Two Wheels on my Wagon (21 page)

Mind? We were delighted. In spite of our filthy state, we were shown in through a magnificent, timbered living room with vast open fireplace to two of the plushest bedrooms I'd had the pleasure to see.

‘Er, perhaps I should just ask how much it will cost,' I whispered to Stephen.

He nodded.

‘Oh, you're not really supposed to stay but you seem like nice guys, so just leave twenty bucks for housekeeping,' said Adam.

Our joy knew no bounds. Per and Trevor arrived and could scarcely disguise their astonishment.

‘I thought he was gonna be a real hard ass when he first came out, but Paul's English accent did the trick,' said Stephen.

In fact, it seemed Adam had little need of external motivation to be hospitable. He just needed the lodge to be empty of paying guests – those who paid more than $300 per night for exclusive access to its services, that is. Looking at the state of us, it was not an unreasonable viewpoint.

‘Would you guys like something to eat? The chef is off duty, but I've got plenty of stuff in the fridge.'

We didn't need asking twice. Cold meat, salads, bread and glasses of milk appeared and then rapidly disappeared. The
pièce de résistance
was birthday cake.

‘Go on, eat as much as you can. It'll only get thrown away otherwise. The person whose birthday it was has gone.'

Ours, it appeared, had come early.

I
t might have been a reaction to the previous morning's tardiness, or it might have been so as not to abuse Adam's hospitality; either way, we started early. Just after 5.30 a.m., in fact. Within less than a minute, we had begun to regret being so bold.

It was freezing, by far the coldest morning of the ride thus far. We were all wearing every layer of clothing we possessed, though it seemed to make little difference. To make matters worse, the day's riding began with a 15-mile descent. Of course, this would normally have been a cause for celebration, not consternation. But then, equally normally, there would not be the imminent danger of losing all – and I mean all – appendages to frostbite.

We were in a classic Catch-22. The faster we went, the more the discomfort increased; the slower we went, the longer it lasted. Stephen seized the initiative and plumped firmly for a swift end to our suffering. He had the added benefit of being able to keep at least his hands warm by cycling downhill non-handed on a laden bike at 40 miles an hour. I was not entirely confident this wouldn't bring an end to our current brand of suffering by creating another – a mess of limbs and bike wheels on the road in front of me – but it was a spectacular sight.

At the end of the descent we resisted the mild temptation to continue nine miles to the bright lights and certain coffee of Dubois (pronounced Do-Boys, of course). Instead, we turned right on the prescribed route towards Union Pass. Having just lost nearly 2,500 feet in altitude in 15 miles, we had now to regain it in less than 10 miles. With a 2-mile downhill section in the middle, that effectively meant two 4-mile climbs at a gradient of nearly 10 per cent, as steep and prolonged as anything we had encountered thus far. At least it would keep us warm.

Not that such a relative luxury deterred us from dreaming of breakfast at a café marked on our maps in between the two sections of climbing. It promised more than just psychological succour. Last night's meal at Brooks Lake Lodge had been far better than nothing, but it was considerably less than we could have eaten. Having also used some of our dwindling food supplies for a pre-departure snack, we were beginning to run a bit low. Most of the climb was spent silently salivating and collectively speculating.

‘I fancy pancakes,' said Trevor, after waiting for the rest of us at the top.

‘I'll take anything as long as they have some coffee to keep me awake.'

Two minutes later, after a short descent, we spotted the café we had been fantasising about. It was closed. Not just for an hour or two, but indefinitely.

‘Due to a death in the family,' read a handwritten sign on the door.

In the circumstances it was hard to feel bitter, but I tried my best. Now there was no guarantee of any services until the town of Pinedale, 80 miles away. There was the possibility of a café after 50 miles, but our faith in its continued existence was waning. We consumed more of our meagre stockpile in the weak morning sun, then set off again. There was little else we could do.

The next climb was as gruelling as the first, without the carrot of a café at the top. Still, our growing appetites matched and even heightened the growing sense of isolation. We were high, exposed and alone. It was thrilling and, without the smothering trees of Montana and with two weeks' worth of habituation, not too intimidating.

After the top, the terrain eased. We were in a broad saddle, right on top of the Continental Divide, the wetlands around us destined to feed rivers running to both Atlantic and Pacific oceans. We rode peacefully, almost reverentially, through wild, open pastures. In fact, our eventual arrival at the 9,210-foot Union Pass had the peculiar distinction of being at the end of a gradual, 5-mile descent from our earlier high-point.

The pass marks the meeting point of three mountain ranges, hence its name. To the north is the Absaroka range. To the west are the Gros Ventre Mountains, which merit a less flattering translation from the French than the breasts of the Tetons: fat stomach, or big belly if you prefer the vernacular. Finally, to the south and east, and our near companions for the next 150 miles, is the Wind River Range. This includes the highest point in the whole of Wyoming – Gannett Peak, 13,804 feet high and a whole 33 feet above the biggest bosom itself, Grand Teton – yet its presence seemed far more muted than its more celebrated neighbour. Instead of a photogenic arête bereft of foothills, the Wind Rivers, almost as broad as they are long, keep their mystique a more closely guarded secret. It felt a privilege to be experiencing them, even if only tangentially.

The privilege of such proximity was brief as our highland odyssey continued on a westerly track before curving back south down a steep, rough descent into the headwaters of the Green River. Just before the descent started, Trevor and I came across a large, brown, hairy animal ambling around in a stand of birch saplings. We had just passed a sign that read ‘Grizzly Bear Area: Special Rules Apply', though it hadn't deigned to explain what those special rules might be. Fortunately, we didn't need an impromptu lesson. It was a moose. It considered us briefly with sublime indifference, then continued ambling.

Ahead, Stephen rode as if he were still trying to warm up. In fact, he was intent on ensuring his arrival in Pinedale before the anticipated closing time of the bicycle shop in order to re-true his increasingly buckled rear wheel. In spite of this apparent handicap, he disappeared down the hill like a bat out of hell and then kept going along the valley bottom until he was well out of sight.

For the rest of us laggards, however, the upper reaches of the valley seemed to defy gravity. The route map indicated we should be heading downhill, and the logic of having a river flowing in the same direction as we were cycling seemed incontrovertible. Yet the effort required for each pedal stroke seemed far more than that necessitated by the constant headwind.

I could only presume those involved in the early tie drives along this very same stretch of river were not similarly confounded. Tie drives – where timber from the surrounding mountains was harvested in vast quantities before being driven or floated downriver to be used as ties or sleepers on the ever-expanding railway network – came to the Green River in 1867. Under the impetus of Charles DeLoney, described as a ‘youthful Civil War veteran from Michigan', the timber harvested that season by 30 men was then driven 130 miles downstream on the flood waters of the following spring to the railhead at Green River City.

The quantity of timber involved in this particular drive, and that of the following year, was lost in the mists of time, but similar drives in Utah provided up to 350,000 ties in a year. Perhaps repentant at the scale of denudation he had caused, DeLoney went on to become Wyoming's first forest supervisor.

The Green River's other claim to fame is as the starting point for Major John Wesley Powell's first descent of the Colorado River through the then uncharted lands around the Grand Canyon. Powell, another Civil War veteran and by this point reduced to only one arm, took it as an affront that, while the country had now been explored from coast to coast, there was still such a vast, unmapped area. Almost completely ignorant of the terrain ahead, and equipped with what were effectively no more than wooden rowing boats, it took Powell and his nine fellow explorers more than three months and innumerable near drownings to reach civilisation again 1,000 miles away in modern-day Arizona. It put our travails into appropriate perspective.

Humbled and subdued, it came as a considerable surprise to find the apparently randomly located ‘The Place Café' was still alive and kicking. So too, thankfully, were its staff. Stephen had already ordered a late lunch. This was no time for him to demonstrate his otherwise impeccable table manners: it was after 2 p.m. and he still had another 30 miles to cover before he would reach the sanctuary of the bike shop.

Clearly suffering from delusions as much as hunger, I ordered, to universal surprise, a salad. I was sure I had intended to ask for a large bacon-cheeseburger and chips, but both Trevor and Stephen confirmed that the salad that soon arrived was exactly as I had requested. Per arrived and Stephen, having already finished, took his leave. I made unconvincing noises of gustative appreciation; Per and Trevor tucked into their vast burgers with carnivorous relish.

Still bemused, we saddled up once more. Almost immediately, I felt a changed man. Gone was the lethargy of previous days. In its stead I found a renewed, if unfathomable,
joie de vivre
. I fairly sprinted up the hill after the café. Then came a glorious, sweeping series of gentle descents on smooth tarmac that took us halfway to Pinedale. I couldn't go fast enough. It was plain, open country and the skies were thick with threatening, leaden clouds. Yet I was in heaven.

This unlikely, salad-fuelled state of grace continued on the gravel trails that ran into town. Given the apparent downturn in the weather, the continued evidence of the impact of recent rains in the slick, gooey surface and overflowing drainage channels should have seemed ominous. But I was carefree. I communed silently with the nearby ranchland and the now-distant Wind River Mountains until I found myself, to my considerable surprise, on the outskirts of Pinedale.

Suddenly aware of my obnoxious state and, more particularly, that of my bike, I stopped at a car wash. A pair of youthful cowboys with a huge pick-up belied their brash, overbearing exteriors and offered me the remnants of the time they had already paid for. They asked where I was from.

‘England. And you?'

‘Pinedale born and raised,' they said in a way that made it clear they had neither been required nor desired to venture much further afield.

Yet opinions of Pinedale were divergent. After locating Per, Trevor and Stephen, who had succeeded in fixing his wheel but only through the expedient of doing it himself, it being too complex a task for the hardware store-cum-bike shop, we headed along the main drag to find somewhere to eat. It could never be called a charming town, though it possessed the answers to all our immediate needs.

As if to prove the point, we settled on a Chinese restaurant, though we could have chosen Indian (as in the country of that name, rather than original natives of Pinedale), Mexican or burgers from any number of diners. The couple at the next table were travelling retirees. They had come to Pinedale to assess its merits for relatives who were also intent on perpetuating the American tradition of relocating when drawing a pension.

‘We won't recommend they come here. It's too open and windy and there are no trees.'

From our brief experience to date, it was difficult to argue. Certainly, our route into town could not have been called picturesque. The town itself had an unfinished air, perhaps associated with recent expansion on the back of the discovery of substantial oil deposits in the vicinity; we had passed several dowdy motels, disreputable-looking even, and had in the end been thankful that they were full, block-booked by rig workers.

Then the waiter added his implied denunciation of his adopted home town, or perhaps just of his current employment in the family business. In a strong Chinese accent and in very broken English he expressed a powerful yearning to join us on our journey (or at least undertake a similar trip – it was the adventure he sought, not necessarily our company). To have travelled so far from his native land yet still seem so unsatisfied was disturbing to see.

Nevertheless, an after-dinner exploration of the town gave a different, homelier impression. I had no qualms leaving my bike unlocked outside the municipal library. Access to computers and the Internet was free. I read more welcome messages of support from home, including a suggestion that a group rendition of ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' might nicely complement our Thomas the Tank Engine misadventures.

The residential streets nearby were tidy and green, with well-kept lawns and immaculate yards. Buoyed by this discovery, I returned to the hotel to find the others in thrall to the television. Michael Jackson had died. I sought solace – from the intrusion of MTV rather than Wacko's untimely demise – in my copy of the
Western Wyoming Penny Pincher
. Along with adverts for drive-thru' liquor stores and an open house for alpacas, one particular request caught my eye.