Two Wheels on my Wagon (17 page)

We stopped, as much out of amazement as anything else. Tour Divide racers were obviously like London buses – there were none for an age, then several came along at once. We knew them all. There was Jacob from Manitowoc, whose phantom I had chased on the day out of Whitefish. With him were Per, Trevor from Montreal and Stephen from Mississippi. Resplendent in mud-spattered overgarments, they were a motley crew.

They were also downhearted. Rain had slowed their progress considerably for the past two days now. Worse, Jacob's rear derailleur had snapped in the mud and he was having to effect running repairs. From his demeanour, it seemed he didn't think they would last long. Still, he had nearly finished and had no option but to continue.

The road after the farm was cycleable again, apart from when it was covered in small lakes a foot deep. Then came a short section of metalled road before the gravel resumed. We were now on the old route to Corinne, 300 miles and two states away in Utah, and which had developed to service the gold camps at Bannack and elsewhere in nascent Montana. It was one of the first roads into Montana, and clearly hadn't seen much maintenance in the intervening 150 years.

Ray's single gear and, perhaps, the fact he had started the day so early, saw him drop back. So, too, did Jacob, nursing his repairs, and Stephen, keeping him company. I rode with Per and Trevor. The trail was slimy but passable. After an hour we consulted the map. ‘Next 47 miles are very remote' it said, followed shortly after by ‘road can be potentially mucky when wet'. That much we knew already. The tautology of the description was only a small crumb of comfort.

At 2 p.m. we stopped for lunch. We had been climbing since the road junction some 10 miles beforehand. Another 15 uphill miles remained. After that, to our disbelieving eyes, there appeared to be a 30-mile descent followed by 8 miles on tarmac. Fifty-three miles to go, most of them downhill. It didn't seem too bad if you said it quickly enough.

Neither Ray nor Jacob nor Stephen caught us as we ate. The blue sky had all but disappeared. With menacing clouds beginning to obscure the tops of the nearby mountains, and rain squalls visible ahead, we decided to press on.

The valley swept on before us, its exposed, barren flanks rising to graceful ridges 2,000 feet above our heads. Medicine Lodge Peak stood proudly to our right. It was magnificent scenery. Which was just as well. Several new bouts of mud wrestling ensured we had plenty of time to appreciate it.

During one such period of enforced reflection, I noticed that Trevor had old-fashioned V-brakes rather than the disc brakes Per and I had.

‘Don't they just clog up even more?' I asked thoughtlessly.

The answer was evident from Trevor's creased brow. He had one considerable advantage over me, however. He was strong enough to raise his bike onto his shoulder and carry it through the sage scrub. Per and I, meanwhile, had to persist in quite literally ploughing a lonely furrow up the road. A large four-wheel drive pick-up fish-tailed past on its way to a ranch. We were uncertain whether to be gratified or concerned that even with its weight and power it could scarcely maintain progress in the desired direction.

As promised by the map, the gradient increased sharply two miles before the crest of the evocatively named Medicine Lodge-Sheep Creek Divide and the road surface improved. The weather deteriorated, however. Grey clouds were massing upwind, and the temperature had plummeted.

All of a sudden, Stephen arrived. He had ridden like an express train since Jacob had succumbed to the inevitability of his mechanical situation and been forced to accept a lift back to civilisation from a passing ranch hand. He had passed Ray at the beginning of the worst of the mud more than 10 miles back. Now he was intent on getting to Lima before the weather broke.

It was a false hope. Hardly had we begun to descend than the first raindrops fell. Soon they were not alone. If yesterday had been like a bad day in the Lake District, what ensued next was Scottish weather at its most foul, a sage-covered Rannoch Moor in a deluge. To add to the excitement, the mud now had the temerity to stop us from even being able to cycle downhill. It sucked greedily at our wheels, at our feet, at our morale. Five miles of only intermittent cycling followed. If you didn't mind not being able to see what you were riding on, often the best route was through the deepest puddles. It was gruelling, and not only because the road surface resembled porridge.

I tried to lift spirits with Flanders and Swann's hippopotamus song, but no self-respecting hippo would have been seen dead in mud like this. In fact, there was a complete absence of wildlife. It no doubt said something about our folly that ‘dumb' animals knew better than to be out in such conditions.

At 6 p.m. there were still 25 miles ahead of us before we even made it to the road. Nightfall under clear skies was 10 p.m., but it already felt dark. Time was of the essence. Fortunately, the intensity of the rain seemed to help, creating rivulets through the mud down which we could ride. Perfumed by earlier trips into the sage scrub, and sweating profusely with the effort in spite of the driving rain, I felt like a stuffed chicken. All that was missing was the onion and breadcrumbs.

At last the scenery began to change. We were now in what one might call ‘injun' country: a limestone gorge, the flanks of which were replete with prominent bluffs and caves carved by an ancient river. Apart from the lamentable absence of native tribes it could scarcely have changed much since they were formed.

As we finally spilled out of the gorge onto the paved road that would take us to Lima, I looked behind to read a sign we had just passed.

‘Road impassable when wet.'

The pace had taken its toll. Even the prospect of eight smooth, flat miles seemed too much. No amount of effort could now compensate for the bone-deep chill. A handful of cars and lorries, headlights already blazing, sped past, oblivious. Motivation finally came through salivation. ‘Think of the food' was our rallying cry.

It can be a dangerous thing to seek incentive in the realm of the possible rather than the certain. Having relied on the prospect of something appealing, subsequent disappointment at its absence is all the more acute. There was no guarantee that anything in Lima would be open at such a late hour on a Sunday night to meet our needs. With a population of only 242, there was no guarantee that there would be anything there at all.

We were in luck. Tucked in a crook of the Interstate, Lima was still buzzing – relatively speaking – when we finally arrived at 9 p.m. More importantly, Jan's Café and Cabins was open. Yet, famished as we were, we hesitated on the threshold. We really weren't very presentable. How best could we exploit our plight to ensure a warm reception? I was elected spokesman.

‘Use that charming English accent of yours,' said Stephen in his Deep South drawl.

With unjust trepidation after the warmth of all the hospitality received thus far, I sploshed into the diner, followed by a trail of mud. I need not have worried.

We were not the only cyclists to have passed this way that day. Seated at the bar, considerably cleaner than when she had arrived earlier in the afternoon, was Cricket, for whom this whole adventure was a ‘Mommy holiday' (some holiday, some Mom, I had thought at the time in Banff).

‘Boy, am I glad to see you guys,' she beamed.

Then, shortly after Cricket's display of enthusiasm, a lady with nearly as much makeup as I had mud on my face – though hers was considerably more flattering – batted nary an eyelid as she offered both food and accommodation. She then made all four of us swoon by leading us on stilettos through the yard to a hosepipe where we could clean body and bike.

‘You can order food up to 10 p.m.,' she said once she had demonstrated how to operate the manual pump.

The work of a woman in rural Montana was nothing if not varied. Cleaned and as presentable as possible, we returned to the diner. We ordered five burgers.

‘Are you expecting someone else?' asked the waitress.

‘No,' said 6-foot-6-inches Per. ‘Two are for me.'

A
t 7 a.m. it was raining. Half an hour later it was still raining, which was encouraging. At 8 a.m., with no let-up yet in sight, we admitted defeat. We were delighted. It was just the excuse we needed to go nowhere.

‘I'm not riding through any more of that mud today,' said Trevor emphatically. Murmurs of approval came from under piles of bedclothes. We had already decided the previous night that only brilliant sunshine and Hawaiian temperatures would tempt us to depart again in the morning. Our luck was in – such an unlikely improvement in meteorological conditions had been avoided.

This turned out to be just as well. Even getting out of bed to go to the café for breakfast was something of a reluctant pleasure but, as with the night before, an empty stomach was a powerful motivator. In the café, Cricket was still nursing a cup of coffee. Her plan for an early start had also been stymied by the rain. Yet she remained intent on sallying forth, alone if necessary, as soon as the rain abated (surely it couldn't go on much longer); attempts to persuade us to accompany her fell on deaf ears.

To try to make myself feel better for such a lack of gallantry, I tactlessly listed the reasons why waiting for a day would be a better idea.

‘One of the messages on the website from a rider ahead said there were 80 miles of mud after Lima,' I pointed out.

The road had also apparently been closed less than a week ago due to flooding. But, like Margaret Thatcher, the lady was not for turning.

‘I have to keep moving. I've had two short days already.'

In fact, she had been caught in the worst of the mud in the worst of the weather and for the past two days had struggled to cover less than 100 miles through the quagmire. The days may have been short, but they had not been easy.

Nevertheless, Cricket's experiences thus far seemed to have inured her to such difficulties. She had already had a face-off with a bear that had charged her after being spooked by her arrival, and which then sat in the middle of the trail in front of her for an hour, refusing to move.

‘When it got dark and I couldn't see him any more it was a little frightening,' she admitted.

As we were still devouring breakfast, she seized on a break in the clouds and rode off. She had been chivalrous enough to save us from guilt at letting her venture forth on her own. Yet guilt there still was, not least because there remained so far to go. How could we conceive of a day off? Only an atavistic urge for food and sleep – and the timely arrival of another round of toast – saved us from succumbing to the perverse temptation to continue. Within seconds, however, Per, Stephen, Trevor and I were lazily and gluttonously justifying our inertia. Even though the clouds were continuing to disperse and sunshine was a real possibility, it wasn't difficult.

Shortly after we had finished breakfast we were mightily relieved to be rejoined by Ray. Our relief was as nothing compared to his, however. If he had looked only semi-thawed when Steve and I had met him in Wise River, he now looked to have only recently climbed out of a deep freeze.

‘I'm done with this thing,' he said.

Having tried to dissuade Cricket from continuing, we now found ourselves trying to persuade Ray to keep going.

‘Hey, have some breakfast, man, you'll feel better,' said Stephen.

‘We're not going anywhere until tomorrow,' added Per.

But it was to no avail. It was easy to understand why. While we had spent the previous night warming ourselves in Jan's Café, Ray had had to chase a herd of elk from a derelict barn high on the pass to find somewhere to shelter from the storm through which we had cycled. It had been a long and cold night for a man from Dallas, and it had not been his first. The cumulative effect of the chill and having only one gear had clearly taken a heavy toll.

‘My knees are just shot,' he confirmed.

Shortly after Ray had left to search out a box to put his bike in for the long journey home there was a knock on the door. It was one of the chefs from the café.

‘Could one of you guys come and help out the other cyclist? He's cut himself real bad.'

Simply because I was nearest the door I traipsed with some curiosity but no particular urgency to the porch.

‘Hi, Ray. Oh . . . what happened?'

A grey-faced Ray was sitting with a large pool of blood at his feet. One hand was clasping the other in a blood-stained towel.

‘I just cut my hand when I was trying to box up my bike,' he said with some understatement.

He had done the same thing while un-boxing his bike in Banff, though clearly not to the same degree. An ambulance had been called, and Ray asked if I would mind tidying up his stuff and locking it into his motel room so it would still be there when he got back from hospital.

‘That's quite an extreme thing to do just to make sure you don't change your mind about keeping going,' I pointed out as he was bundled into the ambulance to be taken to Dillon, 45 miles away.

Ray smiled. At least I thought he smiled; it might have been a grimace. After he had left, I followed the splatters of blood across the drying car park to his motel room. It wasn't a pretty sight. I sorted Ray's belongings and made a half-hearted attempt at tidying up before I was saved from such a noble act by the cleaner.

‘Leave that to me, I'll do it later,' she said.

I decided not to argue.

The rest of the day was spent on more mundane activities. Bikes and clothes were cleaned. The sun came out and a strong, drying wind came from the east.

‘It's a headwind for Cricket,' said Trevor.