Two Wheels on my Wagon

by Paul Howard

  The next challenge came the following day, when I had to retrace my wheel tracks to collect the car from Winchester (and hopefully turn my left arm the same salmon-pink colour as my right). I set off alone in high spirits, and made good progress for the first 40 miles or so. Then, just as I was bracing myself for another bout with the pasties from the Queen Elizabeth Country Park, disaster struck. My bottom bracket – the axle where the pedals join the bike – ceased to turn. Apart from nearly catapulting me once more into the shrubbery, this sudden seizure made it abundantly clear that any further pedal-powered progress was now beyond me. Even if I had had the correct tools and replacement parts with me it would have been beyond my skills as a mechanic to effect a repair.

  Vexed as I certainly was, though, the situation was not particularly grave. By the simple expedient of pushing the bike to the top of the next hill and freewheeling down the other side I made it to the sanctuary of the café. Inspired by tea and yet more pasties, I tracked down the number of a taxi company, who promised to take me and my recalcitrant steed the remaining 25 miles to Winchester. Once safely back at the car, all that was left was for me to spend the long drive home considering what would have been my fate had I been in the great wastes of the Rockies rather than benign Sussex with a taxi company at hand.

  I had already been reassured to a degree by a kind offer from my wife’s cousin, Steve, a resident of Los Angeles. It turned out that he was the owner of a transport company specialising in moving crews and sets for rock groups around the whole of North America. I was unlikely to need a used Bon Jovi stage design, but logistical backup could prove invaluable in the event of a breakdown.

  ‘As I’ve said, my reach is rather remarkable, so anywhere along the way that you need a hand, please call,’ he wrote.

  He also gave me a toll-free phone number that I could use 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That appeared to resolve my concerns about getting hold of spare parts, at least those that could be delivered to a town or metalled road. For troubles beyond that, I vowed to increase still further my emergency food supplies.

  The beginnings of my second attempt were scarcely more auspicious. The previous night started gaily, with family visiting for dinner. The responsibilities of being a host should always be taken seriously, and it seemed incumbent on me to ensure a steady supply of aperitifs and then wine with the meal. An all too rare offer to retire to the local hostelry to continue the conviviality was then accepted with alacrity – too much alacrity, if truth be known. By midnight, I collapsed into bed secure in the knowledge that I could now ride un-aided to the South Pole if so required.

  At 6 a.m., however, a little voice in my head could clearly be heard reprimanding me for the previous evening’s excesses. At 7 a.m., as we started to ride, the voice had become somewhat more insistent, calling into question the wisdom of my chosen path, both for today and in a few weeks’ time. ‘Go back home, go back to bed,’ the siren voice wailed. With a discomfiting wind and rain imminent, I had to rely on the resolve of Ian, once again my training companion, to ensure the day’s venture didn’t end before it had properly begun.

  As is inevitable on the South Downs, the ride started with a stiff climb, at the top of which we were greeted by the squall that had been threatening since we left home. The cloud scudding a few feet above our heads was greyer even than the English Channel off to our left. Once more we seemed – in my mind, at least – to be doomed to ignominious failure. But while I cursed and complained in my new and highly effective waterproof jacket, Ian continued to lead at a stiff pace, clad only in a cycling jersey, seemingly oblivious to the meteorological conditions. The wind howled and the rain stung any and all exposed flesh, but as I couldn’t make Ian hear my moaning above the gale I had no choice but to keep following.

  At last, the weather eased. The dubious charms of the Queen Elizabeth Country Park café were once again within our reach. Gradually thereafter I began to warm to the task. Even the unlikely traffic jams caused by more than 100 mountain bikers heading the other way as part of an organised ‘South Downs Way in three days’ ride could not put us off our stride.

  ‘What’s the collective noun for a group of mountain bikers?’ I asked Ian.

  ‘A bloody nuisance,’ he replied, as we were once again pinned against the brambles by sheer weight of numbers.

  This time we had removed the logistical hurdle of completing the ride from one end to the other by starting in the middle (‘I wondered why you hadn’t done that last time,’ asked Catherine, my wife, when I explained our itinerary; I declined to confess that it was because we hadn’t had the presence of mind to think of it). As a result, once we had made it to Winchester on our outward leg, the return was facilitated by a tail wind. Learning from our slothful progress of a few weeks previously, we pressed on and surprised ourselves by the relative speed of our return and the fact that we were not overtaken by nightfall. A semblance of progress had been made. We returned to the car exultant.

  To distract from my uncertain progress as a mountain biker, I dived headlong into the logistics of preparation, reasoning – hoping – that the vast array of new toys I was collecting would provide adequate compensation for my own fallibilities.

  First, it being incumbent on all cyclists to ‘look the part’ (even if only to disguise the reality of being a spare part), the increasingly avuncular Rod supplied me with a pair of matching black and green Mr Cycles jerseys. His concern for my sartorial welfare was touching, and he assured me that they had never been proved to attract bears.

  ‘And if they do, at least you’ll be wearing a well-designed food wrapper,’ he chortled to himself.

  Through Mr Cycles I was also able to procure most of my clothing needs via one of his suppliers: Altura Pro-Gel cycling shorts (with high-tech gel inserts to protect my ‘ischial tuberosities’, or sit bones if you prefer); similarly conceived cycling mitts to protect my ulnar nerve, which takes a considerable battering on rough tracks; top of the range waterproof jacket and overtrousers; a variety of vests, leggings and arm- and leg-warmers.

  Once all that had arrived, only a few things cycling-related remained. I looked down my wish list, which had become a mass of crossings out.

  ‘A rucksack and a pair of cycling shoes that I can also walk in,’ I concluded, still conscious of my earlier mechanical failings and continuing mechanical incompetence.

  ‘If something happens to the bike that I can’t fix I might need to walk 100 miles to get help.’

  This was the first time I had articulated my Plan B and, caught up in the moment, I even managed to make it sound like a perfectly reasonable proposition. Self-delusion was clearly a vital part of a traveller’s armoury.

  Along with tangible supplies, Mr Cycles also sought to help me overcome my phobia of bicycle maintenance.

  ‘You might think it’s all right to walk 100 miles to find help, but I suggest you try and fix your bike first,’ he advised.

  Over tea and a sticky bun, Rod and the equally proficient Rory performed drastic surgery on my new bike in the dungeon below the shop, all the while endeavouring to impart some of their knowledge. Their approach to curing my phobia was clearly to make me confront my worst fears. Accordingly, between them they dismembered my magnificent new machine, removing all the bits that had transformed it from an angular piece of metal into a bicycle: wheels, handlebars, saddle, pedals and cranks. Just when it seemed impossible to remove anything else, Rory produced a grinding implement that was surely better designed for use on victims of ‘extraordinary rendition’ rather than an innocent bicycle. Indeed, he proceeded to effect some peculiar kind of torture on the poor bike’s nether regions, grinding remorselessly away at the bottom bracket housing until it seemed its structural integrity would be fatally compromised. In Seaford, no one can hear your bike scream.

  ‘They spend so much time engineering these frames to perfection, and then they spray them with paint and leave rough edges,’ said a baffled Rod through a mouthful of bun, ob
livious to my mounting alarm.

  ‘But take a bottom bracket,’ he added, looking at me knowingly. ‘If a bottom bracket housing has rough edges that aren’t perfectly parallel to the frame it will mean the stresses aren’t distributed through it evenly and it will fail, and we wouldn’t want that to happen where you’re going.’

  I smiled weakly, and tried not to get in the way as the bike was reassembled.

  Further distractions came by the way of camping and first-aid requirements. Uncertain as to whether it was possible to ask a doctor for ‘something in case I fall sick while cycling in the Rockies’, I nevertheless made an appointment at the local practice. I was greeted by a youthful Irishman, who listened intently as I explained my predicament. I endeavoured to make the tales of upset tummies that abound on the Tour Divide website sound as macabre as possible, and stressed the remoteness of where I was heading. Before I could make an explicit plea for antibiotics, he prescribed me with two varieties.

  ‘This one is a general purpose, broad spectrum antibiotic, and this one is for serious, water-borne infections like Giardia. You’ll know when you have that,’ he said cheerily.

  I had less success when requesting a generic snake venom antidote.

  ‘There is no such thing. The best approach is to avoid being bitten.’

  Nor did he have any bear vaccine.

  ‘Sounds like a fascinating trip,’ he concluded, making it sound little more than a visit to a museum. ‘Be sure to come back and tell me how it goes. Next, please.’

  Meanwhile, in Brighton, Eddie at Open Spaces undertook to supply me with all the necessary camping goodies. The only problem was defining what exactly was necessary. Did I need a stove? What about a water filter? Should I take a tent or a bivvy bag? Of course, Eddie couldn’t answer these questions for me, but he could provide the benefit of his wisdom, even if his habit of only looking sideways at his interlocutors rendered this wisdom even more enigmatic than it already was.

  ‘I should opt for the most comfortable approach if I were you, but then I’m not you, am I?’

  I took this sagacity as an indication of great experience in the wilder parts of the world, and assumed his idiosyncratic demeanour was the result of casting wistful glances over the Downs, wishing they were the more imposing ranges on which he had previously roamed. Maybe he could come with me and act as an adviser? He declined politely. In the end I opted for two parts asceticism to one part indulgence: no stove, no water filter, but a tent rather than a bivvy bag. Food and water I hoped to be able to find from external sources; sleep would be my own responsibility.

  The final piece in the jigsaw was to fashion a means by which all these belongings could be safely carried on my bike. With a rucksack, a rear pannier rack and a small saddlebag already sorted, the crux remained the handlebar bag into which I hoped to cram all my food as well as my direction notes and maps. Such vital and probably heavy fare would need a particularly resilient arrangement to cope with the rigours of off-road riding, yet off-the-peg solutions in the UK were noticeable only by their absence. The much vaunted, custom-built designs from the US that featured regularly in Tour Divide photos were unavailable due to the demand generated by a field of 42 riders. Inspiration finally arrived at 2 a.m. one anxiety-ridden, insomniac night, leading to a mad dash out to the shed in my pyjamas to check the plan would work. Confident in my design, it then fell to my neighbour, Alan, in whose own shed all sorts of metalworking wonders abounded, to turn concept into reality: a two-pronged piece of metal rod to fit through the sleeves of an existing bar bag, shaped like a shallow ‘U’ and held in place by passing over the handlebars but under the stem. One brief trip to the scrapyard later, plus a few grunts and groans as the steel was bent to shape, and ‘Alan’s patented bar bag mount’ came into being. Lightweight it was not, but heavy and hopefully indestructible would do for me.

  The countdown continued. With two weeks left before departure, I was joined by another Alan and Steve, two Tour Divide veterans, for a final training ride on the South Downs. The aim was to complete the entire length of the Downs twice on consecutive days, fully laden.

  Just making sure I could fully load the bike was the first hurdle. In spite of considerable preparations, the moment of departure still found me baffled by the absence of a place to stow my sleeping mat. Trying hard not to betray my incompetence to such vastly more experienced companions, whose bikes and kit looked as rugged and efficient as their owners, I spotted a spare strap. Quickly tucking the mat under this strap, I announced that I was ready for the off. I also hopped immediately onto my bike, hoping to disguise the last-minute nature of my packing arrangements.

  I was too late. Alan and Steve were already casting a paternalistic eye over my set-up. A few vaguely promising nods of approval suddenly halted when Steve saw my sleeping mat.

  ‘That will fall off,’ he warned. ‘If it doesn’t fall off today, it will definitely fall off in the Rockies.’

  With no other options apparent, I shrugged my shoulders and we set out. Sure enough, within 5 miles I had to retrace my steps to collect my free-spirited mat. Eventually, space was contrived in my tent bag and the ride continued.

  The pattern was set early. Alan and Steve rode cheerily uphill, chatting away and admiring the birds in the trees and the sheep in the fields. I laboured in the rear, trying to pass off my wheezing and panting as appropriate responses to their conversation. The flat sections would be spent with me trying desperately to recoup lost ground, while downhills were merely a chance to anticipate how severe the next climb would be.

  The situation slowly deteriorated. New shoes and an inadvertently modified foot position caused my right knee to become first slightly sore and then noticeably painful. My inability to keep pace increased in direct relation to the discomfort induced by my knee. By halfway I was reduced to borrowing painkillers and anti-inflammatories from Alan (my own ‘first aid kit’ was in fact no more than a facsimile, stuffed with what I hoped would be an appropriate volume and weight of proxy materials – batteries, deodorant sprays, that sort of thing; it had seemed inconceivable that I would need a supply of real medication so close to home). At Devil’s Dyke, with more than 30 miles still to ride but only a stone’s throw from home, I had to admit defeat. Although endeavouring to put a brave face on it, I had no option but to leave my companions with my tail between my legs.

  ‘See you in Canada,’ said Alan. Right at that moment, nothing seemed less likely.

  CANADA

  CHAPTER 3

  THE BEAR NECESSITIES

  Two weeks after the ignominious end to my training ride with Alan and Steve, my departure from the UK was suitably low key. The coach station at Gatwick can never be a fitting place for taking leave of anyone, let alone wife and children. Just finding the right place to unload a car was a minor miracle and an unwanted cause of extra anxiety. The prefabricated concrete ceiling was so low and so oppressive as to dampen even the fondest farewells.

  ‘Don’t get killed,’ was Catherine’s eminently sensible and comforting advice as I struggled to remove the boxed-up bicycle from the boot of the car. I assumed she was thinking of the dangers I was set to face. The possibility of an even more untimely death caused by negotiating fat concrete pillars and thin pavements with a wonky trolley and speeding coaches close at hand only became apparent shortly after she left.

  In a mild state of emotional turmoil after having said goodbye to Catherine and to Thomas and Freddie, my two youngest children who had turned three only the day before, I cursed every wobble and teeter of my precariously perched load. Fellow travellers once again seduced into oblivion by their iPods and mobile phones provided moving obstacles – or sometimes targets, I confess – for my cumbersome load. As I waited, drenched in sweat, for the shuttle to Heathrow, it seemed unlikely that the Rockies could house any trickier terrain.

  An hour later and my first experience of Heathrow’s much vaunted Terminal Five was, if hardly the architectural revelation some may hav
e claimed, at least much calmer. The doorways were wide enough for the bike box, and the process of checking in was smooth. Unable to fathom the machines that purported to allow me to register my arrival myself, I went to enlist the help of a rather suave chap clad in a corporate BA uniform. Fortunately, he seemed to be the check-in clerk equivalent of contemporary television newsreaders – no longer desk-bound, he was at liberty to roam the terminal’s wide open spaces, dispensing wisdom and assistance to all who required it. In less than the time it had taken me to read the initial page of instructions, he had accomplished the task delegated to him and found me a sought-after seat by an emergency exit.

  Nevertheless, the cost and time-saving benefits of DIY check-in, even when aided by a roving member of staff, were immediately undermined by my need to then check-in my luggage. At least there was no queue.

  ‘Is that a bike in the box?’ I was asked by the man who was studying my passport with the air of a bemused child looking for a sliver of hope in an overwhelming exam paper.

  I supposed it was the large, handwritten notice saying ‘BICYCLE – FRAGILE’ that had given it away. Such powers of observation clearly boded well for identifying undesirable travellers.

  ‘Is it heavy?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I replied, lifting it up as effortlessly as I could – no mean feat with not just a bike but sufficient kit for four weeks in the Rockies also stuffed inside. I made sure not to put the box down onto the scales.