Two Wheels on my Wagon

by Paul Howard

  ‘Sorry. I just speak my boss. How can I help you?’

  I explained the situation.

  ‘I wondered if we could use your phone to call for an ambulance and then maybe use a pick-up to take Per to meet the ambulance.’

  ‘No problem,’ he smiled, ushering me out of his office and away from the phone.

  He helped me put my bike in the back of his pick-up. Then we drove off. After five minutes I felt compelled to remind Oscar about calling an ambulance.

  ‘No problem,’ he smiled again.

  I was just about to suggest that there did, in fact, appear to be a problem, as we were now ten minutes away from the phone I had very distinctly seen him use, when he fished a mobile phone from his pocket. He waved to the surrounding hills and kept driving. Finally, as we crested a ridge, he gave me the phone.

  ‘Reception,’ he beamed.

  I called 911 and again explained the situation. It was quite a struggle to persuade the operator that it wasn’t me who had been injured but, eventually, I was told an ambulance would be dispatched to meet us. I handed the phone back to Oscar.

  ‘No problem,’ he smiled.

  Just then the phone rang, almost causing Oscar to drive into a ditch. It was the 911 operator. He asked how badly I was injured.

  ‘I’m not injured at all.’

  ‘Then why do you need an ambulance?’

  This was becoming tiresome.

  ‘I’m not injured. A friend of mine has fallen off a bike and has knocked himself unconscious.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in a pick-up truck.’

  ‘So you don’t need an ambulance?’

  ‘I don’t need an ambulance for me,’ I bellowed, much to Oscar’s surprise. ‘I need it for my friend who’s fallen off his bike and who’s unconscious.’

  ‘OK, sir, no need to get cross, it’s important to get things clear.’

  My sentiments entirely. Five minutes later we found Trevor and Per, who was now clearly conscious.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’ve got a sore head,’ he said rather sheepishly.

  ‘What news?’ said Trevor.

  ‘There’s an ambulance coming down from Silver City, and Oscar has kindly agreed to take Per up to meet it.’

  The only thing to resolve was whether Trevor and I should accompany Per to hospital.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ said Per in a way that implied he felt as though it were really not necessary for him to go, let alone the rest of us. ‘You’ve got to get to the finish. You can’t come all this way and then stop.’

  Coming from Per it did not seem a particularly persuasive argument, but he was adamant. We compromised. I went with Per and Oscar to meet the ambulance.

  A few miles down the track we were flagged down by a small fire truck with three people in it. They seemed surprised to see us.

  ‘Have you guys seen a cyclist who has fallen off his bike?’

  We stopped to let Per out so he could be assessed. I wondered quite how they were going to take him back to hospital in a vehicle with only three seats, all of which seemed to be taken. Then an ambulance arrived, all flashing lights and wailing sirens. The crew seemed surprised to see us. They were even more surprised to see the fire truck.

  ‘Have you guys seen a cyclist who has fallen off his bike?’

  Keystone Cops sprang to mind. Even Per was smiling. Finally, we were joined by a local sheriff’s department pick-up, which by this point was no surprise at all. At least there would be no problem in getting Per to hospital.

  Convinced at last that he was in safe hands, though exactly whose it was difficult to tell, and with Per still adamant that I needn’t go with him, Oscar and I returned to Trevor.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ I said as we arrived.

  ‘No problem,’ he smiled.

  We started to ride south again.

  ‘And then there were two,’ said Trevor with a forced smile.

  ‘He had me worried there for a minute,’ I said.

  ‘Me too.’

  We covered the next 20 miles in glum silence. At Separ, which was not so much a town as a cheesy souvenir shop at the intersection with the Interstate, we stopped for refreshments. It was nearly 10 a.m., two hours later than planned, and already baking hot. Spirits could hardly have been lower.

  From Separ we rode silently alongside the Interstate for 45 minutes. Cars and trucks flashed past with consummate ease while we toiled on the soft, dusty road. It seemed the very definition of pointlessness. Dangerous questions floated in and out of my head. If it was so pointless, why was I still riding? We had, after all, already achieved what we set out to do. Or at least I had. I’d had an adventure. I’d ridden the length of the Rockies. I’d not been eaten by a bear. What possible reason could there be to tempt fate still further by riding into a desert in the heat of the day? Who cared if I stopped now or in 60 miles? Why should Per get the day off?

  ‘We might as well keep going now we’ve come so far,’ said Trevor the mind-reader.

  He was right, of course. But the logic of continuing didn’t assuage all of my anxieties. Even if I wanted to keep riding, I wasn’t entirely sure that I could. It was already so hot that I could hardly see through eyes stinging with perspiration and steamed-up sunglasses. The exposed skin that I had assumed was now inured to the sun’s rays gave me a unique insight into how a cow felt when branded. I was also consuming liquid at an alarming rate. I didn’t really want to add to the day’s casualty list by collapsing from dehydration only a stone’s throw from the finish.

  We turned right onto the paved road that now led all the way to Antelope Wells. Trevor miraculously pulled an iPod and earphones from somewhere deep in his luggage.

  ‘Do you mind if I put them on?’ he asked.

  ‘Not at all,’ I said, aware that my company was not great.

  It was that sort of road. Long, straight and relentless. I decided to make my own music. I cycled past a sign saying ‘Antelope Wells 59 miles’. That was the cue I had been looking for.

  ‘Fifty-nine green bottles, hanging on a wall, fifty-nine green bottles, hanging on a wall, and if one green bottle should accidentally fall, there’ll be fifty-eight green bottles, hanging on a wall . . .’

  Seven miles later I had successfully disposed of all the green bottles. I had also demonstrated to myself that the arbitrary accomplishment of a seemingly futile task could be a satisfactory end in itself. Maybe there was some point in making it to Antelope Wells after all.

  After seven more miles my spirits received another boost. As did my parched throat. I arrived in the ghost town of Hachita to find not only Trevor but also an open, welcoming grocery store. It had air conditioning. It had chilled drinks. It had Danish pastries. It was heaven. The map, of course, denied its existence entirely.

  All of a sudden finishing seemed like a real possibility. A probability, even.

  ‘Trevor. You keep riding to the finish. Don’t worry about waiting for me. You ride at your pace, I’ll ride at mine and I’ll see you at the border.’

  ‘I’ll see you before that,’ he replied kindly.

  We cycled out of town past the conspicuously beautiful and incongruous Saint Catherine of Sienna Catholic Church. In spite of its dilapidated, almost derelict, state – both windows and doors were smashed – its impressive stone tower with ornately traced pointing suggested an air of permanence at odds with the rest of Hachita’s fragile existence.

  Trevor again rode off into the distance. My relative lethargy was no longer anything to do with uncertainty about continuing. It was now all about ensuring that I would be able to continue all the way to the finish. At least we each had the ‘Lonely Highway’ to ourselves.

  I passed another road sign.

  ‘Antelope Wells Port of Entry. 45 miles. Open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Travel Time 1 Hour.’

  That seemed wishful thinking. It was gone midday. Just arriving before the border post closed for the night would be enough for me.<
br />
  I contemplated the desert landscape. To the right were the Little Hatchet Mountains, to the left and slightly ahead their Big Hatchet cousins. Their arid slopes seemed vaguely reassuring, confining the featureless plain through which we rode. The plain itself was populated by creosote and mesquite plants as well as miserable-looking cattle. Even here, it seemed, ranching was big business.

  More notable still were the yucca plants. Their spiky headdresses gave the distinct impression I was cycling through a punk reunion. After the Rainbow Gathering, anything seemed possible. Brightly coloured but inedible gourds lay temptingly at the roadside.

  To pass the time I resorted once more to musical distraction. With my internal jukebox stuck, I could do no better than embark on another repetitive children’s song.

  ‘One man went to mow, went to mow a meadow, one man and his dog and a packet of crisps, went to mow a meadow.’

  Sung at an appropriate rhythm, I reached the conventional end of the song – ten men going to mow – after a mile. I persisted for 4 more miles and 40 more men before I could mow no more.

  The route passed through the gap between the two branches of the Hatchet Mountains. Less than 30 miles remained. Further excitement was provided by a vast monsoon storm breaking over the imposing Animas Mountains that had replaced the Little Hatchets to my right. Towering cumulonimbus clouds cast rain and lightning against the ridges and peaks as if trying to obliterate them from the face of the earth. I was still bathed in merciless sunlight.

  Then the real countdown began. Twenty-five miles. Twenty miles. I was now holding Trevor steady a mile or so ahead of me. ‘I could get used to this desert-cycling lark,’ I thought to myself. Fifteen miles. I started to shout out each milepost as I cycled by.

  ‘Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven.’

  To make such gratuitous noise in the overwhelming silence was strangely therapeutic. At 10 miles to go, I could see Trevor waiting at the roadside. Just as I arrived within hailing distance I heard a tell-tale ‘pssss’ noise. He started to ride off; I skidded to a halt. Trevor realised I wasn’t with him.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Puncture.’

  In spite of scarcely being able to wield the tyre levers because of the sweat on my hands, I managed to change the inner tube and began to pump up the tyre. Nothing happened. The tyre remained stubbornly deflated. I looked at Trevor. He looked at me. I looked in my saddle bag. I had used an un-repaired inner tube.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The only reason Trevor didn’t have to physically restrain me from throwing the bike into the desert was the fact that I was by now almost completely bereft of energy. I started again. Eventually, the tyre began to fill out.

  ‘You could get a job doing that,’ said Trevor.

  ‘I’ve had plenty of practice.’

  ‘I’ve still not had a puncture,’ Trevor added.

  ‘Thanks for the reminder.’

  We cycled the last 10 miles together, silently reminiscing about all that had gone before. It didn’t seem possible that we were about to finish. With five miles to go we spotted the border post. Never has a scratchy collection of concrete buildings with air conditioning and stony-faced border guards seemed more welcoming.

  At 3.41 p.m. precisely we rode into the compound. There, before us, was the sign we had been waiting for.

  ‘Boundary of the United States of America. Limite de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos.’

  CHAPTER 32

  SATISFACTION

  We celebrated our arrival with utter disbelief. If Trevor had not been with me I might well have assumed I was dreaming. The million things that could have gone wrong, that had already gone wrong for some, had not gone wrong for us. We had made it.

  We celebrated with cheap champagne bought the day before and that Mike, the chauffeur for our return journey, had brought with him; cousin Steve’s offer of our own lorry had been great in theory but too complicated in practice. The champagne had a screw top. It was hardly the podium moment of imagination, but I shook the bottle and sprayed it anyway. It had only been out of the fridge a couple of hours yet it was disgustingly warm. No matter, it was not for drinking.

  We celebrated again when the border guards were shocked into revealing their latent humanity and let us ring home. We celebrated more still when I spoke to Catherine and she said Per had phoned in to say he’d been discharged from hospital with nothing worse than concussion and a headache.

  We celebrated silently all the way back to Silver City as Mike’s jeep whisked us at incredible speeds along roads down which we had just laboured. Even his rant against the injustices meted out by the industrial-military complex seemed celebratory, at least for a while.

  Back in Silver City, Per celebrated with us at Jamie’s house. His face spoke of headaches and the fatigue to which Trevor and I would not succumb until tomorrow. Yet he bore his fate with enviable and typical stoicism.

  ‘It seems like it was quite a bad crash so I’m just glad I didn’t do myself any more damage,’ he said happily.

  Viewed in such a light, it was another cause for celebration. We treated ourselves to a slap-up dinner at Jalisto’s restaurant. We didn’t quite go the whole hog, but I did manage half a chicken. At the brew pub next door to the bike shop we were offered free beer. I was almost too worn out to accept it. Almost.

  The next day passed quickly in a blur of preparations for our journey home. We took leave of Jamie’s fabulous cycling cornucopia. Bikes had to be boxed, travel to Phoenix had to be arranged. In a country in which the concept of public transport was perceived as an affront to individual freedom, this was no mean feat. In the end we hired a car. The close-knit cycling community of Silver City provided a driver to return it after we’d been delivered to the airport. It was none other than Barin Beard, Mimbres Man himself; Mimbres Man, it turned out, related to a previous life as an originator of a brand of cool cycling clothing.

  ‘I’m on holiday so I can drive for a day and talk about cycling, it’ll be fun.’

  It was, though the complexity of finding somewhere to sleep at Phoenix airport was mind-boggling.

  ‘It must be the only airport in the whole world not to be surrounded by hotels,’ I fumed as we drove around it for the third time.

  We eventually found one. After dinner, and bidding farewell to Mimbres Man, we checked the Tour Divide website and discovered that Trevor and I had, in fact, failed in our bid to finish last, though only by one place. Clearly poisoning Stephen and causing Per to crash had not been enough. The man set to save us from such indignity – and take home the coveted prize of Lanterne Rouge – was Michael Komp. He had, it turned out, been handicapped from the start by the fact his bike had been delayed in Canadian customs. As a result, he had not even managed to depart with all the other riders, eventually leaving Banff nearly seven hours after the race had officially begun. He finally reached Antelope Wells in thirty-one days, twenty-two hours and thirty-five minutes, four days after Trevor and I had passed through. Our official finishing time was twenty-seven days, five hours and forty-two minutes.

  More than a week and a half earlier, Matthew Lee had won the race in just under eighteen days. Kurt Refsnider took second in eighteen days and eleven hours, only two hours ahead of the Petervarys on their ‘Love Shack’. Steve, Alan and John from the UK all safely finished within a couple of hours of each other, in less than twenty-two days. Jill Homer, although only the second woman to finish after Tracy Petervary, set a new female course record of twenty-four days, seven hours and twenty-four minutes.

  Of the other riders I encountered on the way, Cadet abandoned the race in Eureka, unable to ride any further on his sprained knee. He gallantly let Rick and Deanna depart in high spirits in the belief that he was going to set off shortly after them before pulling the plug. Arizona Jeff called it a day in Butte to go home to his pregnant wife. Martin from Austria turned his race into a touring ride before eventually flying home from Colorado. Rick continued in spite of
his sore knee and rode the best part of 1,000 miles into Wyoming before deciding to call it a day. Ray’s self-inflicted cut turned out to be even worse than it had seemed. He had severed an artery in his hand which required surgery to fix. The surgery was a success. Bruce persisted for 36 days and made it all the way to the finish in spite of missing a small section of the route and disqualifying himself from the race. Deanna also made it to the finish but was relegated from the final leaderboard for similarly going off-route for some 50 miles north of Helena.

  Some of those who didn’t make it expressed an immediate desire to return to the race, including Stephen Huddle and Cadet. Steve McGuire said he would complete the route one way or another, maybe taking a bit more time to appreciate the scenery and surroundings in the process. Even Trevor and Per – both successful in my book – said they would consider returning to ride it. Quicker.

  Racing faster – or maybe just racing – was certainly a seductive notion. I told myself I could probably go faster. Matthew Lee took 30 days to ride from border to border in 2004 before returning the following year to win in 19 days. Greater speed would, in itself, certainly increase the level of adventurousness, if that was the motive. To ride as fast as Matthew Lee or the other front-runners did exposed them so much more to the risks inherent in the ride: bad weather; untimely mechanicals; running out of food and water; running out of energy. It was the cycling equivalent of scaling a higher mountain. I was in the Rockies. They were in the Himalayas.

  Yet one of the most appealing aspects of the whole event was the element of the unknown. I now knew the route, which removed much of the novelty factor. I could also no longer claim to be a mountain bike novice, even though I had still only ridden one race.

  The result was to conclude that once was probably enough. I toyed with the idea of passing this off as the result of the Tour Divide being a form of immersion therapy; or possibly aversion therapy. Making it to Antelope Wells, I conjectured, meant that I was now so at ease with my phobia of actually completing tasks (just ask my wife) that I could henceforth avoid undertaking anything more challenging than getting up in the morning. Or perhaps I could explain my future abstinence as the consequence of day after day of endless pedalling having cured me of the desire to ride long distances off-road for a month.