Two Wheels on my Wagon (24 page)

Per caught up. It had been his front rack this time.

‘I'm gonna get rid of it,' he said.

We rode together, talking little. The Basin's fan oven thermostat had kicked in and the temperature seemed to have stopped rising. I now no longer felt like I was cooking. I felt more like a joint left to ‘rest' after cooking but before carving. I started looking for vultures.

An hour after lunch we turned left off the dirt onto a paved road. It was the most incongruous strip of tarmac we had yet come across. The map's description – ‘more or less void of vehicle traffic' – was an understatement. Only the tumbleweed was missing from the classic image of desolation.

Still, it was an important landmark for us. A mere 26 miles along this road would bring us to the charms of US Highway 287, from where it was only another 16 miles to Rawlins. Neither section had much to recommend it. Eventually, both were completed and we entered the outskirts of Rawlins, a town with something of a reputation.

In Ovando I had come across an old newspaper cutting in which an even older woman recounted her younger days in Rawlins. As a child, she recalled, she had been out on the street one day tending her chickens when an outlaw on horseback rode up and shot one of the luckless hens.

‘Make sure you tell your ma to pluck her and cook her when I return.'

Daughter and mother wisely obliged. The outlaw returned for his meal and, when satisfied, paid up with a gold coin.

It was also known as the haunt of one of the Wild West's iconic characters, Martha Canary, better known as Calamity Jane. Fittingly, we cycled past the Wyoming State Penitentiary in which she had once resided, the result of ‘a disorderly drunken binge of legendary proportions' according to the guidebook. It was an episode conveniently overlooked by the saccharine musical version of her life story. The jail had closed to its inhabitants in 1982 and was now a museum.

More recent history was also less than flattering. While we had been riding the South Downs, Steve had said Rawlins was best avoided.

‘I just didn't like the vibe of the place.'

Even though it was only just 5 p.m. and Steve's words were being borne out before our eyes, we had no desire to continue. Fortunately, Alan had been slightly more constructive.

‘It's not so bad. Try Penny's Diner.'

We did. From the outside it looked great, a sleek silver trailer straight from the 1950s. The theme continued inside, with appropriately uniformed staff and booths into which the four of us could only just squeeze. The food was prompt and considerable, but the illusion of homespun charm was undone somewhat when we asked for dessert.

‘I'll have a home-made apple pie, please.'

‘It shouldn't say home-made 'cos it's not made here. It's all shipped in frozen,' said the waitress.

The look of disdain on her face meant I didn't dare tell her I hadn't really expected anything different.

A
fter eating our fill of non-home-made produce at Penny's, we had booked into a nearby motel. It turned out to be as cheap and cheerless as the rest of the town, though I was prepared to accept that two days of being exposed to biblical portions of first rain and then sunshine were liable to have coloured my perception.

Certainly, the stark beauty of last night's camp had been replaced by an ugly, prefabricated concrete block surrounded by highways and parking lots. Wide open spaces and fresh air had been swapped for a cramped hotel room filled by four sweaty, smelly bodies. Jason's off-key lament had once more become MTV. Michael Jackson was still dead.

To add to the sense of disorientation, we had been confronted with the bewildering choice afforded by a trip to the supermarket. I wandered round the store aping what I hoped were the carefully considered purchasing plans of the others. Not surprisingly, I ended up with far too much stuff. Nor was it nutritionally well balanced. Jamie Oliver would have been aghast, but I was content to settle for volume.

At the till, I found Stephen being surprisingly congratulated on his tomato-red cycling attire. Then it was my turn to receive the same complimentary reception.

‘I just lurve your top, it's so cooool. Do you want some help packing?' said the super-size seller.

Encased in a sweat-stained, mud-spattered apology for a cycling jersey, it was an incongruity too far for me to be able to think of a response. Fortunately, no response was necessary.

‘I just wish I could get one like that. Do you have a pointy helmet too? Hey, Janine, come and look at this cooool top. Do you think they do them in my size?'

I wasn't sure the question was being addressed at me or Janine. In fact, I wasn't entirely sure the whole episode was actually happening.

‘I think I could almost take up biking to get hold of a top like that.'

Now I knew I was dreaming. The boy was clearly delusional. He must have lived in Rawlins too long. Stephen's top was far more appealing than mine.

For want of any better options, we returned to Penny's Diner for breakfast. It might not have had home-made pies, but it was open all hours. Ahead lay another day of uncertain food supplies. In fact, there were none available until the attractively-named town of Steamboat Springs, some 135 miles away. With the route now returning to the mountains and a new high-point of nearly 10,000 feet ahead, it seemed too far to consider it our day's destination.

Nevertheless, in spite of the distance to cover, we left later than anticipated. The time it took to pack up and depart seemed to be directly proportional to the number of people involved in the process, even though there was no obvious connection between us. We each stowed our own luggage, ate our own breakfast and cleaned our own teeth. Yet what could be done in half an hour alone invariably took more than an hour as a foursome.

We rode out of town under the Interstate, passing a bench proudly bearing the logo of the Wyoming Gas Company. It conjured images of conversational, flatulent old men.

Next came a short hill, followed by more than 20 miles of rolling tarmac. We were on the edge of a broad valley. To our left the land fell imperceptibly away. To our right it rose gently until it shot vertically upwards in the form of the escarpment of the appropriately named Atlantic Rim.

Apart from Per, we were feeling fit. Having managed to avoid falling into the trap of pushing ourselves too hard too early in the ride, we were now reaping the benefit of having so many miles in our legs.

Yet for Per, even the rolling terrain was a real challenge. The flatness of the past two days had allowed him to disguise the obvious discomfort brought about by his sore knee. Now it could be disguised no longer. Already the previous night he had hinted heavily that he was coming to the end of his tether, and the terrain was about to become much more challenging. We would be in Colorado later in the day, a state containing innumerable high passes, three of which would see us climb above 11,000 feet.

Trevor, Stephen and I reached the crest of the day's first major climb after six miles of uphill some way ahead. I expressed my concerns.

‘He's been talking about making it to Steamboat as if that were the end of the race. I'm not sure how much further he'll go.'

‘I don't know there's much we can do,' said Trevor.

He was right. Nobody else could pedal for him. Besides, Per had neither complained nor requested any assistance. Instead, the growing legend of his indestructibility had been given more credence when I had asked him about his cycling history. He had none. Well, none as a mountain biker, at least. He commuted 15 miles a day in London, and had completed a couple of day-long road events, but had never ridden a mountain bike, let alone owned one, before deciding to undertake the Tour Divide.

‘My longest ride on a mountain bike was the first day of the race,' he had revealed without bravado.

Prior to that, the longest he had managed was 50 miles on a tow path near London; ideal preparation.

We were now in the mountains once more. This time it was the Sierra Madre range. Initially it was open, high country, but slowly our surroundings became more wooded. We entered the Medicine Bow National Forest accompanied by another punishing succession of short, steep ups and downs.

At a clearing in the forest, just after a descent to another stream crossing, we stopped for lunch. It was hot and sunny and the perfect spot for a picnic, though last night's random approach to shopping meant my picnic was far from perfect. Stephen completed the Enid Blyton picture by heading off to the stream to refill his water bottles.

I had filled all my bottles in Rawlins. It seemed rash to me to rely on sporadic water sources of uncertain cleanliness along the route.

‘Do you think the water is good enough to drink?'

‘Yeah, it'll be fine.'

To Stephen it seemed wasteful not to make the most of nature's bounty. It also saved him several pounds in weight not to be loaded to the gunnels each day.

After lunch we came across a notable landscape feature known as Aspen Alley, a natural avenue of Aspen trees that ran along the trail for a good mile. Then came a sinuous, paved descent. As we lost height so we gained heat. The descent ended at the Colorado border.

This might have been an important landmark for us, but clearly the sign-makers in this part of the country were not of the same opinion. Not that we were particularly in the mood for celebration. It was 2 p.m. and the fan oven had been turned on again. The bleached road and rocks reflected the blinding sun. Even the trees seemed overwhelmed; most were little more than scrub versions of the impressive stands we had spent the morning riding through.

Ahead lay 30 miles of more or less uninterrupted climbing. I began to daydream, or possibly hallucinate. The road started out through a canyon, home to dozens of imaginary Indians sporting bows and arrows. Then I came round a corner to find Trevor gesticulating at me and shouting inaudibly. I was so distracted by his frantic waving that I ignored a strange pile on the road. Only after I had ridden right past it did I become aware of the peculiar rattling noise it was emitting. I reached Trevor, who was clearly relieved.

‘I was shouting “snake!”'

I looked back. Sure enough, there was a rattler in the middle of the road. There was no time to ponder the possible consequences of my inattention, however. A battered pick-up truck came careering down the road ahead of us. It made little effort to accommodate our presence, then screeched to an abrupt halt. Four bare-chested bumpkins jumped out, beer cans in hand. They were clearly spoiling for a fight. Fortunately it was not with us. After a brief period of goading, one of them pulled a long-handled spade from the pick-up and proceeded to very ineffectually decapitate the snake.

‘Welcome to Colorado,' said Trevor.

A short distance further up the road the heat enforced a drinks break. We cowered at the side of the road like convicts on a chain gang. Even Stephen seemed to be distracted. Nevertheless, the protection afforded by his Yasser Arafat shawl, and the fact that Trevor's impressive beard seemed to be having a similarly beneficial effect, saw the pair of them once again ride off into the distance.

Per and I were labouring after them when he had a puncture. I waited until it was fixed, then we carried on. The track was rough and progress was slow. I was moved to revoke my commitment not to enter into any more Faustian pacts about the weather; rain would have been welcome at any price. But it was to no avail. The only water evident anywhere were the drops of perspiration that stung my eyes and obscured my vision. Perhaps I shouldn't have had my eyebrows trimmed in Banff before the start.

Then I started hallucinating again. Ahead was a collection of buildings that gave every impression of being a lodge and bar. At the door was a woman, waving and beckoning me in. Even in my reduced state I was aware of the risk posed by such a siren. Yet the mirage was too alluring to ignore.

‘Hi,' said the siren in a convincingly real voice. ‘Come in, come in. You must be hot. I've got cold drinks and fresh fruit inside.'

Maybe I wasn't hallucinating, though anything more than monosyllabic conversation was still beyond me. Fortunately my host didn't seem to mind my incoherence. As I slowly returned to my senses it became apparent that I was in Brush Mountain Lodge being ministered to by an angel called Kirsten. In front of me was a can of Coke and an enormous fruit salad: melons, water melons, strawberries, grapes to name but a few of its ingredients.

‘I know how you guys get by on gas station food so I always think you might appreciate a few vitamins.'

Kirsten, it turned out, was another Tour Divide junkie. Although, in my mind, we were a million miles from anywhere, she had been following our progress avidly on the Tour Divide website. We were far from the first racers to have stopped by this year, and only a moment's inattention had precluded her from accosting Trevor and Stephen.

Just then, I saw Per through the side window. I jumped up to hail him, then once again demonstrated the debilitating effect extreme heat had on my articulacy.

‘Per! Per!' I yelled. ‘Water melon! Water melon!'

Fortunately, Per had enough imagination to stop, even if he had also been lost in his own private world of suffering.

‘I saw your bike but it didn't dawn on me that meant you would be here.'

He climbed in through the veranda, and let out an involuntary yelp of pain as he flexed his leg to stand up.

‘Ooh, that sounds sore. Are you all right?' asked Kirsten.

‘It's nothing,' said Per, tucking into the food in front of him with atavistic gusto.