by the pre-dawn dark and distanced from each other at the start line of the Stupid Pony, a gravel race along the old Pony Express route across Utah. The 217 mile route included a couple miles of pavement, finely ground dust, some climbs that seemed endless, and 7 miles of washboards that fit right in with the rest of 2020. We worked to keep our distance at the start line, but on the road, in the big emptiness of the west desert, fellow riders were a rare and distant sight. Seventeen hours later, again in the dark, I rolled onto the old Air Force base in Wendover, on the far western edge of the state, picked up a finisher’s horseshoe, ate a couple slices of pizza, and promptly fell asleep on the porch of the Officer’s Hall. In the morning, Connie joined for a recovery ride in the emptiness of the Salt Flats.

Belgian Waffle Ride - Cedar City (October 17)

We’ve been trying to link up with our friend Toby (“Why doesn't anyone ride crits anymore”) H. for a cycling adventure for years, but the timing and travel (he lives in Indiana) has never quite worked out. So, when he called us last November (2019) and said he wanted to come out to ride the Cedar City edition of BWR, it didn’t take us long to find a way to make it work. Eventually, it became exceedingly clear that it didn’t make sense to travel all the way across the country for a day of bike racing. So, Toby stayed home and did his own big ride in Indianapolis while we headed south for another ride over gravel through the desert. Honestly we felt ambivalent about the ride and all the people in the midst of the pandemic. We kept our distance from the groups that formed and were diligent with our masks while we enjoyed the views, dirt, single track, and occasional hike-a-bike. 124 miles after the start, we finished with the requisite celebratory beer at the brewery.

In the end, we each managed to put almost 5,000 miles on the Waheelas this year, including time on pavement, gravel, singletrack, and some time stuck on the trainer (hiding during Zoom meetings). We missed our friend who couldn’t travel, so we raced in masks without him through Southern Utah and lamented the cancelled events and plans. We had adventures and covered miles close to home. We learned more of the streets in our neighborhood and the roads through the Salt Lake Valley and the Wasatch Mountains. In a year that asked us to respond to unexpected circumstances, we needed our bikes to match our creativity and needed them to be ready for whatever we threw at them. The Waheelas were.