Two Wheels on my Wagon

by Paul Howard

  ‘It’s amazing how little bikes weigh these days, isn’t it?’ said the clerk, happily oblivious to my artifice. Maybe his powers of observation weren’t so great after all.

  ‘You need to take it over to the outsize baggage department.’

  As I did so, I once again passed the DIY check-in machines, where the helpful newsreader-type chap now had a queue of puzzled travellers asking for his assistance. The ‘do-it-yourself’ aspect of the process didn’t appear to have been widely adopted.

  After startling the two operators of the outsize baggage handling machine from their afternoon reverie, I placed the bike box gently onto the conveyor belt. Too gently, it seemed, as the conveyor did not engage and the two operators, doing a very passable impression of children’s television favourites the Chuckle Brothers, edged it forwards and backwards to entice it to move.

  ‘Be gentle with it,’ I pleaded, nicely I hoped, before I went to buy a newspaper from the newsagents next door. Leaving the shop two minutes later, presumably just at the point the Chuckle Brothers thought I’d long since been consumed by passport control, I watched them pick up my bike box and drop it from a considerable height onto the conveyor which, gratifyingly for them at least, started to move. The Chuckle Brothers had become the Brothers Grimm. As the bike disappeared from view into the bowels of the airport, I hoped this particular fairytale would have a happy ending.

  The flight itself passed uneventfully. Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino warned of the dangers of a side of North America that I was hoping not to encounter in the Rockies.

  Once below the early evening clouds, the descent into Calgary was revealing. Circling over the city, the surrounding plains seemed to be endless. Roads and fields came and went in the vast blanket of high flatlands. The only topographical features noticeable in the midst of the myriad gentle undulations were shallow gullies carrying water courses, some natural, some man-made. The city itself, even though a classic example of North American sprawl, was dwarfed by its setting. If this was how overwhelming the flat parts of Canada were, I wondered how my arrival in the mountains would feel.

  On the ground, the sense of being somewhere very big was confirmed by the wildly varying times shown on the clocks in the customs area. I knew Canada had several different time zones, but this seemed ridiculous. Maybe it was all part of a plan to disorientate newcomers and help officials flush out ne’er-do-wells. I assumed the ferocious questioning I received just as I was about to break out into Canada proper was similarly motivated.

  ‘Is that a bike in the box?’ said a uniformed woman (was this my first ever Mountie?). The sense of déjà vu from check-in was only overcome thanks to the mirror sunglasses worn by my questioner.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I replied, trying desperately not to sound as irreverent as I felt. The large ‘BICYCLE – FRAGILE’ labels had survived the flight intact.

  Behind her mirror shades, my interlocutor betrayed no indication of her likely reaction. Time stood still while I contemplated the hassle of unpacking the bike simply as a result of inadvertently mocking an officer of the Canadian Border Services Agency. After all, it had taken me more than three hours of incompetent fumblings in the garden to squeeze it into the box in the first place, although trying to fend off footballs aimed imprecisely at the nearby goal had contributed to the delay. At last, the silence was broken.

  ‘Enjoy your ride,’ she said, with just a trace of a smile.

  The shuttle to Banff confirmed impressions of the scale of my surroundings and the incongruity of Calgary, a rapidly expanding city of a million inhabitants located in the middle of what appeared to be nothing. Downtown, a few miles to the south, was an impressive array of skyscrapers lit by the receding sun that was now peeking out under the western edge of the glowering clouds overhead. Whatever the non-downtown sections of such cities are called was a less than glittering amalgam of poorly maintained, rectilinear streets and down-at-heel malls. Occasionally, older streets at curious angles betrayed the underlying morphology and confirmed it was not entirely flat.

  As the shuttle began its long trek west, the city eventually had to yield to grassland. Ranches replaced suburbs. First horses, then cows and even deer appeared out of the window. Johnny Cash sang on the radio. Every few miles an impertinent tree broke the monotony of the terrain. The excitement this generated was tempered, however, by the fact that such brazen cheek only served to magnify the emptiness everywhere else.

  Everywhere else except straight ahead, that was, where the Rockies were rising ever more abruptly out of the surrounding plains. The sun glinting on snow-clad summits did its best to soften their jagged profile, but the general picture was of dark rocks and even darker trees. Closer inspection was not to dispel this assessment. The sun had set by the time I reached Banff, but it was still light. The sense of being in the heart of the mountains was palpable.

  My cumbersome arrival at the Young Women’s Christian Association hostel drew a good degree of attention, though not from the staff at reception. Instead, I was greeted in what I would soon learn was a West Texan twang.

  ‘Hey, how ya doing? Do y’all mind if I ask if you’re a racer?’

  Even though the Tour Divide was very much a race, it hadn’t dawned on me until that moment that my participation conveyed onto me such a vaunted status. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to say yes.

  ‘Gee, that’s great. I got here yesterday and I sure been looking forward to meeting some other racers.’

  My new companion was Cadet, a schoolteacher from Midland-Odessa.

  ‘It’s famous for two things. First, for being the setting for a football movie called Friday Night Lights. Y’ever heard of it? It’s a great movie.’

  I said no, football in the US being played with the wrong-shaped ball. I also assured Cadet that the village I lived in was not famous for anything, as far as I was aware.

  ‘It’s also famous for being where George W. Bush is from,’ he added, with slightly less enthusiasm.

  This was something about which I felt I could offer fewer assurances.

  After a receptionist eventually appeared, I was concerned to find myself allocated to Room 101. Cadet put me at ease.

  ‘Anything has to be better than where I was last night,’ he said, before detailing the raucous party thrown by his Quebecois roommates. Like all good parties it involved wine, women and song, and didn’t stop until nearly breakfast time.

  ‘Ideal preparation for a near 3,000-mile bike race,’ Cadet added, but he still preferred to join me in my Orwellian dorm where we could be left in peace to consider our own personal demons rather than those imposed by others.

  The next morning, Cadet showed me around Banff. The setting was every bit as impressive as my brief shuttle journey the previous night had led me to believe. Timber-clad mountainsides rose sharply in every direction. Rocky ground took over as the trees began to thin out, the uninterrupted slopes culminating in serrated ridges and peaks, the highest of which – just under 10,000 feet – were dusted with fresh snowfall. Although far from overwhelming in terms of height, the mountains exuded a rugged invincibility. Perhaps it was the absence of the pastures and grazing lands that characterise the Alps. Everything was very angular, and the dry, clear air, even though the sun possessed considerable warmth, created a feeling of brittleness like that generated by extreme cold.

  The town itself didn’t take long to explore. Over the bridge across the Bow River at the south of town, the wide, straight main street contained mainly curio stores and outdoor shops. It seemed churlish to compare a town little more than a century old with Alpine settlements that have developed over the past millennium, but the temptation was difficult to resist. Certainly, the inevitable grid layout of the centre lacked the ‘olde worlde’ charm of the winding alleyways of Guillestre, say, or Aosta.

  Instead, the buildings were a mix of modern functional, modern faux-frontier style and a few genuine, timber-framed buildings from the town’s early days. The effect was at
tractive. Off the main street, the modern functional architecture took over and the roads remained just as wide. Pick-up trucks the size of small houses lay abandoned in vague proximity to the kerb. A satisfyingly wide variety of tea and coffee shops, along with more outdoor shops, provided evidence of just how much the town – population less than 7,000 – acts as a tourist honeypot for the surrounding Banff National Park, which attracts more than 4,000,000 visitors each year. Early June, however, seemed to be something of a quiet time and the streets and cafés were uncrowded. The pace of life was gratifyingly slow.

  In contemplative mood I decided to confront my fears and seek advice about bears. It would be fair to say the prospect of meeting a bear had already been occupying my mind since signing up for the Tour Divide. My only previous encounter with a bear had, in fact, been a hallucination brought on by fatigue. I was uncertain whether it was better to encounter a bear or be so tired as to think that you had. It seemed as though this trip would provide the opportunity to make a direct comparison.

  In the last nine years, I had learned, there had been 28 recorded fatal bear attacks in North America, though many more had ended in serious injury. I tried to rationalise this as just three bear deaths per year in a population of more than 300,000,000 and an area more than twice that of Europe. Yet such logic had seemed considerably more persuasive on the South Downs than in my current surroundings. After all, fatal bear attacks had been recorded in every state of the Tour Divide route. More alarming still, in 2005 a jogger had been killed by a bear while running near a golf course in Canmore, only a few miles from Banff. Exposure to garish fashions and reactionary opinions are the only threats encountered on golf courses in the UK.

  At The Ski Stop, which, in spite of its name, was also a bike shop, I made sure to fit my bike with the latest in high-tech, audio bear-warning devices.

  ‘You mean a bell,’ Catherine said later, a touch dismissively.

  The fact I also intended to carry a whistle seemed to cut little ice.

  ‘The best thing is certainly to make as much noise as possible,’ one of several Ski Stop assistants told me. ‘Try singing, that sort of thing, because bears will normally run away from noise.’ My questionable baritone, certainly very effective at driving away humans, suddenly seemed to have become a virtue.

  ‘But what do I do if I do meet a bear?’ I asked, trying hard not to sound too concerned. The attempt was clearly a failure. Sensing a little sport, other members of staff gathered round to swap anecdotes of bear encounters. As the extreme nature of the encounters described increased, it crossed my mind that I had become an unwitting participant in a modern, more humane form of bear baiting.

  Nevertheless, some potentially useful advice was forthcoming. If an attack actually took place, it would pay to know your bear. Brown bears – grizzlies – were more likely to lose interest if you played dead. Indeed, fighting back could be seen as an act of provocation. Black bears, on the other hand, were less gentlemanly and would happily kick – and maul and bite – a man when he was down. But brown bears could appear black, and black bears sometimes brown. If you were sure it was a black bear, the only option was to fight back. Even if you were sure it was a grizzly, if the attack hadn’t waned after a minute you should also fight back. I tried to imagine counting to 60 while being mauled by a 500-pound ball of teeth and claws. My face must have betrayed my inner anxiety.

  ‘You’d better take some pepper spray and bear bangers,’ the assistant concluded after his co-tormentors had dispersed. I drew some succour from the fact that they all still had all of their fingers and limbs and there were no large scars across faces.

  To soothe my nerves, I visited the library to check my messages. The first one I opened was from Bob, a Canadian friend whose bear advice I had also sought. By way of reassurance, he sent a link to a local newspaper, detailing how a 15-year-old boy had been dragged from his tent by a black bear, saved only by another camper firing two shots from his rifle to scare the bear away.

  ‘Paul, the article that I forwarded to you is an example of an isolated incident,’ Bob wrote. ‘Generally, when you are travelling through the Canadian Rockies, you must stay at a designated camp-ground. It would not be advisable to stop at the side of the road and pitch your tent. First, it is illegal. Second, it can be dangerous. There are not just bears, but also coyotes, wolves and cougars. Cougars will definitely attack a single person.’

  Nobody had mentioned cougars. A quick Internet search revealed four fatal North American cougar attacks since 2000. While I was at it, I also checked for fatal snake bites – also four – and lightning strikes – 33 in the first half of 2009 alone. Maybe bears wouldn’t be my biggest problem after all. I decided to ignore the link to fatal bee stings.

  ‘In any event, bicycling in Canada is 100 per cent safe with regards to wildlife,’ my friend continued. ‘No grizzly bear is going to come charging out of the bush and chase you down on your bike. The bigger danger is the possibility of being hit by a car as there are lots of idiot drivers. Hope you really enjoy your adventure.’

  My other messages were less alarming.

  ‘Here is some advice from your children,’ wrote Catherine. ‘Molly says “be second the best and don’t die”. Benjamin says “be first the worst and second the best and don’t fall off”. Thomas says “Thunderbirds” and Freddie says “please come down”. I don’t know where you have to come down from but he was adamant.’

  Suitably inspired, I decided it was time to put my bike together. Only one part of it was protruding from its box, which I felt was a good sign. Slowly, and by casting furtive glances to copy what Cadet was doing, I managed to put everything back in the right place, a slightly buckled wheel being the only obvious damage incurred during the journey.

  The next day we went on a brief ride to make sure the bikes were fully functioning, joined by another British rider, John, from Newcastle by way of Milton Keynes. Not only had he assembled his bike quicker than I could eat my breakfast, he betrayed the self-confidence integral to success by having booked his return flight from Phoenix in Arizona over a week earlier than mine.

  The seemingly gentle climb up to the Hot Springs that had provided Banff’s original raison d’être in the 1880s caught us all by surprise. Either the altitude – Banff is the highest town in Canada, but still only 4,500 feet above sea level – or more likely the dryness of the air meant we rasped our way up the hill.

  Then we undertook our first foray into the boundless woods surrounding the town, venturing the first few miles along the Tour Divide route. Bears might not have been the biggest actual threat to our safety, but they certainly exercised the greatest hold over our imaginations. Even though we were on a marked trail used by thousands of cyclists each year, the sense of having strayed into the wild was immediate. Elk nibbled on the grass below the imposing Banff Springs Hotel. Not for the first time I wondered quite why I’d wished so fervently for an adventure on this scale. Beware of what you wish for, it might come true.

  Back at the hostel, I was simultaneously wishing for more and less carrying capacity. The way John had ridden up the hills on the track out of town made it clear what an advantage it would be to have less weight. Whenever I asked him if he had what I was just about to pack he invariably said ‘no’. Even a tent had been forsaken, in preference for a bivvy bag.

  On the other hand, the growing realisation at just how inhospitable the terrain would be made me wish I could carry more. More food was certainly on the agenda if I could find room, even if stories of a bear’s incredible sense of smell called into question the wisdom of carrying peanuts loose in the pockets of my cycling jersey as was my wont.

  The vexation of trying to resolve these packing dilemmas was unintentionally exacerbated by the presence of the first Tour Divide groupie. ‘Crazy Larry’ was something of a Banff character with a well-known passion for mountain biking. ‘Crazy Larry’ was not just an affectionate nickname.

  ‘I’ve had my name changed by d
eed poll because I work with disadvantaged young people and they think I’m crazy,’ he said proudly to a dormitory now filling with increasingly frazzled cyclists.

  Larry – or maybe that should be Crazy – wore his hair in a mullet, and rattled his way around the room sporting a variety of bear protection devices. The most impressive weapon in his armoury was a machine to fire four bear bangers in one go.

  ‘It’s just not worth taking any chances with those bears,’ he said knowingly.

  Crazy’s favourite occupation appeared to be discussing bike set-ups and bemoaning the fact he couldn’t join us on our ride.

  ‘Man, it’s just gonna be awesome.’

  He had hit the nail on the head, but my capacity for small talk is limited at the best of times, and I soon needed to find a quieter spot to continue wrestling with my logistical conundrums.

  In between worrying about what I should and shouldn’t take, I began to weigh up rivals for the prestigious Lanterne Rouge competition. Lanterne Rouge is the term used to describe the last-placed finisher in the Tour de France. As well as generating often much-needed sympathy from onlookers, thanks to the wearing of a red race number, it conveyed to the recipient a useful notoriety, facilitating invitations to the lucrative round of post-Tour criterium races that once constituted the major part of a professional cyclist’s income. I wasn’t sure whether completing the Tour Divide would open up similar remunerative opportunities, or even if the Tour Divide considered the Lanterne Rouge a legitimate race within a race, but it was clearly the only competition in which I was likely to play any meaningful part.

  I also had to make sure I did my homework in case the competition developed along the lines of the equivalent award for finishing last in the Giro d’Italia. As befits the often controversial and partisan nature of racing in Italy, the battle for the infamous Maglia Nera was the source of great skulduggery. Shady deals were struck, long-cuts were taken, punctures fabricated – all for the sake of claiming a footnote in sporting history. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the official competition only lasted from 1946 to 1951.