utah. you're incredible.

i'm currently sitting in a hotel room. air conditioning. tv. shower. bed. it's amazing. we are currently in escalante, utah. the restaurants and stores here have a very austin-like feel to them which is surprising for such a small town in the middle of nowhere.

unfortunately, i got an email from at&t saying that i've been using too much off-network data and if i continue doing this, they'll drop me. i take all of my pictures on my phone and then email them to myself and upload them onto blogspot. well, i can't do that anymore and for some reason my phone isn't compatible with this computer. so... this post won't have any photos. hopefully i'll find a way to get them before my next post.

anyway -- i am so sad to be done with colorado. i absolutely fell in love with it. on our rest day in telluride, we ended up going mountain biking. i will never get on a mountain bike again. actually, they say one of the best places to mountain bike is telluride so i probably shouldn't have chosen that to be the first place i tried it. lets just say that my legs are currently black & blue. once i got back to the campsite, i told everyone i was never getting on a mountain bike again. then seth showed up in his rented full-suspension bike and i just had to try it. bad idea. now i really never will get on another mountain bike. i like my spandex, skinny tires, and riding on pavement.

when we reached the 'welcome to utah' sign, i was so sad that all i did in the picture was do a thumbs down. i was fully expecting to hate utah. well... i was so incredibly wrong. utah is absolutely incredible. i've seen the most beautiful views of the entire trip. utah is definitely a challenge though. i wasn't expecting it to be this hard. i actually think climbing the rockies was a lot easier than what we've been doing the past few days. the heat doesn't make it any easier, either. we literally tried to see if we could fry an egg on the pavement.

i can't tell you enough how much i am loving this trip. it's absolutely incredible and i am so lucky. seeing the country on a bike is the way to do it. i appreciate it so much more than i would if i were just riding in a car. i get to stop every so often and look at indian petroglyphs, waterfalls, stop at amazing overlooks, and bomb down the mountain after climbing it all day. amazing.

here is the latest video. it shows a lot of footage from kansas. the wind was insane, as you can tell from the video. enjoy.