So, Saturday morning I woke up to find out that two of my sisters and our friend were going on a double tandem bike ride from my house up to the Herriman reservoir. They needed another rider, so I happily consented to go. Realizing that it was sunny outside, and not wanting to get a horrible tan line, but also not deeming it appropriate to wear my swimming suit as I biked across the valley, I stuck on bikers, (how fitting :)) and a tank top. We were off.
I thoroughly enjoyed that it was warm outside, not too hot, and not too cold. The reason that the Herriman reservoir was chosen to be our destination was because the ride there is primarily uphill, leaving the ride back home mostly downhill.
Tandem riding is great fun, my sister and I got our bike for Christmas a few ago and it has been well used. In fact the bike has been so well used that every once in awhile when riding the chain will get caught, if you know the bike, you can pedal backwards a certain amount and get the chain fixed while riding and continue onward with no problem. We found this obnoxiously necessary to do throughout the ride.
After riding awhile we came to the hills against the southern mountains of the valley that we needed to climb to reach our destination (Okay, we only actually had to get about a fourth the way up the mountain). We determined that this would be best achieved by obtaining as much momentum as possible and then pedaling up the hill, subsequent to the first hill we would continue climbing the other hills by just going off of brute strength…it didn’t work. The chain kept repeatedly getting caught, so while we were going uphill we would have to try and pedal backwards a bit so that we could keep riding the bike. After pedaling backwards all momentum would be gone, and we were not strong enough to continue riding…in short we looked ridiculous. Walking up the last two hills was humiliating; nevertheless, we finally made it to the reservoir.
Herriman reservoir is a quaint little place that immediately lightened my previously peeved mood that had set in while walking up the hills. I set down our bike and saw that my sister was sticking her feet in the water; because I didn’t want to take off my shoes I opted to sticking my finger in the water for a second instead. Surprisingly the water was not ice cold, I now plan on going swimming there sometime this summer. Sunny as it was we decided that perhaps we ought to put on sunscreen before venturing home.
The highlight of our adventure was the view while coasting down the mountain. We could see across the entire valley, and had nothing but cool air blowing onto our hot faces. Not being especially familiar with Herriman caused me to take a different route home than I initially had in mind, but we made it in a direct pathway avoiding hills that I thought we would have to climb on our return! Two and a half hours later I bounced into my house grateful for air conditioning. Since this escapade I look like a lobster. An uneven lobster, I am redder on the left side of my body (it took much longer to go uphill than it did down). All in all I have concluded that I had a great time, hopefully I’ll go on another bike ride again sometime this summer!
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