Payson, Utah

We woke up at 5:30 to begin our day to Payton, Utah. We were told during circle up that we were going to have to go as quickly as possible to get to our destination due to sponsored activities we were having later that day. I started my ride today with Travis Turner, a senior at Georgia Tech, and Blake Neuman, a sophomore at Texas Christian University. Once we got on the bikes, our day started going down hill. The roads we started our day on in Delta were absolutely horrible for our bikes. They were very rough, which put a lot of wear on our tires. Within 8 miles our pace line was on the side of the road repairing Travis’s flat tire, his first of the summer. Travis was very frustrated because he has gone a long time without changing a flat, and he had an unenjoyable ride the day before. Not only ½ mile later we had to stop to help two other guys fix a problem with their chain, and help another fix a flat. Once that problem was fixed, I quickly got a flat tire. It was a horrible way to start the morning. On top of all of that, I felt extremely congested which made riding pretty tough.

After about 20 miles I made it to the third crew stop and had to rack my bike for the day. I am hoping that I can make it through the 80 mile ride tomorrow, 30 mile ride the day after and then enjoy my day off in Park City.

Once we arrived in Payson, we staged up in a park with a local group, and an amazing young lady I had the pleasure of meeting today, Natalie Green. Natalie is an 12 year old girl who suffers with Cerebral Palsy and Epilepsy but still gets out on her trike and rides often. She has won 3 gold medals in the Special Olympics, and has a little sassy attitude to go along with it. Natalie, and the rest of the crew, a group of cyclist rode with us through the town of Payson to our lodging, which was a great experience. She found so much joy in this short ride, and also managed to take out one of my team members, which turned out to be pretty funny.

Matt Docimo and Michael Brooks with Natalie in her custom built trike! 

To end the day we are just hanging out, doing laundry and running errands. After getting my laundry done, we had a casual team dinner together, and then had our weekly team meeting which generally last 1 1/2 hours. During this weeks meeting we talked a lot about road safety, and expressed some feelings and emotions we had faced thus far on the trip. 

Pretty excited to go to Salt Lake City tomorrow, another new experience for me.