I woke up and went for a really long run. 54 minutes to be exact. And I suffered. The whole way. Partly because I was tired and partly because I was dehydrated but mostly just because I am not training very much and every time I go out it is a bit of a shock to my system.
I met Paulo back at the gaff, checked out and we went to do our laundry.
Then it was time for lunch, so we went to the only place you should go in St George, Utah - the Bear Paw Cafe!
Don't get me wrong, the sambos were great, the service was good and the coffee was brilliant but we should have known that the bitterness would follow. And it did.
We got back on to 15 and continued north, hoping to make it past SLC and into Ogden for the night. We drove for several hours and stopped at Applebees to eat as it was the most healthy option.
Now, I am used to being carded a lot over here, especially in restaurants. And I understand why they do it. But in Applebees in Utah, you get carded twice. Yes, twice. We sat down, I asked for a run down of the beers and ordered one. The guy asked me for my ID. No bother. He goes off to get the drinks and a girl comes up to the table and asks for our IDs. I told her that we already ordered and that the waiter had checked my ID. It didn't matter. She had to check it again - the auld 'double card'. I couldn't let that go and had to ask her what the f*ck was going on. It seems that Applebees in Utah have had a lot of problems with under age drinking and a few of them even lost their liquor licenses so now you get carded twice. What a ridiculous state.
We managed to eat and get back on 15N (not a second too soon) and drove some more. The sun set and we kept driving. We past SLC and were about 40 miles from Ogden when we hit something with the car. Something big. Really big. And it made a really loud noise, scaring the bejaysus out of both of us. I was pretty sure there were no deer on I-15 so I figured that it must have been a flat tire. We pulled over immediately to check it out. All the tires were fine. We walked around to the front of the car and saw that the plastic tray under the engine had almost been ripped off completely and the bumper was cracked. WTF!? Two other cars had pulled over in front of us and then two more pulled over behind us. We were baffled. What the hell was going on? Then the police arrived. It turns out that some douchebag had two mountain bikes on a bike rack on his car and the rack snapped. The bikes fell onto the motorway and we (along with about six others) ran over them. Pity too, because I later heard that they were both worth about 2000 dollars. And just to add insult to injury (literally) the owner had wrapped one of them around a tree earlier in the day.
Fortunately, we were both totally fine. But we were a bit shaken up. Paulo got on to Dollar straight away and we had to drive the car another mile to the nearest petrol station to fill out a police report. Long story, short - more hassle with Dollar. But in the end Paulo managed to get through to someone with some intelligence and some authority who told us that a new car would be sent to us tomorrow. She also agreed to have Dollar foot the bill for our hotel room for the night. While we would have both loved to large it up and stay in a palace, we weren't in the form. So we settled for a Best Western.
One of the police officers gave me a mini Rambo knife and I cut the rest of the under tray off and threw it into the back seat. We drove there very slowly to the hotel and checked in for the night. We were both exhausted and fell asleep almost straight away.
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