Two Wheels on my Wagon (2 page)

Then there were the not insubstantial reservations expressed by family and friends. Most involved questioning my sanity, which was not a particularly unusual activity. Novelty came in the form of encouragement – of a sort – from Chris Boardman.

‘I really hope the adventure goes well for you. You are, of course, raving mad.'

To be considered mad by friends and family was one thing. To be considered mad by an Olympic gold medallist and Tour de France yellow jersey wearer was another level of compliment entirely.

Thus reassured, I made tentative steps towards securing a bike. A good bike, if possible. With the rider – me – possessing uncertain psychological and physical competence, an effective pedalling machine was clearly a prerequisite for success. But how would I recognise a bike good enough to cycle 2,800 miles in less than a month?

The answer came from Mr Cycles. Although strictly speaking this was the name of a shop in Seaford, rather than its proprietor, Rod, the two quickly became interchangeable. After much discussion, most of which I could only pretend to understand, I was provided with a Marin Nail Trail 29er. Marin, I was told, was the manufacturer, and Nail Trail was the name of the bike. ‘29er', however, had me lost.

‘It means it's got bigger wheels,' Mr Cycles explained.

I must have looked even blanker than usual.

‘They'll make you go faster.'

It seemed unlikely, but it was a straw I was happy to clutch at, especially when confronted with the opaque vocabulary of my few mountain biking acquaintances.

‘If you want me to school you bro' we'll go out, throw down a few shapes off a booter and see if we can't stick some sick lines,' said Dom, a friend from the office in which I had discovered the Tour Divide.

He meant well, I was sure, though exactly what he meant I had no idea. By way of reassurance, Cool Dom then said something about ‘berms'. This succeeded not in enlightening me but in making me think of Inspector Clouseau's attempts to single-handedly destroy the established tenets of English pronunciation.

‘Not now, Kato, I 'ave fallen onto my berm . . .'

This might not be an accurate interpretation of the mountain biking vernacular, but it was certainly an accurate description of the occasionally unbalanced start to my career as an off-road rider. In fact, my first few rides involved a very convincing, if unwitting, impression of the hapless Clouseau were he to have been transferred from his 2CV to two wheels and a rocky path. Several potentially humiliating tumbles were only not humiliating because of the absence of an audience. Lying inelegantly in a clump of nettles, however, was humiliating whether the incident became a public affair or not. Still, seduction is a mysterious business. In spite of all the perfectly good reasons for not participating, not least of which were the nettles, Einstein and the Tour Divide had won me over. Whether it was a good idea or not, I had decided to give it a go.

E
ven once I had come to some sort of accord with my bike to try and avoid our causing each other mutual harm, misadventures in training were numerous.

Shortly after Easter, I decided that an attempt should be made to ride the South Downs Way in one day. Such a ride was locally perceived as the very acme of achievement, but a comparison between the South Downs and the Rockies quickly demonstrated the apparent futility of this gesture.

In purely geographical terms the difference was clear enough. The Rockies measure 3,000 miles in length; the South Downs 100 miles. The high point of the Rockies is 14,440 feet, on the imposing Mount Elbert in Colorado. In contrast, Butser Hill measures just 891 feet, a mere one sixteenth of the size. I could find no records of anyone having suffered from altitude sickness on Butser Hill.

The differences in climate are equally stark. The average minimum temperature in January in Steamboat Springs, roughly halfway along the route, is –17°C. The average high in July is +28°C. In Brighton in Sussex, the figures are +3°C and +16°C respectively. Steamboat averages 183 inches of snow per year. Brighton has no records. The extremes regularly recorded at each end of my intended ride were even more marked.

Then came wildlife. The list of dangerous creatures that inhabit the mountains of North America is enough to send shivers down even David Attenborough's spine: bears (black and brown, or grizzlies as they are more commonly known), mountain lions, wolves, moose, snakes, scorpions, tarantulas . . . In Sussex, the most dangerous animals I was likely to encounter were mad cows.

And, sorry as I was to say it, inconsiderate fellow travellers. The threat from this latter category should not be dismissed lightly. Sunny weekends, I learnt, attracted cyclists to the Downs like flies to a cow pat, often with behaviour to match. So intent were these weekend warriors on demonstrating their belief that they were Lance Armstrong's real rivals that common civility was dispensed with. Shutting gates? Not for them. Thanking others for holding gates open? A waste of breath . . . Failing to forewarn other cyclists or walkers of their impending arrival? What's it got to do with them anyway . . . I soon discovered that the only possible way to deal with such rudeness was to help already puce faces turn pucer by being ostentatiously altruistic in my own interactions with them; it helped, too, to overtake such misanthropes between gates and to repeat the dose at the next obstacle.

That most mild-mannered of figures, the rambler, was often little better. Quite why it was necessary to export road rage onto the nation's bridleways, when cars should long since have been forgotten, was a mystery. Yet the mere sight of a cyclist was enough to drive some pedestrians into a frenzy; they couldn't all be London cabbies with a personal vendetta induced by the provocative antics of cycle couriers. Other variations on the same theme included those who isolated themselves from the world around them with an iPod and headphones. Their being oblivious to others was OK; my unwittingly startling them out of their esoteric trance by passing them on a bike was not.

Even for those not cocooned in their own little world, interaction with cyclists was frequently antagonistic. It may have drawn mockery from youths gathered at bus stops, but I had fitted a bicycle bell to alert people to my presence. It generated a nice, tinkly sort of noise, designed to be a friendly compromise between no warning at all and something that might be considered too strident (such as an air-horn, or a cry of ‘Get out of my bloody way, you day-dreaming path-hoggers'). Responses varied. Those a little hard of hearing, or too deeply engaged in conversation, were often oblivious to my tinkling. ‘Why don't you have a bell? You should let people know you're coming . . .' they'd say, affronted at what they perceived to be my intentional impersonation of a stealth mountain biker.

Then there were those whose hearing was clearly more acute.

‘You don't need to ring a bell, I knew you were there . . .' they'd declaim, affronted at what they perceived to be my impersonation of a juggernaut. I must confess to having at times dreamt longingly of a processional chariot with which to crush them, but managed to resist the temptation to turn my bicycle into one.

Nevertheless, with the start of the Tour Divide now less than two months away and the height of my off-road riding accomplishments so far having been a handful of three-hour rides, the South Downs it was going to have to be. Something – anything – had to be done, and they had the distinct virtue of being right on my doorstep.

Accordingly, one misty morning in April, Ian, a cycling friend, and I rode out of Winchester, intent on reaching Eastbourne by nightfall. Actually, intent implies a degree of earnest endeavour that was curiously lacking. We ambled through the dappled, early morning shade of the trees so characteristic of the western Downs and, while most continued to slumber, admired West Sussex at its finest. The greys and blues of the first hour slowly became infinite shades of green and gold as the mist dissipated. By Old Winchester Hill we were bathed in glorious sunshine. We were also lost, but even this couldn't wake us from our torpor. Less surprisingly, nor could the sausage rolls and pasties that I consumed, much to Ian's consternation, at the Queen Elizabeth Country Park as we crossed the A3.

Such lethargy was exacerbated by obstacles not entirely of our own making. At the pub on top of Devil's Dyke, it took over half an hour to accomplish the seemingly straightforward tasks of buying and consuming a pint of Coke and using the facilities, of which we could only find one and for which there was a considerable queue. I waited impatiently, all the while conscious that, hopping around in my cycling shoes on the tiled floor, I sounded like a demented tap dancer. Those in the queue with me, fresh from an afternoon of inactivity and alcohol consumption, clearly agreed that I was at least demented.

At last we were inspired to make a concerted effort to recoup lost time. Past Jack and Jill windmills we tried to raise our pace, but it was too little, too late. At nearly 6 p.m. at Ditchling Beacon the game was up. Stymied by impending darkness and seduced by the delightful picnic provided by Camilla, a friend of Ian's, that was designed to fuel our final push, we conceded defeat. To console ourselves, we drank tea and ate malt loaf, pouring honey into each other's ears and telling ourselves our achievements were still considerable. Nevertheless, by the time I returned to Hurstpierpoint, I had ridden scarcely 80 miles in more than 12 hours. I had also suffered noticeable sunburn on my south-facing right arm, hardly a promising portent for the deserts of New Mexico, should I ever make it that far.

The next challenge came the following day, when I had to retrace my wheel tracks to collect the car from Winchester (and hopefully turn my left arm the same salmon-pink colour as my right). I set off alone in high spirits, and made good progress for the first 40 miles or so. Then, just as I was bracing myself for another bout with the pasties from the Queen Elizabeth Country Park, disaster struck. My bottom bracket – the axle where the pedals join the bike – ceased to turn. Apart from nearly catapulting me once more into the shrubbery, this sudden seizure made it abundantly clear that any further pedal-powered progress was now beyond me. Even if I had had the correct tools and replacement parts with me it would have been beyond my skills as a mechanic to effect a repair.

Vexed as I certainly was, though, the situation was not particularly grave. By the simple expedient of pushing the bike to the top of the next hill and freewheeling down the other side I made it to the sanctuary of the café. Inspired by tea and yet more pasties, I tracked down the number of a taxi company, who promised to take me and my recalcitrant steed the remaining 25 miles to Winchester. Once safely back at the car, all that was left was for me to spend the long drive home considering what would have been my fate had I been in the great wastes of the Rockies rather than benign Sussex with a taxi company at hand.

I had already been reassured to a degree by a kind offer from my wife's cousin, Steve, a resident of Los Angeles. It turned out that he was the owner of a transport company specialising in moving crews and sets for rock groups around the whole of North America. I was unlikely to need a used Bon Jovi stage design, but logistical backup could prove invaluable in the event of a breakdown.

‘As I've said, my reach is rather remarkable, so anywhere along the way that you need a hand, please call,' he wrote.

He also gave me a toll-free phone number that I could use 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That appeared to resolve my concerns about getting hold of spare parts, at least those that could be delivered to a town or metalled road. For troubles beyond that, I vowed to increase still further my emergency food supplies.

The beginnings of my second attempt were scarcely more auspicious. The previous night started gaily, with family visiting for dinner. The responsibilities of being a host should always be taken seriously, and it seemed incumbent on me to ensure a steady supply of aperitifs and then wine with the meal. An all too rare offer to retire to the local hostelry to continue the conviviality was then accepted with alacrity – too much alacrity, if truth be known. By midnight, I collapsed into bed secure in the knowledge that I could now ride un-aided to the South Pole if so required.

At 6 a.m., however, a little voice in my head could clearly be heard reprimanding me for the previous evening's excesses. At 7 a.m., as we started to ride, the voice had become somewhat more insistent, calling into question the wisdom of my chosen path, both for today and in a few weeks' time. ‘Go back home, go back to bed,' the siren voice wailed. With a discomfiting wind and rain imminent, I had to rely on the resolve of Ian, once again my training companion, to ensure the day's venture didn't end before it had properly begun.

As is inevitable on the South Downs, the ride started with a stiff climb, at the top of which we were greeted by the squall that had been threatening since we left home. The cloud scudding a few feet above our heads was greyer even than the English Channel off to our left. Once more we seemed – in my mind, at least – to be doomed to ignominious failure. But while I cursed and complained in my new and highly effective waterproof jacket, Ian continued to lead at a stiff pace, clad only in a cycling jersey, seemingly oblivious to the meteorological conditions. The wind howled and the rain stung any and all exposed flesh, but as I couldn't make Ian hear my moaning above the gale I had no choice but to keep following.

At last, the weather eased. The dubious charms of the Queen Elizabeth Country Park café were once again within our reach. Gradually thereafter I began to warm to the task. Even the unlikely traffic jams caused by more than 100 mountain bikers heading the other way as part of an organised ‘South Downs Way in three days' ride could not put us off our stride.