Two Wheels on my Wagon (10 page)

A
fter 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 would 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.

Out of the skiing season, however, and after 8 p.m. in the evening, the town's 5,000 or so residents were evidently content to let the handful of strolling visitors have the run of the place. Strangely, accommodation seemed the one service in short supply. Eventually, the scruffiest motel I'd yet encountered presented itself. Even in my slightly reduced state I nearly balked at the prospect. I was glad I didn't. I ended the evening eating dinner – a chocolate bar and a can of Coke – while soothing my aching muscles in a rooftop jacuzzi.

I
woke before the alarm sounded. It was 6.40 a.m. Laziness tempted me to go back to sleep but guilt at already losing valuable cycling time eventually won the battle for my conscience. I donned yesterday's clammy cycling kit, in spite of which unpleasantness my Whitefish experience continued to exceed expectations by providing an enjoyable breakfast, the first since Banff. I had a veritable feast: two bagels; four pieces of raisin toast; apple juice; three cups of coffee.

At the same time, I treated myself to the conveniences afforded by modern technology and logged on to the Tour Divide website on the hotel computer. The SPOT GPS tracker loaned to all Tour Divide riders allowed visitors to the website to follow their progress through position updates beamed to an omniscient satellite at ten-minute intervals. The system was clearly working to the satisfaction of those back home, even if it did feel as though Big Brother had finally caught up with me.

‘Hello from us all,' Catherine had written. ‘We are avidly watching your progress and flipping between excitement when we can see you moving and slight worry when you don't go anywhere for a while (especially at nine in the morning!).'

Yesterday's lie-in had evidently not gone unnoticed.

It also provided a means to convey other vital messages.

‘What is a bear mace by the way?' asked a friend to whom I had endeavoured unsuccessfully to explain my bear precautions. ‘Is it some kind of ceremonial item with which you hope to convince the bears that you are their mayor?'

My brother-in-law Dominic clearly thought the whole undertaking was not sufficiently demanding. ‘It's reassuring to know I have the right website as I also found a site set up by a group of alternative crazy-men who follow a similar route but have to wear hair-shirts and be beaten to sleep every night with a totem pole.'

There was even some encouragement.

‘Enjoy the suffering – pain is only weakness leaving the body.'

I must have been weaker than I thought.

Next, I checked on the position of other riders. Rick and Deanna had stopped a considerable distance short of town. Cadet was still in Eureka. Then, an initial flurry of excitement at finding two racers apparently still in Whitefish subsided when I realised that my own tracker placed me 5 miles back the way I'd come, somewhere on the shores of Whitefish Lake. Maybe the satellite wasn't as accurate as it was cracked up to be. Nevertheless, I departed in buoyant spirits. I had become a fox with a couple of rabbits up the road. I veritably sprinted through the neatly tended lawns of the edge of town. It was just a question of time before I had someone to talk to again, and to help me fend off bears.