Two Wheels on my Wagon

by Paul Howard

  The result was slow progress, with a knock-on effect on supplies. At midday it had taken five and a half hours to ride 40 miles. The only certain food was still 82 miles away. At the current rate of progress that would see us arriving at 11 p.m. Even Per’s enthusiasm for Spam and jam was uncertain to last that long.

  Shortly afterwards we were confronted with a reminder of the slenderness of our margin for error created by the decision to travel light. A large, profusely perspiring cycle tourist rode into view and hailed us heartily. It wasn’t his size, however, that caused us to draw breath, though the effort he must have expended to haul his bulk to such an altitude was impressive enough. It was the size of his luggage. If he was large enough to make two of us, he had more stuff with him than the four of us combined. He had a full set of panniers to both front and rear, and a large rucksack. He also had a full bike trailer bouncing cumbersomely behind him. It was a heartening, if slightly disconcerting, sight.

  ‘Hey, guys, how ya doin’?’ he exclaimed, clearly pleased at a chance for a breather.

  After exchanging pleasantries, we told him where we were heading; he said he was doing a similar thing in reverse.

  ‘I’m just setting out to see how far I can get before winter,’ he added.

  At his self-proclaimed average of 30 miles a day, we calculated that he should arrive in Canada before the end of September. He seemed reassured. Then he broached the topic that had obviously been on all of our minds.

  ‘How do you guys manage with such little stuff? Not tents and stuff, but food?’

  It was, we admitted, a question we were beginning to ask ourselves. Then he asked about water. We carried about five litres each, which had so far been plenty.

  ‘I carry more than two gallons,’ he replied.

  With all that extra weight to contend with, his presence at above 10,000 feet seemed nothing short of remarkable.

  After a short spell so rocky that riding was impossible the terrain finally improved, first with five miles of paved roads, then with a dry, dusty forest trail. We rode through a succession of formal and informal campgrounds, full of locals celebrating their national holiday. The prerequisites for such a celebration were simple: beer, barbecues and quad bikes, though not, we hoped, in that order.

  The first two ingredients were universal and understandable; the last a surprise and a growing annoyance. Far from being utilitarian tools for farmers, the quad bike had clearly become the latest must-have gadget for a patriotic, outdoorsy family. Around us, whole families indulged in quad bike safaris. Children not yet ten were let loose on machines that dwarfed them. Those younger still sat jauntily on mom or pop’s knee.

  You could see their appeal. When the enormous 4×4 pick-up that had been used to transport family and quad bike from the city to the mountains just couldn’t go any further, they could now jump on their quads and desecrate (sorry, discover) vast new areas of erstwhile wilderness previously immune from the internal combustion engine. Why walk when you could quad bike?

  ‘I see the 4th of July is actually national ride your quad bike day,’ I said to Stephen.

  He magnanimously agreed with this discourteous assessment.

  The speed of our progress was increasing, but so was the temperature and the effort required. With only one round of Spam/jam sandwiches remaining, timing our last feed stop of the day would be crucial. At 3 p.m. we could wait no longer. A stray dog inadvertently herded us into a partial clearing in the forest, complete with shade to cool off in and logs to sit on. We were delighted. When he recognised the prospect of food and drink, so was the dog.

  The poor mutt was clearly in a bad way: it was as desperate for Spam as we were. It was also covered in mange and was panting uncontrollably. It made a half-hearted effort to pester us before flopping exhausted to the ground.

  ‘It doesn’t look too good,’ I said.

  ‘There’s not much we can do for it,’ pointed out Per.

  After a few minutes, a tell-tale buzzing noise alerted us to the impending arrival of yet another quad bike. It was do or die for the dog. I rushed to the road and flagged down the speeding machine. It was a young teenage couple. I explained about the dog.

  ‘Aww, that’s soo sad,’ said the girl, looking in its direction.

  The boy didn’t look quite so moved.

  ‘Do you know anyone who’s lost a dog or can you take it with you?’ I asked.

  ‘Gee, we could ask when we get back to camp. Maybe someone could come back and pick it up,’ she said, looking imploringly at her young beau.

  ‘Maybe,’ he replied, recognising the chance to at least temporarily avoid assuming responsibility for the situation.

  It wasn’t what the dog needed but it was the best we could think of.

  After finishing our late lunch we embarked on a speedy descent that took us below the forests into dry scrubland that better conformed to my clichéd image of New Mexico. We were now below 8,000 feet and the temperature had continued to rise in proportion to the fall in altitude. We arrived in the picturesque Vallecitos River Valley at the hamlet of Cañon Plaza, the first of three settlements dating back to the late eighteenth century and the first Spanish colonisers in the area. It was far enough from anywhere to be rumoured to be entirely devoid of services, and I had tried in vain not to become too excited about the possibility of refreshments. Yet the map had offered one glimmer of hope to which I had clung disproportionately.

  ‘Snack stand on left may be open.’

  It wasn’t. Nor was there anything on offer in the neighbouring hamlet of Vallecitos, which was little more than a collection of farm buildings and unintentional scrapyards full of disused farm machinery and pick-up trucks. This paucity of services did not augur well for El Rito, where it was suggested we would find food and shelter for the night. Yet we were temporarily distracted from self-pity by the rigours of the climb that we had to scale to get there. It was not the gradient that was the problem. Once again, it was the ground conditions. This time, in an unfortunate twist on the fate of the Ancient Mariner, we were compelled to ride through a rim-deep ribbon of quagmire while the rest of the surrounding forest was covered in tinder-dry leaves. The forest road was a sort of compacted goo that clearly turned to goulash after the heavy rain we had heard they had suffered in the area yesterday.

  ‘Dryness, dryness everywhere, but not a yard to ride upon,’ I murmured to myself as I fought a losing battle to maintain momentum.

  The crest of the hill was a long time coming, and the following downhill offered little in the way of respite due to the slipperiness of the conditions. Yet we had now been riding for more than 13 hours, and it was late enough to cause concern about shops and restaurants shutting up for the night (we still naively clung to the belief that there would be shops and restaurants). The result was something of a kamikaze downhill, survived due to good fortune rather than skill.

  That was where the good fortune ended, however. No sooner had the path led out of the forest into the great sweep of plains around El Rito than it became clear it would have little to offer the passing traveller. In fact, that turned out to be an overstatement. It had nothing. Even the grounds of the high school where the map suggested we would be able to camp were locked. In New Mexico at least, the information on the map was indicative rather than definitive.

  Waiting for the others to arrive, I came across the tail-end of the town’s 4th of July celebrations, which seemed to consist of open house at the volunteer fire station. A man with arms crossed looked on proprietorially. I asked if he knew of anywhere to eat in the village. He shook his head. Then he decided to expand on his answer.

  ‘There used to be a nice place, but the health inspector paid a visit and decided it wasn’t quite as nice after all. Things got worse when the owner disagreed with the health inspector’s assessment and tried to shoot him. Now he’s not at liberty to provide any food, whether good or bad.’

  I had to admit that this was a turn of events for which the map coul
d not be blamed.

  ‘Are you from Britain?’ asked the man, whose name turned out to Malcolm Morrison.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘My grandmother was from Stornoway on Lewis,’ he said.

  ‘A lovely spot.’

  ‘She didn’t think so. Full of midges and rain. She had nothing good to say about it.’

  I was saved from further embarrassment by the arrival of the others, to whom I explained the situation. They didn’t need to say anything for their disappointment to be obvious. Malcolm decided to propose a solution.

  ‘I don’t know if they’ll be open, it being 4th of July and all, but there’s a pizza place and a bar at the junction with the main road. You could try there.’

  The junction was on our intended route, but it was 14 miles away. It was 7.50 p.m.

  ‘We might make it by 8.30 p.m., they could still be open,’ said Trevor.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Per.

  We had little choice. Even our Spam supplies had now expired. The road to the junction was all downhill. Freewheeling through the red-soiled scrubland under the setting sun should have been a delight. Racing against an invisible clock for the outside possibility of something to eat took the edge off it a little.

  At the junction, the pizzeria was closed. Trevor tried the bar. Three weeks of wearing Lycra in peculiar places had inured us to the occasional snide comment, but the latent hostility of the reaction as he walked in was palpable. Everybody stopped. Everybody stared.

  ‘We done serving food,’ said the barman.

  Even in our hour of need, it was something of a relief.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said quickly.

  Trevor didn’t move. Taking what I hoped was the calculated risk of prolonging our stay, he then asked if there was anywhere else nearby. The silence seemed interminable.

  ‘The Abiquiu Inn is a couple a miles up the road. They serve ’til quarter to nine.’

  ‘Could you phone them to let them know we’re coming?’ asked Trevor.

  ‘Nope. They’d just tell me to tell you not to bother,’ said the barman.

  It was the excuse I had been waiting for. Being nearest the door, I was first on the bike. It was now 8.33 p.m. We had 12 minutes. If it was only two miles we might be OK, I reasoned. I rode the bike like a man whose dinner depended on it, which was just as well. A precious minute was wasted exploring a derelict building with a B&B sign outside. It clearly wasn’t an inn but, in desperation, anything seemed possible. Then the Inn appeared. At 8.40 p.m. precisely, I jumped off my bike and ran inside.

  ‘Are . . . you . . . still . . . serving . . . food . . . ?’ I panted.

  The receptionist looked at the clock. Then she looked at me. I was not, I realised, a pretty sight. Dried mud and dead mosquitoes were fighting for space on my face and three-week beard. Perspiration ran in rivulets down my cheeks and dripped off my nose. The benefits of yesterday’s laundry on the cleanliness of my cycling top had long since worn off. I tried a smile. To my surprise it seemed to work.

  ‘Of course, sir, is it a table just for one?’ she said, looking for all the world as if the arrival of a nearly hyperventilating cyclist was a daily occurrence.

  ‘No . . . there . . . are . . . three . . . more . . . coming . . .’

  This time there was not even a hint of hesitation.

  ‘That’s fine, sir. The waiter will be through to take you to your table shortly.’

  ‘Thank . . . you . . .’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  After slowly regaining my composure and discovering that the inn also had one room remaining for the night, I stumbled back to the entrance to wait for the others. As I did so, it became clear this was far from your average roadside diner. In fact, it was a rather chic, almost boutique, hotel. The interior was elegantly whitewashed and adorned with Spanish and Native American artefacts. The tiled floor was artfully covered in a series of pristine rugs. Outside was a courtyard with a well-kept Hispanic garden.

  The others arrived and we were shown through to the dining room. We tried hard not to disturb the two couples enjoying their 4th of July dinner in an atmosphere of studied romanticism. It was in vain.

  The menu perplexed us with its temerity to deviate from the habitual fast food offerings.

  ‘What, no Spam?’ said Per.

  Yet the food, once we had deciphered what was on offer, was delicious. I enjoyed tomato tortilla soup followed by a lamb kofta kebab with extra fries. The others were similarly extravagant. The coup de grâce, though, was the dessert: bread pudding with caramel sauce; and ice cream; and cream.

  CHAPTER 27

  THROUGH THE RAINBOW

  DAY 24

  Not surprisingly, I slept terribly.

  ‘I scarcely slept at all,’ I said loudly, just in case anybody had failed to notice my constant tossing and turning on the cold, tiled floor; the room had only one bed, and I had nobly volunteered to sacrifice comfort for some guarantee of uninvaded personal space.

  ‘Not as badly as Stephen,’ said Trevor.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You didn’t hear him?’

  ‘Didn’t hear what? And where is he?’

  ‘I thought you said you’d been awake all night?’

  Just then, a disturbing retching noise emanated from the bathroom. Shortly after, an ashen-faced Stephen appeared. He had, it turned out, already been through a similar routine at 4 a.m. Yet he still professed some hope of being able to continue. He joined us for breakfast before we set off. It was a bad move.

  Two miles down the road we stopped at Bode’s store to restock for the day ahead. Cuba, the next town, was 80 miles away, and we didn’t want to repeat yesterday’s mistake. Trevor, Per and I went inside to acquaint ourselves with what was on offer. Stephen stayed outside and reacquainted himself with his breakfast. It looked considerably less appetising second time around.

  We cleaned away the evidence as best we could. The process was disconcertingly reminiscent of sickness bugs at home, though Stephen had the great merit of being able to hold his own bucket and not cry incessantly for his mummy. But it was clear Stephen was not going any further, not today at least.

  Fortunately, the owner of the store was sympathy personified, in spite of the fact this was not the first time a worn-out cyclist had vomited profusely on his forecourt.

  ‘I had a girl here last year who had exactly the same thing happen to her. I had to take her to hospital in the end,’ he said cheerily.

  He offered Stephen the use of his sheltered veranda until he was feeling well enough to decide what he would do. He also offered to find a lift to take him to a doctor if that turned out to be necessary. There seemed nothing else the three of us could do. We had little option but to say goodbye.

  ‘I’ll stay here, maybe see if I’m better tomorrow,’ said Stephen, manfully endeavouring to ease our departure.

  ‘It might be for the best. Your knee might improve after a day’s rest,’ I suggested.

  The sentiment was well intentioned, but the words rang hollow.

  We left, and immediately embarked on a 30-mile climb. There were, in fact, a few minor descents between Abiquiu and the high-point of the Polvadera mesa, but we were in no mood to quibble. The ascent and the heat of a gloriously sunny day helped focus our minds on the task in hand rather than Stephen’s misfortune.

  The scenery was every bit as beautiful as yesterday’s. The terrain every bit as rough. It came as something of a surprise, therefore, after two hours of riding into the middle of nowhere, to encounter a pick-up truck with an ancient caravan bobbing painfully along behind it. Even more surprising was the presence, on the open platform of the pick-up, of two young children sat happily in deck chairs. There was no obvious means of restraining either chairs or children.

  We slowed to let the pick-up past, then stopped to check the directions. It read as we thought: ‘swing right up steep and rocky climb, might be a pusher’.

  ‘It can’t be that bad,
then,’ said Trevor, motioning in the direction of the truck.

  It was worse. We could not ride up it, yet somehow the caravan and pick-up with free-range children in the back had come down it.

  ‘One of life’s little mysteries,’ said Trevor.

  ‘Maybe we were hallucinating,’ I suggested.

  ‘All three of us?’ asked Per.

  At the top of the climb we stopped for another luxurious lunch of tortillas and salami. Our enjoyment was spoiled, however, by the arrival of a thunderstorm. Initially it seemed like it would merely be on a par with that experienced on Marshall Pass. Then it entered a league of its own as it started to hail. Lycra, we quickly discovered, proved an ineffectual defence against such an assault.

  For 15 minutes the hail came and went, turning us into caricatures of plague victims with red weals on exposed flesh. Eventually we rode through the storm into clear skies.

  ‘That was nice,’ said Trevor.

  ‘I hate New Mexico,’ said Per enthusiastically, almost seeming to relish the disaffection.

  Next came what we had anticipated would be one of the highlights of the trip. We were about to cycle through the location of this year’s Rainbow Gathering, a peripatetic annual reunion of ‘The Rainbow Family of Living Light’ or the ‘Rainbow Tribe’ – otherwise known as hippies.

  The first inkling of its proximity was the presence of an abandoned car with Connecticut licence plates lying at a jaunty angle across the road in the middle of the forest. On the back seat was a motley selection of beer and foodstuffs as well as that classic hippie giveaway: tie-dyed clothing.

  ‘Gone for gas,’ read a hand-scrawled sign in the windscreen.

  Then came two guitar-toting teenagers who, in between a bewildering intensity of expressions like ‘wow, man’ and ‘cool, man’, asked if they were heading the right way to find the brothers. We assumed they meant the Gathering, rather than an unlikely offshoot of a religious order, and said that as we’d not yet passed them we assumed they were still ahead.