12. Dugway

Cresting a slight rise in the barren landscape I saw on the track far ahead a figure moving with great animation. As I approached I saw it was a huge man dressed only in shorts and T- shirt doing exercises in the road.  My brain searched for possible explanations for him being her but could come up with none.  An instinct made me wary and I stopped some distance from him to ask if he was alright.  He came towards me in an aggressive manner shouting 
        ' O.K. ,yeah 'corse I'm O.K.' 
I noticed a strange shape to his head and limbs which suggested some congenital condition.  I took fright and skirted around him accelerating.  I never did come across anyone who had seen or heard of him.

By the end of the next day I was hot, tired and sticky.  I was reduced to 10 mph by a horribly corduroyed road and the fact that a front shock absorber was leaking.  There were millions of black crickets on the ground- hundreds were dying under the front wheel.  I crunched my way into Simpson Springs campsite ,once an important post on the Pony route as there is water available.  In those days it was shipped to other points along the way- now it is considered unfit to drink.  I met Dave a big, burly, bearded guy who was out here with his kids to ride dune buggies.

“Yep, they’re called Mormon Crickets”, he said.  “Nearly wiped out the Mormons before a flock of seagulls came along and ate them”.

“You see those buildings off in the distance?  That’s the Dugway proving ground, all the nastiest chemical and biological weapons are tested down there in an area maybe 60 by 30 miles.  It’s more polluted than Chernobyl”.

In Ibabah the only food I had been able to find was canned.  I had selected four types of beans.  Tiredness had made me hungry and I finished the last one for supper.

That night lights flashed and muffled bangs were audible as Dugway set off its explosives and poisonous gasses.  In the tent at Simpson Springs I was giving them good competition.

When I rejoined civilization at Lehi south of Salt Lake City, the verdant growth, shining lake and towering ramparts of the Wasatch Front brought the strains of “America the Beautiful” into my head.  Central Salt Lake itself was a model of cleanliness and order centering on Cathedral Square, the world center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.  I visited the Mormon visitors center several times watching movies about their beliefs and history.  They certainly were professionally produced, well scripted and moving- at the end of one the Kleenex were being liberally passed around to sobbing viewers, but I left still confused about their beliefs.  I got to eat fresh cooked food and the bike got new seals and a new tire so we were in fine shape for the next section of the journey.