Two Wheels on my Wagon (29 page)

‘Time for breakfast,' announced Per right on cue, and in the manner of a man for whom last night's vast meal was but a distant memory.

I told them I would have to join them later. They ambled off. Then, just as I had finally managed to locate my puncture repair kit, they all returned, looking rather downcast.

‘What's up?' I asked.

‘It's closed,' said Per.

‘What's closed?' I asked.

‘The shop and the café.'

‘But the sign said shop and restaurant open for breakfast at 7 a.m.'

‘Every day except Thursday,' Stephen corrected.

‘What day is it?'

‘It's Thursday.'

I began to get the feeling this was going to be a day to forget.

‘What about the woman from last night who said it would be open?'

‘Nowhere to be found.'

The café in fact would not open until midday. In the absence of last night's host, the shop would not be available to us for another hour at 8 a.m. A half-hearted debate about the possibility of continuing without re-stocking ensued, but common sense prevailed.

At least I was no longer the sole cause of our delay. After finishing my repairs, I went to the gas station to pump up my tyre. In keeping with the day so far, there was a sign reading ‘no air'. The compressor was out of action. I walked back to our cabin through a disparate collection of trailers, some genuinely towable, others by now well-rooted in Sargents soil. It was a fate we seemed in danger of emulating. All were accompanied by enormous, shiny pick-ups and only slightly smaller but equally shiny quad bikes.

I inflated my tyre manually, an effort that made the café breakfast we now had to forego seem even more inviting. By the time I had finished it was 7.30 a.m. We twiddled our thumbs. We discovered a kettle in the cabin, but no tea or coffee. We found a toaster, but no bread.

‘We could always go to the shop,' said Stephen with enforced irony.

Eventually, we did go to the shop. It was not really worth the wait. There was little to choose from, though there was hot coffee. Determined to make the best of it, we had an impromptu competition to find the highest calorific content of our preferred snacks. Trevor and I went for pastries: blueberry cheese Danish and bear claw (a generic term for an almond-flavoured confection purportedly shaped like a bear's claw). The cheese Danish won by a short head: 509 calories compared to 480 calories in a 4.5-ounce package. Stephen selected his personal favourite, Pearson's Salted Nut Roll, a sort of peanut butter, nougat and marshmallow bar, and pointed gleefully to that fact that they had an even better calorie-to-weight ratio: 760 calories in 5.5 ounces.

‘You've not tried them?'

‘No.'

‘They're disgusting,' said Per, putting two into his shopping basket along with both pastries (cheese Danish and bear claw, just for the sake of comparison) and as many tortillas as the rest of us put together.

‘Just a little something,' he smiled.

We went to pay.

‘I thought you boys would have been gone by now,' said the woman at the till, who had also been behind the bar the previous night.

Clearly her alcohol-induced promise to be open for breakfast had been long forgotten.

It was 8.30 a.m. by the time we finally left.

‘I'm beginning to get the feeling we're doomed never to make it to Antelope Wells,' I said as we rode along.

‘Nonsense. We'll be finished in a week,' said Per.

‘You're just saying that so you can catch your plane,' I objected. ‘The rest of us could take two weeks more, if we wanted, and have a day off tomorrow.'

‘Speak for yourself. I've got to get home so I can start my new job,' Stephen pointed out.

‘And I just want to get to the finish as soon as possible so I can stop riding,' said Trevor.

This was the Catch-22 we were now in. With unfortunate timing, our enthusiasm for cycling was at something of a low ebb. We had made it past halfway, which had been a huge fillip. There was no escaping the fact, however, that this had meant we still had to do the same again. Recent experience demonstrated just how arduous that might be. Yet the longer we prevaricated, the longer we would have to keep riding.

So we kept riding. Until I had another puncture, that was. I had been dawdling behind the others so they were ignorant of my plight. I threw my bike disgustedly into the verge and watched forlornly as they rode over the brow of a hill and out of sight. Even repeated blasts on the bear whistle I was still carrying around my neck went unheeded. It was a good job I hadn't needed to use it in earnest.

With plenty of recent practice I was soon underway again. The enforced solitude was surprisingly agreeable. By lunch we were all reunited on the far side of Cochetopa Pass, the ‘Buffalo Gate' of the native Ute Indians and another historically significant breach in the surrounding mountains, this time used as a stage route. With a gradient suited to coach and horses, it had not proved a major obstacle.

We were now in much more arid country, though the grey skies above suggested otherwise. We stopped to eat in a dry, rocky stream bed bereft of significant vegetation. As well as its aesthetic deficiencies, it was infested with mosquitoes.

‘Yum. Salami tortillas with added insect,' said Per, through a buzzing cloud.

It was no place to linger. Yet there was good reason to ensure we ate our fill. It was in the nearby town of Saguache (‘nearby' and ‘town' being relative terms in Colorado as Saguache was more than an hour's ride away and had a population of a mere 500) that one of the Wild West's most heinous crimes first came to light. The crime in question was cannibalism, preceded by murder. The assumed perpetrator of both acts was Alfred G. Packer, a hapless prospector originally from Pennsylvania.

In spite of advice to the contrary, including from no less an authority than Ute Indian Chief Ouray, Packer and five companions set off into the surrounding mountains en route to Gunnison in February 1874. As was inevitable, they were caught in the winter weather, then became lost and snowbound. Only Packer survived. When the bodies of his companions were later discovered, all had died violently and all had had strips of flesh taken from legs and chest.

According to Packer, apprehended spending money from his companions' wallets in Saguache, another member of the party – Shannon Bell – had gone mad and killed the other three prior to eating parts of them. Packer said he had then been forced to kill Bell in self-defence, and to perpetuate the cannibalism in order to survive.

The courts thought otherwise. Packer also appeared to change his mind. He wrote a confession and was convicted of murder, but then escaped from jail. Nine years later he was caught again and convicted a second time, though this conviction was then reduced to manslaughter just prior to his intended execution. In spite of another written confession and his sentence being upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court, Packer died a free man, having earlier been paroled or pardoned, depending on which account you read.

With this in mind, it was with some trepidation that we embarked on the ascent of the dubiously-named Carnero Pass. It sounded uncomfortably close to carnivorous to me. Fortunately, our overriding hunger was to reach our destination for the night, the Spanish-sounding town of Del Norte. Actually, it didn't sound Spanish at all. It looked Spanish but, like Salida, had a very Anglicised pronunciation. Del Norte, in fact, was Del Naught, not Del Nortay, while Salida now charmingly rhymed with saliva.

A long descent through dramatic, rocky scenery took us into another vast Colorado basin. Three separate storms could be seen on the horizon. The largest, darkest, most fearsome of these, of course, appeared to be directly on our route. Yet at the last moment our fortunes improved and we turned sharply to our right. Instead of a storm to contend with, we were now confronted with a landscape straight from a Western film as we skirted the basin's edge. Red soils and rocky bluffs made for perfect ambush territory. I began to hum the theme from
The Big Country
.

A narrowing track and stony ground also made for Stephen's idea of perfect cycling territory. He had been rather sluggish all day but he now cycled between the sagebrush as if the posse were on his trail. Trevor did a passable impression of hot pursuit, but Per and I were laggards once again.

It was of no consequence. We re-emerged between two prominent basalt towers onto the plain only a short time later with Del Norte in sight less than five miles away. At first glance it seemed about as appealing as Rawlins, without the glamour of its historical association with outlaws (even though it was, according to the town sign, the home of astronaut Kent Rominger – fame indeed).

On closer inspection, however, the town's broad, bland main street gave way to a grid of tree-lined residential roads with well tended houses and even better tended lawns. The sense of homeliness was reinforced by our accommodation for the night. The map had informed us that Gary Blakely and Patti Kelly offered basic services to passing cyclists. In a moment of inspiration, Stephen had called to see if that included sleeping space. To our collective surprise, it did.

‘Hey, guys, come on in. How are you all feeling?' asked Gary.

A lot better for having arrived, was the consensus reaction. The house was a white, timber-framed, one-storey construction surrounded by manicured lawns dotted with trees and flowering bushes. At the back was a vegetable patch. Inside was equally immaculate. It didn't look designed to accommodate four such lumbering, noisome oafs. Yet Gary and Patti were undeterred. Perhaps their sense of the obnoxious had been diluted over years of similar hospitality to passing cyclists.

Whatever the reason, the warmth of their welcome was genuine. Along with all domestic facilities, including clean towels and hot water, Gary provided us with some more race updates. We had confirmation that Matthew Lee had won, and that Kurt, Chris and the Petervarys on their ‘Love Shack' had also finished.

‘Matthew stopped by last Wednesday,' said Gary, kindly not mentioning the fact it was now Thursday over a week later. ‘He wasn't going to stop long as he thought there were a couple of guys only a few hours behind him, but we told him they'd dropped back so he relaxed a bit and stopped for a shower and something to eat.'

Alan, Steve and John had also passed through a good while ago in a group of eight riders. They had all now almost certainly finished as well. Jill Homer and Jamie Thomson had been through more recently, though were too far ahead for us to consider catching them. Then there was Cricket.

‘She's called the race,' said Gary.

‘There are plenty of things I'd like to call the race at times,' I said, assuming I'd missed the crucial adjective.

‘It means she's pulled out,' explained Stephen.

All the while, Patti inadvertently emphasised my sense of cumbersome gaucheness by performing effortless and elegant stretches. It made my inability to summon the coordination to take my shoes off even more pitiful, though Patti kindly refrained from pity. She also expressed a surprising degree of enthusiasm for the South West Coast Path back home. It seemed incongruous to be talking of something so mundane while in such impressive surroundings, but one man's backyard is another's exotic playground.

We asked about options for eating.

‘There are two,' said Gary. ‘There's a nice, organic place that's great but where the portions are a little on the light side, and there's Boogie's diner that's good too and might suit your needs better if you're wanting something more substantial.'

He looked at us and read our minds.

‘I'd go for the diner.'

T
here were, it turned out, two downsides to staying with Gary and Patti.

The first was the quality of the night's sleep. This was not something that could be blamed on our hosts. Rather, it was a combination of too much roast beef dinner the night before and too many people having consumed too much roast beef dinner trying to sleep in too small a space. The attic bedroom was simultaneously hot and cold. Any covers were too many; no covers were too few. Space was at a premium. The room had a double bed in it, which I shared with Per; Stephen and Trevor had already bagged the comfort of the floor. Moving was not an option.

The second problem was also not the fault of Gary and Patti. We were once more slow to depart, though this time the obstacles were psychological rather than practical. Gary had been as good as his word and got up at 5 a.m. to provide fresh, hot coffee to speed us on our way, but the warmth of the hospitality and the natural desire not to leave a cosy kitchen on a cold morning combined to make us tarry. Six croissants for my breakfast alone didn't help.

Our sloth might also have been inspired by the prospect of what lay ahead. Indiana Pass, at a breath-shortening 11,910 feet, was the highest point of the whole Tour Divide and was only 23 almost exclusively uphill miles away. It was also probably the biggest climb on the route in terms of altitude gain in one go, towering more than 4,000 feet above Del Norte. What's more, while the first 800 feet came in the 11 miles of paved road straight out of town, the remaining 3,300 came in 12 miles of dirt and gravel. It was clearly going to be hard work.

At 6.20 a.m. we could delay no longer. We rode out of town past the Colorado hair emporium and ‘shoppe', the Del Norte National Bank and a ‘drive-thru' ATM. The morning was chill with high, grey clouds. Perfect cycling conditions.

The paved part of the climb went smoothly. Then the real ascent began. It took just under two hours, but it seemed to pass in a flash. In spite, or maybe because, of the six croissants, I settled immediately into a comfortable rhythm. It was the exact opposite of my travails on Boreas Pass. Within minutes I was absorbed by the existential simplicity of cycling uphill. Life was reduced to nothing more than turning the pedals. The power of conscious thought seemed to disappear, to be replaced instead by an abstract concentration on the task in hand. Yet my senses were heightened. I was consumed by an animalistic awareness of the surroundings that defied conventional powers of observation and description.