by Paul Howard
Less reassuring was the advert for the Gila Rangers, whoever they were: ‘Live Cowboy Action Shooting. Every Second Saturday.’
To my mind, this could be read two ways, at least one of which was somewhat alarming. Was it the ‘action shooting of live cowboys’? Or was it the more innocuous ‘live, cowboy-action shooting’? It wasn’t Saturday so we didn’t have the opportunity to find out.
It was a relief, nevertheless, to find the store in Mimbres village considerably more hospitable. Indeed, Per and I were once again confronted with being minor celebrities due to the unmistakable ‘foreignness’ of our accents. Surprisingly, Per’s origins were quickly determined. Mine took a little more time.
‘Are you Australian?’ asked the friendly woman behind the counter.
I explained that I wasn’t.
‘That’s a shame. I don’t like our new president too much and I was hoping to move to Australia but they said I was too old and too dumb,’ she added before immediately descending with her two colleagues into gales of laughter.
I was in the middle of searching for the right combination of words to assure her that this surely wasn’t the case when I was confronted by new evidence to the contrary.
‘Do you know if Australia has a socialist economy?’ she asked. ‘It’s just I know it has a queen and a parliament.’
I was, I sensed, treading on thin ice. I said I was pretty sure that having a queen and a parliament didn’t mean it was necessarily socialist, and that as far as I was aware it had a fairly robust enthusiasm for the free market. I waited anxiously for the reaction. There was none, which was fine by me. Instead, conversation now turned to soft fruit.
‘Would you like some peaches?’ she said, pointing to the plump, ripe fruit that were filling a basket by the door and for which she had just been attempting to determine a price. We appeared to be about to eat her profit margin, but she was resolutely unconcerned. Whatever the merits of the assessment made by Australian immigration officials, lack of generosity was certainly not one of her failings.
With Silver City now only just over 20 miles away, we allowed ourselves the luxury of eating our peaches on the veranda. If there had been any activity to entertain us we could have said we were watching the world go by. As it was, the pace of life in Mimbres seemed to be on a par with that in Pie Town.
After one last, unpaved climb past the abandoned settlement of Georgetown, and another disturbingly vast copper mine, we reached US Highway 180. This was the main road into Silver City, a town that had become so closely associated in our minds with the end of the ride that it could not have been more keenly anticipated had it been called El Dorado. As if to heighten our expectancy still further, the city itself arrived as in a series of very slow jump cuts from a French ‘New Wave’ movie. The road was as straight as an arrow, but it was also cruelly undulating. Every dip caused our goal to be rendered once again invisible; each summit seemed to bring it only fractionally closer.
The monotony was broken most unexpectedly. A slightly battered pick-up truck drove slowly by and then pulled onto the hard shoulder. The driver wound down his window and beckoned me to stop. At first it seemed a rather dubious invitation, but as there was no evidence of road rage or ill intent, and because I was thankful for an excuse for a rest, I decided to stop.
‘Hi, are you Paul?’
It was not a difficult question but the surprise made me struggle to answer.
‘Er, yes.’
‘I’m Jeff. I’m part of the unofficial welcome committee for Tour Divide riders in Silver.’
I was once again speechless. Jeff explained that he and a whole host of others in the town had been following the race on the Internet. Every time a racer made it to Silver they would try and meet them to offer encouragement for the final push. Silver City, it seemed, was not just El Dorado. It was also a cycling Mecca.
‘I’m going to the bike shop. I’ll let them know you’re coming,’ he said before driving off.
Refreshed, I caught Per and Trevor on the edge of town. Initially we were disheartened. The outskirts were little different from so many towns en route: a selection of prefabricated motels, chain restaurants and out-of-town salesrooms. Downtown, however, was another matter entirely. It had managed to retain the majority of the original buildings from its early days as a mining and frontier town (it had been a lively place – Billy the Kid called it home when he was just a, ahem, kid). These had now assumed an air of faded grandeur that nicely offset the bohemian stores and organic cafés they housed along with more functional emporia.
We found the bike shop – Gila Hike and Bike – where the owner, Jack Brennan, and his colleagues were, not surprisingly, not surprised to see us. As we made arrangements for boxing our bikes prior to flying home and enquired about how we could be collected from the finish tomorrow – we had no intention of riding back – we were also greeted by other members of the welcoming committee. After four weeks of isolation from such social interaction it was an almost overwhelming whirl of new faces and new names. After Jeff in the pick-up, another Jeff rode up with his son on a tandem and single-handedly took charge of arranging tomorrow’s transport arrangements. Then a mysterious character known variously as Mimbres Man and Barin Beard (which I misheard as Baron Beard), arrived to take our pictures. It was heady stuff and we kept reminding ourselves we hadn’t even finished yet.
We sought refuge from our own over-inflating egos in a nearby Mexican restaurant. In between mouthfuls of bean and cheese burritos – three of them – I raised the previously unspoken prospect of us continuing to ride that night in order to record as fast a finish time as possible.
‘We could finish in less than 27 days,’ I pointed out.
It was a dangerous move. I had no particular desire to carry on, yet I was aware that the perceived constraints of politeness often involve respondents replying more enthusiastically than they would otherwise wish to such suggestions in order not to appear rude. In extreme circumstances this can even lead to outcomes that are the polar opposite of the desires of everybody involved, simply because a subject is innocently mooted and nobody dares to say what they actually think. I once nearly had to cook Christmas dinner for 11 people on such a sketchy basis.
Fortunately, three weeks in each other’s company had removed any sense of obligation to follow peculiar social niceties. The discussion was frank. The decision was unanimous.
‘I’m quite happy with 27 days,’ said Trevor.
‘As long as I catch my plane I’m satisifed,’ Per added.
Just as we were about to leave the restaurant to find a motel, we received yet another surprise visitor. This was no Tour Divide fan, though. This was Jamie Thomson, Silver City’s very own Tour Divide racer.
‘Hey, guys, how ya doing?’
Having finished just the previous day, Jamie was clearly now doing very well indeed. Even through the sloth generated by too much Mexican cuisine and our decision to postpone further movement until tomorrow, his energy and enthusiasm was infectious. He had also, according to Catherine, become something of a legend of the race, or at least to listeners to his entertaining call-ins made to the website.
‘I hope you meet him. He sounds like a real character. He’s been in love with a mosquito and described chipmunks as being like Tour de France groupies,’ she had said when we spoke in Pie Town.
It rapidly became apparent that the description of him as a character was a considerable understatement. He had, it transpired, only participated in the race because he was offered a lift to Canada in time to make it to the start. The offer had been made at lunchtime with departure set for early evening. That had given him about three hours to make his preparations. Even Per’s minimalist planning seemed meticulous in comparison.
‘I just went home and grabbed my stuff then went to the bike shop and said what else I needed and they lent me some gear. Then I got in the back of the van and that was it.’
Not surprisingly, he had suffered a bewildering ar
ray of mechanical problems, all of which had been overcome, including using dental floss to stitch a tyre sidewall that had been slashed by a rock.
‘That’s an old Jack Brennan trick,’ he said modestly.
We also learnt something about Jamie’s earlier adventures, including getting caught in a nighttime thunderstorm near the Plains of San Agustin.
‘I didn’t have any lights and it was so dark that the only time I could see where the road went was when lightning flashed. I had to get into the middle of the road, then run as far as I could until I eventually fell off the verge again.’
He managed several miles in this unlikely fashion until he eventually sought refuge in a disused bus at the HQ of the Very Large Array, a vast collection of satellite dishes in the middle of the desert.
‘I woke up just as everyone was coming in for work, so I had to sneak back out again.’
Then he asked if we’d like to stay at his house for the night to save some money on a motel. Not only that, he pointed out that he lived less than half a mile away, whereas all the motels were back on the outskirts of town. It was a simple decision.
The house was instantly recognisable. The exterior was decorated with dozens of bikes, some leant artfully against the chain-link fence, others abandoned in the front garden as if waiting to be repaired. Inside, the cycling associations continued: a poster of two grizzled Belgian professionals from the 1930s sharing a cigarette while racing; thousands, it seemed, of bicycle-related magazines and articles; the odd bike. In the circumstances, the addition of three distinctly odd cyclists seemed quite normal.
CHAPTER 31
THE FALL
DAY 28
It was Thursday, 9 July. It was the twenty-eighth day of our race, and hopefully the last. All that remained was 120 seemingly straightforward miles between Silver City and Antelope Wells. Our only anxiety was the fact that we were now about to enter a real desert. The Great Divide Basin and the Plains of San Agustin had been challenging enough. Now we were faced with a desert that could be located in atlases and on globes. The Chihuahuan Desert was the third largest in the entire Western hemisphere. It even had a dog named after it.
Accordingly, we set a new record for early starts and rose swiftly as the alarm sounded at the ungodly hour of 3.00 a.m. The plan was to avoid as much of the anticipated heat as possible – July daytime temperatures of between 35° and 40°C were the norm – by tackling the first 18 miles of pavement in the hour before dawn. Without any major mishaps, we reckoned we would then be able to make it to Antelope Wells between midday and 2 p.m. Jamie had told us it would be a piece of cake, but for a man of Jamie’s enthusiasm and energy, everything was a piece of cake. Even so, we dared to let ourselves feel optimistic.
To start with, the plan went well. Pet cockroaches in the sink and the arrival through an open window of a luna moth caused minor frights, but we succeeded in leaving as planned within the hour. We cycled out of a silent Silver City on State Highway 90 and made good progress along the rolling road in the dark. A distinctive rattling at the side of the road reminded us of the wisdom of having refrained from the temptation to ride through the unpaved section of the desert at night.
Nevertheless, our plan worked almost too well. Within another hour we had arrived at the junction with the day’s first dirt road. It was still not light. In fact, dawn had scarcely begun to break, and it was with some trepidation that we began to feel our way gingerly through the desert. It was difficult to distinguish the sand of the road from the sand that purported to be soil.
The situation deteriorated further when we rode across what the map described as a ‘canyon wash’. It was, it seemed, a seasonal river bed. The amount of soft sand through which we were now blindly wading suggested it was out of season. It would have been funny had I not kept slithering to an ignominious halt. To Per and Trevor it seemed quite amusing anyway.
I was saved from further embarrassment by our southern latitudes and the speedy arrival of the sun. As we climbed out of the wash, we stopped to take in the magnificence of the scenery and the sunrise. To the east, over a huge plain culminating in suitably serrated mountains, the sky had turned an infinite variety of oranges and mauves. Indigo clouds, like giant ink spots, scurried away from the imminent heat.
More importantly, we could now see where we were going. We rode easily along the winding road. Spirits were high. We began to discuss our celebratory dinner.
Then, disaster struck. On what was possibly the most innocuous part of the Tour Divide, just as we were freewheeling down a long, gentle hill under a now fully-fledged sun, Per somehow contrived to ride straight into the only treacherous part of the whole, hard-packed, well-surfaced road.
Everything happened so quickly that it was difficult to recall the precise order of events. Nevertheless, the starting point seemed to be when Per’s front wheel ploughed into an unexpected patch of soft sand. As we were by now travelling at considerable speed – 20 mph, maybe more – this resulted in a rapid loss of momentum and his bike being tugged violently to one side. This I knew for sure as I suddenly found Per careering across the road towards me.
‘Watch where you’re . . .’
I didn’t get the chance to finish the sentence before Per corrected himself. My sense of relief was shortlived. Per had in fact over-corrected himself. From suddenly travelling at 45 degrees to the left of our initial direction of travel he had now turned back through 90 degrees and seemed set for an unintended excursion into the undergrowth. That was to forget the effect of the momentum acquired by the rest of his considerable frame, however. The front wheel might have been intent on some off-roading; the rest of his bike and everything associated with it was still charging forwards.
At some indefinable point in this instantaneous yet seemingly interminable battle, the back of the bike won. Out of the corner of my eye, my own forward progress not having suffered such a rude interruption, I saw Per flip over his handlebars. I did not see his landing, but I heard it.
I stopped. Laughing nervously, I looked back. Trevor, who had been riding a short distance behind us, had slithered to a halt a few feet from Per.
‘All right, Per? That was exciting.’
No response. I looked at Trevor. His expression was not encouraging.
‘Per, are you all right?’ he asked.
Still no response. I put down my bike and ran back to where he lay. It was not a happy sight. He was face down in the dusty road, with legs and arms splayed at awkward angles beneath him. In fact, being 6 foot 6 inches tall, his arms and legs seemed to be everywhere except where they should have been.
‘Per! Per!’ said Trevor, more urgently this time.
Still no response. Things were looking bleak. My first aid knowledge was rudimentary – cuts, stings, maybe a broken bone or two. Unconsciousness was something different. Trevor was of a similar opinion.
‘Per!’ I shouted, trying to suppress a sense of panic and iniquity. It was all right for him. He was fast asleep. Trevor and I were the ones who had to tidy up the mess. At least he was still breathing.
‘Should we move him?’ I asked.
Fortunately, Per saved us from the responsibility of deciding between the merits of the recovery position and the possibility of aggravating the potentially serious back or neck injuries that were suggested by his current posture by moving himself. Unfortunately, it was not voluntary movement. Instead, he began to convulse violently. We could do little but try and stop further injury by moving the bike away.
After a minute at most – though it seemed like an hour – Per stopped twitching. His eyes opened. He tried to sit up. It was an abortive attempt. He relapsed into unconsciousness. Eventually, after several more tries, and with both our help, Per made it into a sitting position. Awareness of his surroundings, of who we were, of who he was, took slightly longer.
Five minutes later, with Per now able to answer simple questions with a little prompting, we took stock. Miraculously, nothing seemed broken, though on
e collarbone and several ribs were very sore. Per also had a large bump on his head, just underneath the crack that had gone clean through his helmet.
‘You’ve very cleverly saved yourself by landing on your head,’ said Trevor.
There was a ghost of a smile. This was reassuring. Less so was the realisation that Per’s bike was going nowhere. Both wheels were far too buckled to be either turned or mended.
‘I guess we need to get some help,’ I suggested.
With Per still struggling to remember exactly why he was sitting in the middle of the desert with a sore head, Trevor and I decided that he needed to be taken to hospital. Silver City was 30 miles behind us and there had been little evidence of any habitation thereafter. Ahead, however, about eight miles away, was a ranch. We decided that I should try there while Trevor kept Per company.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind staying with him?’ I asked.
It sounded mean, but any relapse would be an awful responsibility.
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Trevor.
In half an hour, after my fastest period of sustained riding during the whole race, I arrived at Thorn Ranch. A collection of single-storey farm buildings surrounded a central, bare-earth yard. At the far end was access to a much more substantial adobe building, itself surrounded by tall trees. There were a couple of pick-up trucks but there was no sign of life.
Then a dog started barking enthusiastically in one of the farm buildings. At least I decided to interpret its barking as enthusiastic, rather than ferocious. ‘Sorry, Per, I was about to get help but there was a scary dog, so you’ll have to walk to hospital instead’ just didn’t seem to wash.
I knocked on the door. To my surprise a man’s voice shouted and the dog stopped barking. The door was open, so I went in. A friendly face motioned me to wait while he finished his phone conversation. Then he came and introduced himself. His name, he said in broken English with a strong Mexican accent, was Oscar Peña.
