Hopkins 4K for Cancer

July 19, 2003

History Lessons Glore
Cedar City, UT to Panaca, NV



The running joke is that we bring rain everywhere we go. Today we managed to bring rain to Cedar City, Utah, where it had not rained since April. It was just a drizzle, but enough to get us wet, and it was in this drizzle that we started off our day. Our new friend Lenny, the bishop of his church, and the bishop’s wife cooked us the good hot breakfast that we ate outside while huddled under a balcony that protected us from the rain. During the breakfast, Lenny gave us words of encouragement as well as six copies of the Book of Mormon!



After the breakfast, we pushed off, but not without running into a few problems. Gloria discovered that she could not shift out of her smallest front chain ring, but fortunately, the bike shop was able to take care of that problem. In addition, the rain had made the road slick and Matt and Katie had a fender bender. Neither one of them was seriously injured, but Katie had to take the rest of the day off.



Somewhere along the way, we decided that we should all ride together today and form Team Everyone, so we did just that after leaving from our hour long break for milk shakes at Beryl Junction. For lunch, we stopped in Modena, a ghost town that presented us with our only opportunity to find shade for miles and miles. We pulled in and saw a bunch of abandoned buildings, including a hotel and the Last Chance Saloon (the irony abounds). We saw signs for a store called Forces, and, curious to what kind of store we’d find, we followed them. The storeowner saw us and invited us to use the store’s yard to eat. He had moved to Modena five months ago from the big city of St. George, UT in hopes of starting a museum to showcase the town’s history. (You can check out pictures of Modena here.) We were only eight miles from the border, and none of us felt like riding in the heat, so we took a long lunch break and talked to the storeowner. It turns out that during our lunch break, Modena’s population increased fivefold because of our presence!



At the Nevada border, we all stopped to take a group picture. Then, we climbed Panaca summit and coasted down the other side into Panaca. We stayed at the Lincoln County High School. We had a delicious Dutch oven dinner. (If you have never had food cooked in a Dutch oven, you are missing out.) It turns out that one of the gentlemen who cooked for us had a great grandfather who came to Utah with Brigham Young. In the evening, he told lots of stories about the history of the area. Most people chose to do bike maintenance during this time, but I found these stories very fascinating and I chose to listen to them instead. There will be plenty of time to do bike maintenance in the next couple of days because we will be riding through the most remote areas that we will see during the entire trip, and so we will not have the chance to hear many stories.



Rajeev Mahajan