Two Wheels on my Wagon

by Paul Howard

  As a distraction, after the next lightning flash I counted the seconds like an excited schoolboy. In fact, I counted them like an over-excited schoolboy. After reaching a count of five, I consoled myself with the announcement, to nobody in particular, that things were OK – the storm was 5 miles away. Then it dawned on me that five seconds should actually represent one mile. One mile seemed a little close for comfort.

  The storm intensified. Lightning and thunder began to follow in such quick succession that associating the two became impossible. My debate about its proximity had been resolved unfavourably. I was uncertain what to do. Conventional wisdom at home said don’t stand under trees, of which there were plenty, even if the temptation was great. Yet being out in the open, riding across the gashes made by areas of clearcut, seemed counter-intuitive. The reality was that I was deluding myself into thinking I had a choice.

  Eventually, the rain eased and the thunderous soundtrack grew more distant. I stopped to warm up – oh, irony – and realised I was at the beginning of the ‘connector’ section between forest roads. The only information it had been possible to glean about this much-vaunted connector before the race came in the form of an entry on the Tour Divide website by Bill and Kathy Love, who had pioneered the route:

  ‘The connector was very nice – pretty easy-to-follow blazed trail along the river bottom with a quick grunt at the end. We saw a moose calf nursing from its mom along the river.’

  ‘Nice’ did not seem a particularly apposite description. A solitary piece of blue tape and a tree branch laid across the main track marked the point at which it was now necessary to disappear into the undergrowth, an undergrowth made freshly sodden and even more foreboding than usual by the recent downpour. The track was indeed visible, and occasionally rideable – between the recently created areas of bog – but ‘nice’ implied a pleasantness which, in my slightly frazzled state of mind, I could not discern.

  Pushing through the puddles and shivering through my bear whistle, I noticed only slowly how the ‘trail’ was being squeezed between the river and its imposing embankment. This, it turned out, was the ‘quick grunt’ at the end. It looked neither quick, nor a mere grunt. Instead, after the passage of nearly 40 pairs of feet and bikes as well as the recent downpour, ahead lay a loose, shale rake that climbed steeply up a precipitous slope. The occasional twisted tree trunk and associated glistening roots added an extra frisson to the task ahead.

  With little enthusiasm for retracing my steps, and unsure that I could even if I wanted to, I started to climb; slither and slip might have been a better description if it were possible to do so uphill. Initially I pushed the bike, although it soon became necessary to take advantage of the leverage afforded by hanging on to surrounding trees and haul it after me. Climbing over the bike on such a precipice was a delicate manoeuvre. I drew some succour from the fact it was unlikely that a fall would result in a direct plunge into the river below. Becoming impaled on a tree branch on the journey down was a much more likely fate.

  After ten minutes of such ‘grunting’ I emerged into what for all the world appeared to be a large car park. This was the terminus of the day’s final forest service road. I sat down to regain my composure, then remembered that the others were still to come. It was 6 p.m. and I was keen for the day to come to an end, but my long-suppressed conscience finally decided now was the time to make its annual appearance. I remembered the enormous weight of Rick’s bike and belongings; I remembered that Deanna had still been wearing espadrilles, which I couldn’t imagine offered the best traction on the ground I had just covered. Fuelled by a disproportionate sense of noble endeavour, I armed myself with a stick with which to beat off an army of grizzlies, laid down the bike and retraced my steps.

  Within half an hour this unlikely good Samaritan act had run its course and my more natural desire for self-preservation had kicked in. I invented a plethora of perfectly good reasons for not waiting any longer: they were all together and would, collectively, be able to cope with what I had now decided was a simple muddy bank; even better, they had all had the eminently sensible idea of abandoning the whole endeavour and found another route to civilisation; more bleakly, they had already been eaten by bears and there was no point in my adding to their number. In reality I was cold and hungry and wanted to go home; even somebody else’s home would have done. I returned to the car park and gloomily contemplated the track ahead.

  The trail began to climb. At first this was tolerable as it generated some heat and the mileage already accumulated on my computer made it clear the end was in sight. Assuming whatever ascent I now faced would be mirrored by a descent, I could expect little more than a couple of miles of uphill. I would be in the US in less than an hour.

  An hour and half later, after fighting my way over two vast piles of avalanche debris – stones, mud, snow and trees – I was still climbing into the wilderness. I laboriously pursued a large male elk up the track ahead of me. In other circumstances this dogged invasion of his personal space might have seemed reckless, but I was in such miserable spirits it could have been a bear or a pack of wolves and I wouldn’t have desisted. After the mileage at which I had expected to reach the border had passed, I resorted to profanities.

  Just as I had exhausted my not inconsiderable repertoire of Anglo-Saxon curses and diversified into French, two cyclists came round the bend in front of me. I was stunned into silence. They smiled knowingly.

  ‘We’ve just ridden out to see the “connector”,’ one said.

  ‘It’s awful,’ I replied.

  ‘We know, everybody has been talking about it on the race website.’

  My two cheery friends then told me the good news that I was virtually at the top of the climb, and that the ensuing 10-mile descent was, in the vernacular that had come to dominate the race, ‘awesome’.

  ‘There’s lots of bear scat,’ added one.

  Perhaps they noticed my disquiet, or perhaps they had simply remembered my earlier torrent of expletives.

  ‘Anyhow, you don’t need to worry about bears, you’ll be hauling ass down there.’

  I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but I knew that it implied speed. He was right. I left the top of Galton Pass at 8.22 p.m. Only 23 minutes later, at a quarter to nine precisely, I arrived at the Port of Roosville border post some 10.5 miles away, an average of 27.5 mph (including two miles of flat road covered at a meagre 16 mph). In spite of the gathering gloom and the switchback nature of the trail, the maximum speed recorded on my bicycle computer was 37.5 mph.

  At the border post I was almost hysterical with delight after my thrilling descent and safe return to civilisation (calling Roosville civilised was a clear indication of my reduced mental state rather than an accurate description of the place itself). As a rule, however, US border guards don’t seem to warm to semi-delirious, exceptionally smelly cyclists. This was no exception.

  Nevertheless, by 9 p.m. I had become a legitimate visitor to the USA; at 9.45 p.m., just as dusk turned to night, and more than 16 hours after I had left Sparwood, I arrived on the fringes of Eureka. Scarcely had a town been more appropriately named.

  MONTANA

  CHAPTER 7

  BREAKFAST WITH DOLLY PARTON

  DAY 4

  After the previous day’s exertions I had set the alarm as late as I dared. I was eventually woken from my slumbers at the luxuriously late hour of 7.30 a.m. Whitefish, the next town of any note, was a further 90 miles away. Ambitions now firmly tempered by reality, I would be more than happy if I made it that far.

  Fired by a vague recollection that the café opposite the motel had been recommended for breakfast, I opened the door and was immediately shocked by the brightness. I had grown unaccustomed to rising after dawn, and last night’s rain clouds had long-since dispersed, leaving a sheen of water on the car park to reflect and amplify the rays of the morning sun.

  I was also shocked to see Rick, dressed and ready for action, fiddling with his bike outside his room.


  ‘I wondered when you’d be stirring,’ he smiled.

  I asked what time he’d arrived.

  ‘Gone midnight.’

  I almost apologised for having had it so easy.

  ‘Do you fancy breakfast?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really, but I’d better eat something.’

  Although yesterday’s ride had inspired dreams of culinary excess, overwhelming fatigue and limited choice in the end meant dinner had consisted of no more than a tin of ravioli heated up in the microwave in the motel room. Hunger still seemed a distant companion.

  Rick disappeared to get some money. I poked my head in the door of his room and saw not just Rick but Cadet and Deanna too, surrounded by an explosion of wet kit and sleeping bags. Cadet looked almost as tired as I felt and was nursing a sore knee from negotiating the connector. Even Deanna had the decency to have apparently lost a little of her customary joie de vivre.

  At the Four Corners café, Rick and I tried unsuccessfully to blend in. Figure-hugging Lycra did little to disguise the fact that we were half the size of most of the regulars. My inability to order the simplest breakfast items didn’t help. The menu proposed an overwhelming variety of options but few that I understood or found palatable. Most eye-catching were the two Dolly Parton-themed breakfasts on offer. The ‘Full Dolly’ consisted of sausages, bacon, biscuits, hash browns and gravy, all topped with two fried eggs – sunny side up, of course. It was a visual gag. More intriguingly still there was also a ‘Half Dolly’ – as above but with only one egg, and dedicated to a late regular who obviously had a favourite mammary.

  ‘Do you think they’ll just be able to give me some pancakes?’ I asked Rick, all references to pancakes on the menu being accompanied by a dozen variations on the theme of a cooked breakfast.

  ‘Sure, just go ahead and ask for anything you want.’

  I decided against suggesting the apparently exhaustive nature of the menu was therefore a pointless exercise. The waitress arrived and, looking disdainfully at my figure, advised against three pancakes.

  ‘Two will do you,’ she said. ‘Mind, we did have a cyclist the other day who ordered six, but he didn’t finish them all. He took some of them with him.’

  Rick did his best to continue the trend of excess by ordering a bewildering array of ingredients otherwise known as a lumberjack breakfast. As I struggled to come to terms with even two pancakes, my attention was caught by an unguarded conversation on a neighbouring table.

  ‘Well, hell, if we go to war with China, we’re dead,’ said one of the diners, seemingly apropos of nothing. Certainly, the newspapers in the café made no mention of there having suddenly been a catastrophic deterioration in Sino–US relations. One of the great advantages of cycling into the wilderness for a few days was isolation from the worries of the rest of the world.

  ‘They’ve got lots of things,’ went on the self-appointed military analyst to his friends. ‘And they’ve got technology too.’

  The border might have been only 10 miles away, but we were clearly now in the paranoid land of Uncle Sam. Unfortunately an influx of noisy new customers put an end to this uniquely insightful assessment of China’s military prowess.

  Rick stoically cleared his plate while I gave up on carbohydrates and filled up with caffeine. I couldn’t even face the prospect of taking a spare pancake for later. Back at the motel, I had not had the energy to unpack the previous night so was soon ready to leave. Cadet and Deanna’s plans for departure had advanced little, and Rick was now encumbered by his breakfast. I decided I couldn’t delay any longer.

  It quickly became apparent that last night I had merely arrived on the edge of Eureka. After the unappealing surroundings of our motel and associated roadside gas stations, it was a pleasant surprise to discover an attractive small town of frontier-style buildings and useful shops. The riding the other side of town down the old road along the Tobacco valley was equally agreeable. I had come to the Rockies for adventure, but for this morning was content to appreciate the savagery of wilderness tempered by agricultural endeavour. Farmsteads and isolated houses, some of impressive stature, punctuated the copses and meadows. The metalled road helped as well.

  This softness didn’t last long, however. After 20 miles I was back on dirt roads winding through oceans of forest – western larch and lodgepole pine – and facing another 10 miles of stiff climbing. Ahead lay a mountain range that was vast by British standards but here was just one small island in a huge archipelago. High, grey clouds and little wind created perfect cycling conditions but made for a distinctly chilly and lonely breather on top of the pass.

  ‘Crest Whitefish Divide and begin descent through spectacularly wild country. Watch out for Grizzly Bears!’ cautioned the route description.

  I decided it was lunchtime. Maybe not being hungry myself would deter any potential predators. In fact, I still had no real hunger, and had begun to marvel at my apparent ability to cycle long distances on less food than I would consume on a sedentary day at home. I wasn’t sure it was sustainable all the way to Mexico, but it was certainly cheap.

  I munched on a bag of crisps and was dismayed to find my accompanying ‘Grape Juice Drink’ had neither grape juice nor caffeine, which I had come to see as my primary fuel. The only company was a chipmunk, which surveyed the scene from a safe distance, and dozens of invisible birds that serenaded me from the woods and scree. One, in particular, sounded teasingly like a bear-whistle-toting cyclist but, in spite of the fresh tyre tracks I had followed all morning, no one appeared.

  The descent passed bear-free and returned the route to the Flathead valley on the US side of the border. It was broader and more open than its Canadian counterpart, and lacked much of its majesty. It was also infested with mosquitoes.

  The return to the mountains and the day’s second climb were a welcome distraction. In fact, all of a sudden I was confronted with a surprising sensation. I was enjoying the ascent. Devotees of Holland and advocates of cycling in flatlands may demur, but one of the great joys of riding a bicycle is the rhythmic harmony of mountain climbing. Finding that rhythm provides an overwhelming, atavistic sense of well-being and vitality. I started to sing.

  ‘I’ve got rhythm, I’ve got mountains, I’ve got my bike, who could ask for anything more?’

  The Gershwins had it right, way back in the 1930s.

  Even the discovery of more avalanche debris followed by remnant snow patches could not dampen my spirits, though they proved very adept at scratching my limbs and freezing my feet. The fact that I had five hours of daylight and only 30 miles of almost constant descent remaining no doubt helped my mood remain cheery. As did the scenery. Red Meadow Lakes was everything I had hoped the Rockies would be, or at least the northern portion of them. The lakes themselves reflected the surrounding snow-covered peaks in their quicksilver waters. They were also at sufficient altitude for the intense timber cover to have begun to ease, providing clearings and meadows from which to enjoy the views. It would have proved an idyllic campground and base for exploration off the beaten track (or even the not particularly well-beaten track on which I had just been riding).

  Which was exactly what the next person I saw was using it for. Actually, he was sunning himself and half asleep when my inadvertently surreptitious arrival caused him to start. He soon realised I was not a bear; his ‘guard dogs’ had clearly already reached the same conclusion. Nor was I the first cyclist he had seen that day, and he was already well aware of the race.

  ‘There were two groups of two who came through a couple of hours ago,’ he said as I sat down and warmed my feet for half an hour.

  Of course, he couldn’t tell me who they were, but my curiosity had been well and truly whetted. Since dinner in Sparwood I’d had no information concerning the whereabouts of racers ahead of me, although it was my companionable rather than competitive streak that entertained thoughts of catching them. It seemed unlikely they would stop in Whitefish if they were so far ahead as they wou
ld have time to continue the 10 miles to Columbia Falls or beyond, but, with Cadet and the others likely to already be some distance behind, there was now a chance I could find some new fellow travellers.

  There was still some snow to negotiate on the far side of the pass. In the shade of the precipitous mountains I was once again cold and my feet numb, even though it was little after 5 p.m. This clearly wasn’t a deterrent for the natives, however: four teenagers, two boys and two girls, clad scantily in T-shirts and trainers, came round a corner ahead of me. Closer inspection revealed the girls were carrying fishing rods and the boys rifles, slung over their shoulders at rakish angles. They waved jovially and continued their high-spirited progress to . . . to what? I listened intently but heard no shots before the snow eventually cleared and the speed of my descent increased. I followed more fresh tyre tracks past another delightful lake embedded like a jewel in the velvet of the all-encompassing forest.

  The rest of the ride to Whitefish was as uneventful as yesterday evening’s had been exciting. Entertainment came this time in the form of thousands of flowering grasses – 3-foot-tall stems crowned with hundreds of tiny cream flowers, the whole forming the shape of a bulb or partially inflated balloon. Then the route emerged from the darkening green at Whitefish Lake and skirted expensive houses and second homes with private jetties. Another enormous freight train shunted slowly along the far shore.

  Whitefish was another pleasant surprise, more refined in its charms than the rudimentary, prosaic appeal of the towns encountered since Banff. Unlike Elkford or Sparwood, or even Eureka, it clearly benefited from having a second source of activity and income in addition to its primary industry of logging. Skiing is big in Whitefish. In fact, the Whitefish Mountain Resort is one of the top three ski destinations in the whole of Montana.