Sunday, July 12th, 2015

Today we had a rest day in Salt Lake City and we sure did do a huge variety of activities, but we did all start off in the morning meeting with Trudy and Kevin who are supported by the Damon Runyon Foundation. Both are professors at the University of Utah who are working on very different aspects of cancer. Trudy works on research for lung cancer, developing different treatment options. Kevin is a surgeon who operates primarily on sarcoma patients, which tend to be adolescents. We had the opportunity to speak with them about their roles and how they saw cancer. It was fascinating and we are so happy we had this time to refocus our journey and to see directly where some of our fundraising dollars go (we are still fundraising during the summer, in case you did not know! Click on the donate tab above to learn more). We are also very thankful that Trudy and Kevin provided breakfast for us this morning. Thank you so much!

After that, we were free for the rest of the day to do whatever we pleased. Some folks went to visit bike shops to get any needed supplies, while others sought out a good meal. There were many other options though. Jason, Joe, Diego, Zack and Shutian got up around 4 AM for an early morning sunrise hike near our stayover. Zack followed this up later by going up Mt. Olympus, which was quite a feat. A larger group of people, including Alex,Sarah, Hannah B and Diego went to visit the sight of the 2002 Winter Olympics. There was a great zip line course that went over the park and some folks even tried out the bobsled course.

In accordance with rest days, we also did laundry, showered, did some regular bike maintenance, slept and caught up on tv shows. We were very excited to receive mail and packages from friends and family- definitely a moral booster. If you weren’t able to send stuff to SLC, check back in the blog for our next mail drop locations/addresses.

It was a fun day and we are excited to be back on the bike tomorrow, even though most of us found that we are very fond of this new city.
-LAH