Two Wheels on my Wagon (28 page)

‘Be sure to tell her we're just up the road,' said Stephen.

He offered us the use of the tools and provisions in the back of the van. Oranges were the only fruit, but we didn't complain about the lack of diversity, unlike some of the riders he was chaperoning.

‘I prefer the self-guided tours where people are a bit more self-sufficient. These guys really need some nannying, and they get a bit arsey if there aren't the right kind of oranges at the right time or if it gets too hot or things we can do nothing about.'

I felt my by-now semi-permanent state of disgruntlement had slightly greater justification. We cycled out of town past the self-proclaimed ‘Hartsel Jail and Sheriff's Office', which was in fact no more than a dilapidated, whitewashed former gas station with broken windows and hand-painted signs. Had we known of it 12 hours earlier we might have become the first people to knowingly break in to spend the night there. Then came a sign for a special service to be held that Sunday at the Gateway Church. ‘Join us at the Boomerang Express. 3yrs to 6th Grade.'

‘It's for repentant sinners who've now seen the error of their Godless ways. They just can't help coming back,' explained Trevor.

‘Youthful, repentant sinners,' corrected Stephen.

‘Youthful, repentant sinners in a hurry,' said Per with a degree of finality.

The countryside south of Hartsel was initially very similar to that through which we had ridden from Como the previous night. Yet the harsh, bright light of what seemed destined to be another hot day turned it into a more austere and arid landscape. What had appeared in soft twilight to be lush grazing was in fact meagre pickings. Yet away from the ranchlands, glorious wildflower meadows showed the fecundity of nature in even such exacting circumstances. Most of the plants were alien to me, but no less beautiful for their anonymity: red, iris-type flowers were the most common, accompanied by drifts of daisy white and buttercup yellow. Aromatic shrubs also abounded.

I came over all wistful. Why rush through such beauty? Why not stop and enjoy nature's bounty? I gave voice to my concerns. If the others heard me, they did not show it. I cursed them under my breath. Ignorant, soulless swines. How could they not want to pause and commune?

I silently cast myself as a frustrated Wordsworth of the Rockies.

‘I wandered lonely as a cloud/That floats on high o'er vales and hills,/When all at once I saw a crowd,/A host of ruby-red, iris-type flowers . . .'

It was a work in progress.

I brooded petulantly at the back of the group, hoping to act as a brake on our speed. To no avail. It was my fault: I had kept my sensitive, romantic soul hidden for too long under a façade of brash ambition. The others assumed more prosaic explanations: fatigue, or laziness, or both.

We crested the watershed divide that was our route out of South Park and down into the town of Salida. The magnificent views over the 14,000-foot peaks of the Sawatch Range exacerbated the problem. We stopped to take photos. It was not enough. I wanted to paint. I wanted to hike. I wanted to go all Julie Andrews and prance around among the edelweiss.

Actually, that might have been a bit too energetic. I was coming to realise that all I really wanted to do was stop this mad rush and rest for a while. I wanted, I acknowledged to myself, to stop. Full stop.

It was something of a relief to admit to such heresy, and also something of a surprise. Not since my solitary vigil in Montana's multitude of trees had I actually thought about stopping. Even then it was only because I was being driven mad with claustrophobia. Now, I had developed the imagination to understand where Steve McGuire had been coming from. Maybe it was just time for this bike ride to stop.

Per, Stephen and Trevor clearly didn't think so. They careered into Salida. I trailed in after them. I raised my concerns. They looked askance.

‘I think I might stop here for the day,' I said, not willing to reveal the true extent of my affliction.

‘What do you want to do that for?' asked Per in a way that seemed to exemplify thousands of years of restless, resilient Scandinavian adventurers' genes.

It was a good question. There were a million answers, but articulating any given one of them was all but impossible. I decided relying on my recently discovered enthusiasm for poetry and painting might sound implausible.

I was saved from my dilemma by Safeway's. Trevor and Stephen had bilaterally decided that yesterday's luxuries of restaurant and siesta had been a step too far. Instead they headed to the supermarket deli section. Unlike the novelty charm of Helena, it was the very acme of soullessness. A true romantic would have struggled to find inspiration; all I could find was semi-frozen quiche and potato salad. It was not a place to end the adventure of a lifetime. In fact, it scarcely passed muster as a place to spend a lunchtime.

Even the debilitating heat of Salida – it was nudging 100° F (nearly 38° C) – was preferable to the air-conditioned atrophy of Safeway's. The three amigos rode off. I accompanied them.

To lighten the mood, Trevor pointed out that it was Canada Day.

‘Canada Day? What does it celebrate?' I asked.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, 4th of July is Independence Day in the US, so . . .'

‘Oh, nothing special. Just Canada's “day”, I guess.'

An hour later and I had my first puncture of the trip. It coincided with the ominous massing of cumulonimbus clouds above the high peaks ahead. As I fumbled with inner tubes and tyre irons, drops of sweat mingled with drops of rain.

‘Bet you're glad you decided to keep going,' said Trevor.

The remainder of the climb to Marshall Pass, a mere bagatelle at 10,842 feet, was memorable for all the wrong reasons. It was long and steep. Navigation at the bottom was surprisingly awkward. And then there was the not inconsiderable matter of a terrific thunderstorm that accompanied us at far too close quarters for the best part of two hours. Lightning flashed incessantly. The sound of thunder was deafening. It was like riding in Thor's chariot itself. I blamed Per. I told him as much, but he couldn't hear above the surrounding din.

The rain, too, was interminable and torrential. It became so intense that, against all advice and logic, Per, Trevor and I sought shelter in the trees at the side of the road. Stephen was somewhere ahead, we hoped. It was too cold to stand still for long, however. Back on the bike, the deluge that ran over nose and mouth made breathing difficult.

We ploughed on and on through rivers of mud. Movement was the only protection against hypothermia. Finally, the top brought a refuge – of sorts. Leaning against a prefabricated toilet cubicle was Stephen's bike. Inside was a shivering, half-naked Stephen, trying desperately to find some non-sodden clothes to wear for the descent.

‘Howdy! Come on in!' he said gallantly.

It was, on reflection, an unlikely invitation, but I accepted it with alacrity. The scene then repeated itself twice more as first Trevor and then Per arrived. It was something of a squash. I hung my coat on a hook and anxiously read the sign detailing the construction of the cubicle. It said the base was designed to withstand a force of 3,000 Newtons per square metre. My antipathy to physics lessons at school had not prevented me from remembering that a Newton was roughly one tenth of a kilogram (remembering useless facts was never a problem; understanding what they meant was). That equated to 300kg per square metre. I weighed about 70kg wet through, which I was.

‘How much do you weigh?' I asked as nonchalantly as I could.

‘What? Why do you want to know that?' asked Per.

‘Oh, just curious.'

‘185 pounds,' said Per.

‘175 when I set out, but less now,' said Stephen.

‘155 pounds,' said Trevor.

This was going to tax my arithmetical abilities more than I had anticipated. That was 525 pounds, divided by 2.2 . . . erm . . . er . . . a bit less than 250kg. Probably. Plus my own 70kg. Even assuming a safety margin in the construction process, that took us perilously close to breaking point. I eyed-up the size of the cubicle. Probably one and a half metres each way. That gave us two and a quarter square metres of floor space, minus the toilet itself.

‘We should be all right as long as we don't all stand next to each other,' I concluded triumphantly.

I was surrounded by blank faces. Nobody had any intention of being closer to anyone else than they could possibly help.

‘The strength of the floor. That sign up there tells you how strong the floor is. I've just worked it out. If we don't all stand next to each other, we won't end up in the shit.'

The others were delighted. Just in case I had been wrong, I opened the door and stepped outside. The weather was as foul as before. It could be said we were in the shit already.

Fortunately, the descent was long but easy. Desperately trying to reach the bottom before my slowly deflating rear tyre made another repair stop necessary, I even outdid Stephen's remarkable downhill skills. A large herd of elk, sheltering at the roadside, disdainfully ignored my sodden progress.

It was after 8 p.m. when we arrived in Sargents. It was not how I had pictured it. The map showed a wealth of services that still, in the mind of someone from a small, crowded island, implied a town. Or at least a village, with shops, houses, a small green, perhaps. Instead there was little more than a trailer park at the side of a main road with a gas station and bar-cum-restaurant. The gas station was closed. The bar, the Tomichi Creek Trading Post, was open, and extremely welcoming.

If Sargents had been something of a disappointment from the outside, once inside the bar we found it exceeded our expectations. There was, said the slightly tipsy bartender, a cabin for us to rent, and a grocery store that she would open up for us. There was a wholesome menu, and food was still being served. Most important of all, there was a karaoke birthday party.

After we had reserved a cabin and ordered our food, it became apparent that there was little to distinguish between staff and guests. Those propping up the bar reappeared behind it; those behind it were clearly not immune to the temptation to keep the customers company. Every now and then, all would rush to the backroom for a singalong. It didn't seem to make for a very sound business plan, but it certainly made for a convivial atmosphere.

In fact, the mood was so compelling, and our relief at having made it this far unscathed so overwhelming, that we celebrated by ordering only our second alcoholic drinks of the whole trip.

‘I think I'd better have a bottle of Fat Tire beer,' said Trevor appropriately.

Seizing on this indication that we were not such killjoys as we appeared, we were corralled into participating in the karaoke.

‘You've got to come and sing with us. It's the rules. Everyone in the bar has to sing when “I'll Fly Away” comes on,' the smiling waitress explained.

Per, Trevor and Stephen were disadvantaged by the fact they didn't know the song. I knew the song, but couldn't sing (not just couldn't sing – can't sing). We did our best; it wasn't very good, it certainly bore no resemblance to Alison Krauss's original, but it didn't seem to matter.

‘I think we made them smile a bit,' said Trevor.

‘I'm not sure they need much help in that direction,' said Stephen.

My enthusiasm for continuing the race had been restored.

I
f it had taken for ever to reach Sargents, it took even longer to leave. Yet our attempts to depart started early enough. In fact, Stephen's mobile phone resounded balefully at 5 a.m., a full hour earlier than anticipated. Disbelieving, I checked the clock, but there was no escaping the early hour.

‘Stephen, it's 5 a.m.,' I pointed out.

‘I know,' came the muffled reply.

I shouldn't have been surprised; after all, it was his phone. Nevertheless, I thought it pertinent to remind Stephen that the intention had been to have a minor lie-in, this time until the luxurious hour of 6 a.m., so that we could make the most of the café and shop next to the bar in which we had caroused the night away. It did not open until 7 a.m., and we could not leave without going to the shop as ahead lay another 100 miles of nothing.

By the time I had completed my litany of complaint Stephen had wisely gone back to sleep. I did not. Instead, I lay fulminating as ill-humouredly as if my beauty sleep had been disturbed by one of the children at home. By the planned rising time of 6 a.m., however, my frustration had mellowed and I had put the intrusion into some sort of perspective. At least I hadn't had to change a nappy or mop up a pool of toddler vomit at the same time.

With little need for haste, an orderly queue formed for that rarest of luxuries: a morning shower. Then, just as it was my turn, I pushed past my bike and realised the tyre that had been slowly deflating during the descent from Marshall Pass was now completely flat.

Relinquishing my place in the shower queue, I set about removing the tyre. At certain times – say a sunny evening at home, in the garden, with a glass of wine to hand – mending punctures is a pleasure; at others, as yesterday, it is a simple necessity; mostly, however, it is a pain in the backside. Nevertheless, with practice it can be accomplished quickly and painlessly. After ten minutes, I sat smugly looking at a job well done.

Then I remembered the two spare inner tubes that now had holes in them. If I didn't carry out repairs to the originals before we left, I would have to do so en route if I suffered another puncture. Images of trying to make a patch stick to a tube in a thunderstorm like last night's put paid to the instinctive desire to bury my head in the sand and ignore the problem. Yet I was in danger of causing considerable delay.