Day 13

Did you hear the story about the two peanuts that went for a walk in the park after dark? In a nutshell, one was a salted. If any word describes Day 13 of the 2018 Prefrontal Tour, it's "salted". We got on the road a bit later than usual, but not by much. It was enough time, however, for the sun to be showing over the horizon, and it makes for a brutal start to the day to be riding eastward into the rising sun. It was cold enough to see our breath for the first time on the Tour, too. We started seeing salt flats fairly quickly after leaving Reno, just little low-lying depressions in the fields alongside the road, growing larger as we rode east. Eventually, they turned into great salt pans extending in all directions, some dry and some partially filled with mirror-smooth water, glistening white here, and the mottled gray of late spring lake ice there. I was surprised at the smell, sort of a "savory sulfur" as if you left a Thanksgiving turkey on the counter for a week, then stuffed and roasted it anyway. I didn't expect salt to smell because it doesn't support much in the way of biology. About 10 miles later, we passed a geothermal hot spring, bubbling up out of the ground and draining away across the desert in a long, steaming trace. That was what we had started smelling 10 miles back, and at the source it was overpowering. There was the inevitable mixture of western scenery - rocks, mountains, valleys, more rocks. But the salt dominated the day. Even though the Great Salt Lake is in Utah, most of the ride through Nevada was over and through every kind of salty substance. It was blowing in the air, it was encrusted on fence posts and roadside rubbish, it was caked on the back of ATVs and side-by-sides that were being towed down the highway, going to or coming from some off-road adventure. I could only imagine what that does to a vehicle. At one point we rode past Deeth Starr Valley, and I thought of Sean Bridgeford and his passion for science fiction. Close enough, right? We saw snow again in Utah as we came through Emigrate Pass, closer now but still a few thousand feet above us. We drove past the Bonneville Salt flats but they're not visible from the road. Just huge flat gray salt pans marked everywhere with tire tracks, campfire remnants, and small rocks arranged in various initials and romantic gestures. The flats are rock hard and safe to drive on when dry, but turn to a slushy mess when wet - it's obvious not everybody understands that... There are plenty of tire tracks that start out at the edge and then end abruptly in four deep wheel holes, sometimes with a plastic bumper still lodged in the salt, having been abandoned when the vehicle was recovered. Just before arriving in Salt Lake City we saw a semi trailer completely overturned on a laser straight roadway and we wondered what could possibly do such a thing. More on that tomorrow. On a final note, I realized midway through the ride that I haven't thought of work for several days, and after the last several years, that's a welcome change. Onward and upward.

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