Two Wheels on my Wagon

by Paul Howard

  ‘It’s exceptional rainfall for the area and for the time of year. We’ve had two inches in the past week,’ said the presenter.

  Two inches might not have sounded a lot, but it was nearly a quarter of the yearly average.

  ‘It’s been very cold too. Yesterday there was a high of only 28°F in West Yellowstone, and it’s mostly been in the low 40s.’

  ‘Yep, it’s the worst weather in 30 years, probably longer,’ confirmed the man-mountain. ‘My grandpa homesteaded down here so I’ve been coming here for ever – he was in his 60s – and I’ve never known it so cold and wet.’

  CHAPTER 15

  LEAVING MONTANA

  DAY 12

  Tuesday, 23 June dawned clear and bitterly cold. There was frost on the cars as we bade something of a sad farewell to Lima. Hands, ears, nose and feet froze almost immediately.

  To begin with the road passed through the low canyon of the Red Rock River Valley above where it spilled out into the broader surroundings of Lima. The early morning sunlight ahead of us was brightening the hills to each side, but we rode in shadow. We had been warned the trail would be gumbo, but in fact we were now reaping the benefit of yesterday’s fine weather and drying wind. Treacherous sticky patches remained but could by and large be avoided.

  After about an hour we passed the dam at the head of Lima Reservoir. A pair of pelicans huddled together on the water. The sun shone from a faultless blue sky and the land broadened again considerably. It was easy to see why Montana was known as ‘Big Sky Country’.

  Though still loosely following the eastward track of the Red Rock River, we were now in the Centennial Valley. This time, however, the pleasure of the mountains was indirect, in the great, isolated upland basin they created ahead of us rather than the immediacy of their presence. Some distance to the north was a gentle range, dusted with fresh snow. To the south, nearly 10 miles away, was a more crenellated ridge that marked the frontier between Montana and Idaho. In between was a vast sweep of grassland and sagebrush interspersed with wetlands. I spotted my first pronghorn antelope of the trip.

  After two days of purgatory we were elated to find ourselves in cycling heaven. The valley was flat, the sun was out and the wind was helpful. Progress was good. Then Per drew to an abrupt halt. Trevor and Stephen, by now accustomed to his various mechanical issues and the speed with which he could resolve them, carried on.

  I stopped, as much out of curiosity and a desire to inspire such companionable behaviour should I ever find my progress stalled as out of concern. I could not offer any help – and not just because of my limited mechanical skills. One of the handful of rules of the Tour Divide was that every rider must be entirely self-sufficient.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘It’s just the bolt that holds the panniers on that needs tightening.’

  Nothing serious, then.

  ‘I thought you’d tightened them all up yesterday.’

  ‘I did.’

  It turned out Per’s preparation for the race and his choice of equipment had been even more haphazard than mine. He had only bought his mountain bike a few weeks before the start and had built it up himself. His pannier rack had been the cheapest he could find, and the bolts clearly weren’t up to the jolting they had received. To reduce the weight it had to carry, he had used an old leather belt to strap his sleeping bag under his saddle. He’d also had to extend the bottom of the rack with brackets from a hardware store to accommodate his extra large wheels.

  ‘I’ve got two spare brackets with me as they keep wearing out. I’ve had to replace one already,’ he explained breezily.

  ‘Most people have spent the past year carefully selecting the best kit and testing it to destruction,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Where’s the fun in that?’

  We were quickly on our way again. The cycling might have been good, but it was still likely to be a long day. After Lima, there were nearly 90 miles with no services. This time we were motivated by more than simple necessity, however. We wanted to cover sufficient ground to convince ourselves that making it all the way to Mexico was still a possibility. Yesterday’s rest had been entirely beneficial, but the fact we needed a rest at all was a cause for some concern.

  We had also discovered an extra reason to start moving more quickly. Per’s limited holiday entitlement meant he had been constrained to book his return flight to the UK on 11 July. Allowing a day to travel to the airport in Phoenix, that gave us seventeen days including the current one to reach Antelope Wells.

  ‘Plenty of time,’ said Per.

  Buoyed by the morning’s success, we readily agreed, at least until the atrophied cogs of our mental calculators began slowly to turn. So far, we reckoned, we had covered little more than 800 miles. It had taken us 11 days, which gave an average of not much more than 70 miles per day. Even discounting the rest day, on the tempting but fallacious premise that it obscured an accurate assessment of the speed at which we had cycled, we had only covered 80 miles each day.

  By a long-winded process of deduction we eventually worked out that ahead of us lay the best part of 2,000 miles. More alarmingly still, that left us with the daunting task of now covering an average of nearly 120 miles per day.

  ‘No problem,’ insisted Per.

  Those of us who didn’t have a plane to catch felt inclined to demur.

  Light relief from such challenging arithmetic came from playing cowboys. Not, as fortune would have it, in the form of fending off hostile natives. Rather, it was the slightly, though only slightly, less disconcerting sight ahead of a Montana traffic jam. The trail was blocked by a vast herd of cows which stretched way beyond the confines of the dirt road itself, across the grass to each side, right up to the ranch fences that were mini-versions of those Steve McQueen failed to jump on his motorbike in the Great Escape. Our chances of success, should push come to shove, seemed similarly low.

  For those, like me, used to encountering similar blockages on the lanes of Yorkshire, cycling past massed ranks of cattle should not have been a problem. But that would have been to overlook the skittishness of US bovines. And their very sharp-looking horns. Recent experience had made it clear that even the passing shadow of a cyclist was enough to spook them into kamikaze flight. Nobody mentioned the word ‘stampede’; nobody needed to.

  Fortunately, a genuine expert was on hand to offer us some advice – our first bona fide cowboy of the trip, complete with boots, hat and lasso. And a horse, of course.

  ‘Hey, fellas, where ya headed?’ he asked, oblivious to our concerns and paying us the compliment of appearing as interested in us as we were in him.

  We explained our route for today and afterwards.

  ‘Wow, that’s some ride.’

  The same could be said for him. With the aid of a couple of dogs he was escorting several hundred head of cattle a dozen miles down the valley to new pasture.

  ‘How do we get through the cows?’ I enquired.

  ‘Just ride right through ’em. Just tell ’em you’re a comin’ and keep goin’.’

  It seemed no time to stand on ceremony. It sounded deceptively easy. And it was. Adopting a close formation down the right edge of the road and unabashedly making as many guttural, cow-herding-type noises as we could muster (a surprisingly imaginative collection, it transpired), the cows parted before us like the Red Sea before Moses. In only a couple of minutes we were through to the promised land, bearing only cowpat-stained tyres as evidence of our escapade.

  ‘I wonder if there’s any scope for the development of bicycle-mounted cowboys? We could then get paid to ride the Tour Divide by offering our services on the way,’ suggested Trevor.

  We rode on for another 10 miles, then stopped for lunch at a place identified on the map as a village called Lakeview. It was not so much a village as a small collection of houses and barns. The focal point was the headquarters of the Red Rock Lakes national wildlife refuge, established in 1935. This provided flushing toilets, drinking water, a
nd a wonderful source of information about Trumpeter Swans. Some 300–500 of these huge birds – up to 4 foot long, with 8 foot wingspans and weighing up to 30 pounds – now lived on the reserve, with several thousand more migratory visitors. This was a distinct improvement on the situation in the early twentieth century, when fewer than 75 birds remained in the whole of the US, having once ranged as far east as the Mississippi and as far south as Arkansas.

  ‘Plume hunters and ladies’ fashion wreaked havoc on the population. Birds were shot, plucked, and thousands of skins were shipped to the East Coast and Europe,’ read a sign.

  For every ‘Ying’ there is a ‘Yang’, however. While the population of Trumpeter Swans stabilised and then grew, in a rare victory for the animal kingdom the human (and cattle) populations plummeted through the removal of access to the valley’s prime grazing lands; the cows from earlier in the day had clearly been part of the ‘rump’ population. It was too little, too late for the bison that used to roam in the area, but moose, elk and antelope were now all making the most of the swan-inspired tranquillity.

  We dined on mince and slices of quince, or slices of salami wrapped in tortillas, at least. Following the cold and rain of the past few days it was something of a shock to be seeking refuge from the sun.

  After a brief respite, the riding continued to be as agreeable as the weather. Ten miles further on and we began the climb to Red Rock Pass, where the mountains to our south at last turned north and crossed our path, requiring another traverse of the Continental Divide. At the summit we encountered a major landmark – the border between Montana and Idaho. The amount of Tour Divide lore that has managed to accumulate in the few years since the route became a reality is limited. But one recurring theme is that if you make it out of Montana, the state with the highest mileage on the whole route, you stand a good chance of making it all the way. We celebrated with more cowboy impersonations.

  ‘Yeehah,’ said Trevor convincingly.

  ‘Yahoo,’ echoed Stephen to great effect.

  ‘Wey-hey,’ I added, revealing my imitative inadequacies.

  Per, wisely, stayed quiet.

  Once more the scenery ahead of us changed markedly. We descended steeply into much more wooded country, and promptly got slightly lost in our own, private Idaho. This time the confusion was only minor, however. Not long after 3 p.m. we emerged back into civilisation, if that’s an appropriate description for the small collection of fast food joints and gas stations at the intersection between our route and US Highway 20.

  Per’s considerable appetite came once again to the fore and he insisted we precede our planned meal at the restaurant over the road with a trip to the Subway sandwich shop.

  ‘It’s for breakfast,’ he reassured me, waving a large baguette. ‘Or maybe a second tea.’

  Over at the restaurant we were greeted by a rather overly effusive waiter. His bonhomie seemed contrived, and largely inspired by a financial motive. For once, my cynical, English view of platitudinous North American hospitality seemed justified.

  We asked if he had seen Cricket. We assumed she would have made it this far yesterday, or this morning at the latest.

  ‘There was a woman came through? Jeez, and I missed her? Was she hot?’

  Stephen chivalrously dismissed the question. The waiter seemed unimpressed.

  ‘Jeez, she came through on my day off, I can’t believe it . . .’ he lamented as he trailed off into the kitchen.

  Functional quantities of food were consumed rapidly. When Trevor announced it was his birthday, we toasted him with Pepsi and root beer. He was, it turned out, 32. Although originally hailing not far from Banff, Alberta, he now lived in Montreal, where he worked as an illustrator and designer as well as sometime bicycle courier. He had by far the best beard of the four of us.

  We didn’t tarry. Ahead lay one of the most deceptively difficult sections of the entire route. We hoped to complete it before nightfall.

  After 3 miles of road, the next 30 miles ran along the old railbed of a spur of the Union Pacific Railroad, developed in the early 1900s specifically to bring tourists into the fledgling Yellowstone National Park. It sounded idyllic, but that was without reckoning for the soft, volcanic soils across which the railway had travelled and which now sucked energy from passing cyclists like mosquitoes suck blood. It was a tough call, in fact, whether the sandy terrain or the mosquitoes, which had been blissfully absent from most of the route thus far but which we now encountered with a vengeance, were more trying.

  For Per, however, the answer was clear. It was neither. Instead, it was the relentless undulations of the route, caused by the erstwhile presence of sleepers exacerbated by the modern curse of quad bikes. The result was not unlike riding over giant sheets of corrugated metal (covered in sand, of course). Having struggled in silence thus far, Per could no longer conceal the pain in his right knee and thigh. The day off had not been as kind to him as it had to the rest of us.

  Even for those of us still with two working legs it was tough going. I was moved to suggest we call the Fat Controller and request urgent repairs. Stephen seemed nonplussed.

  ‘Thomas the Tank Engine. It’s very popular with the children at home,’ I explained.

  I volunteered myself as Thomas. With some persuasion, Stephen assumed the role of Henry, Trevor of James and Per of Percy.

  Eventually we came to the end of the line. There was a minimalist campsite, and there was space for our four weary bodies among the super-sized motorhomes. The requisite 120 miles had been covered. It was time to stop.

  IDAHO AND WYOMING

  CHAPTER 16

  NO ROOM AT THE INN

  DAY 13

  For some reason we made a slow start to the day. It certainly wasn’t the peace and tranquillity of the campsite that induced us to lie in. Just as dawn was breaking, a large motorhome had arrived and promptly performed the popular campsite slapstick routine of ‘how do we park this thing?’ Very loudly. As a result of this funny-were-it-not-so-painful performance, no prolonged sleeping had been possible.

  Yet we were lucky to leave before 7.30 a.m. Maybe it was untangling the cord with which I had insisted we suspend all our odoriferous belongings to reduce their appeal to passing bears. With everyone else secure in the metal carapaces of their vehicular homes from home, the campsite (obviously the designation was a relic of the days when people actually camped) contained no bear bins.

  Still, we had survived unmolested and, late as we were, we were soon rewarded with fine views of the western flanks of the famous Teton mountains. This, apparently, was their less flattering side, but it still showed up pretty well across the Idaho arable land through which we cycled.

  ‘My mom used to say that Tetons is actually the French word for breast,’ confided Stephen.

  ‘It’s true,’ I said, shamelessly implying a European linguistic superiority over my American host.

  ‘Yeah, she was a French teacher,’ Stephen added.

  We both agreed that we had never seen quite such jagged breasts, but it was better than the original Anglophone alternative: Pilot Knobs.

  After several miles of tarmac we turned onto the Ashton–Flagg Ranch road, also known as the Reclamation Road, though what it was reclaiming and from whom was unclear. Initially it was quiet but broad and straight and covered in dusty gravel. It felt as though progress should have been easy, but the gradient was deceptive. It was also hot. For the sun, though, we were still prepared to be thankful.

  Another hour or so later and we departed our second state in two days. We left Idaho with considerably less fanfare than we had left Montana – partly because it had not required undue exertion to pass through, but mainly because of the volume of mosquitoes. They were so prolific that even stopping for a call of nature was hazardous. In fact, I suffered the indignity of being bitten in a very sensitive area while watering the last flowers in Idaho. Otherwise we would quite happily have celebrated our departure over-enthusiastically.

  Our e
ntry into Wyoming saw the road turn into a trail and become much tougher going. It was both rougher and steeper, and Per in particular struggled. It was clear that the pain in his knee meant he could no longer stand up to pedal when the gradient required. In fact, though he tried to hide it, he could scarcely tolerate sitting down and was forced to walk not by gradient or terrain but by the pain.

  I was concerned I was becoming something of a curse. First Steve McGuire, then Jacob, then Ray – all had been constrained to stop shortly after I had caught them. I explained my concerns to Per.

  ‘I might have to take steps to stop you instead,’ he said grimly.

  I assumed he was joking.

  I asked what he did when he wasn’t voluntarily causing himself considerable discomfort in such unlikely surroundings. He said he had come to the UK from Sweden to study at university in London ten years ago and hadn’t returned. He was now 29 and worked for F&C Management doing something with derivatives and spreadsheets. I say doing something. Per wasn’t secretive about it. He did explain exactly what it was, but having almost as complete an aversion to financial markets as to the terrifying ubiquity of Excel, it fell on deaf ears. Instead, I resorted to caricature.

  ‘Ah, you’re to blame for the credit crunch,’ I said, using provocation to distract Per from his pain and the possibility that he might really take it upon himself to exorcise the curse that I apparently inflicted on my riding companions.

  ‘No, I’m the one who can make the money to get us out of it.’

  Given my state of ignorance, I felt in no position to argue.

  We plodded on. The going might have been challenging but the scenery was beautiful. We were once more in thick tree cover, interspersed this time with water meadows and gently flowing streams. This beauty should not have come as a great surprise. After all, we were sandwiched between two of North America’s most famous and popular national parks – Grand Teton to the south, and Yellowstone, the granddaddy of them all, to the north.