Grand Adventure Roadtrip – Day 10 to 13

The adventure – roadtrip from the East Coast to the Grand Canyon and back.

The goals:

• Bicycle in every state we drive through.
• Visit as many national parks as we can.
• Celebrate the wins… a roadtrip isn’t a roadtrip without some ‘misses’.

Today’s lesson

Mother Nature can humble you faster than you anticipate.

She doesn’t care how much planning and preparation you put into an adventure.

Higher than normal temperatures in the Grand Canyon resulted in heat exhaustion for two of our crew. This was on the way down (the “easy” part).

Many lessons were learned on this adventure. Some of those were:

• Heat exhaustion doesn’t always make an appearance as a gradual process. The grit and determination of a person can mask the onset.
• The longer you spend planning a trip, the greater the risk of tunnel vision at execution time. Future trips will include a beginning step of:
  • pause
  • Clinically evaluate the real-time scenarios and outcomes based on existing factors (weather, trail conditions, group readiness including pre-trip sleeping habits and post-travel health)
  • Adjust or abandon the adventure as appropriate
• The National Park Service rangers rock. Listen to their advice.

Today’s win

Everyone lived.

Well, except for a few toenails but those will grow back.