FROM: Diana van Uitert, NPEA Utah Division
PST
Dear Pony Express Rider, Member and/or Participant,
We have completed another year of carrying the mail through Utah. We handed the mail to the Nevada Division this morning at 3am, and it is half way through Nevada now. It will be delivered in Sacramento sometime tomorrow. We picked the mail up on the Wyoming border at 12:30am on Sunday morning and Team 3 under the leadership of Pat Hearty worked through the night and delivered the mail to Team 2 at Murray Park at 7:30 am. A great job with a phenomenal time. That is a great job with all but 4 miles on pavement. Team 2 wasted no time with sending the mail down State Street “Pounding the Pavement” so to speak. They weren’t handicapped with having to ride in the dark as Team 3 had to but they watched the cool morning temperatures turn to blistering heat as the sun beat on the pavement. As they threaded a needle getting through Eagle Mt. to Fairfield and then to Simpson Springs to hand off the mail to Team 1 the temperatures soared to a season high of 102 degrees at Simpson Spring with a hot southern wind at 25 mile an hour. Team 1 anxious for the sun to go down and the winds to die worked tirelessly through the night mile by mile till they reached Ibapah and turned the mail over to Nevada.
We are allotted 28 hours to run the mail through Utah we did it in 26.5 hours, a job well done. I suspect next year we’ll slice it down a little bit more.
Some of the things I noticed as I followed the three teams through the state. Young riders had grins on their faces from ear to ear, old riders seamed to have written on their faces, “what is the maximum safe number of ibuprofen can I take?” At the end of a 2 mile ride the young rider says, “that felt like only a mile and a half” and the mature rider says, “why did I have to ride 3 miles?” I saw new friendships being made and old ones being strengthened. I heard comments about how great their ride was or how good their horse was. I was able to enjoy a new member’s birthday party and cake at “Black Rock Station” and hear him say, “this was the best birthday ever”. But the best thing I say, was a completed re-ride with no injuries to horse or rider.
Thank you all for the part you contributed to in making this a success.
Happy Trails
Fred Leslie, UT Pres.