Be Brave, Be Strong

by Jill Homer

  “So, um, how’s you’re knee feeling?” I asked.

  “It definitely hurts,” John said. “But not as bad when we’re moving at this comfortable pace. I’ll gauge it tonight, and maybe continue at this pace tomorrow. But by then I really have to decide whether or not I can go at full power, because after tomorrow, I’ll have no shot of catching up to Matt Lee.”

  “And if it still hurts tomorrow?”

  “I might tour the Divide with you for a bit,” John said. “It’s a lot more fun when you can actually sit up and look around once in a while.”

  I laughed nervously. It seemed unfair to believe that riding with John might spoil the Tour Divide experience for me, but that was the first thought that ran through my mind. Yes, I had feared the absolute solitude of a solo ride, but constant companionship didn’t seem like a solution, either. Self-discovery just wasn’t going to happen if John and I were constantly regaling each other with stories about the outside world.

  It was a race and I could try to shake him off, but that was not only rude, it was also highly unlikely that I could outrun him in any capacity, even if he was injured. And I had to admit, it was fun to have someone to chat with on the long climbs and chase on the long descents. Maybe we could find a better medium. A few days of riding together might work out well.

  We pedaled up Whitefish Divide, hardly even noticing the change in elevation as we motored along and talked about our very different lives. John was an engineer and consultant in Fairfield, Connecticut. He was sixteen years my senior, never married, and owned a house in the town where he grew up. Racing bikes was pretty much his only hobby, although he also dabbled a little in sailing and even owned a boat. He told me he once built a human-powered flying machine, vying for a rather large international prize. Now he worked for an independent think tank that specialized in technology so complex he couldn’t begin to describe it to me, although I gathered that it had something to do with bioengineering.

  The manipulation of nature — that was John’s purpose and his passion. He explained to me how he could use a particular type of wheel to cut eighteen percent off his air drag, thereby adding significantly to his power capabilities without even needing to build a single extra muscle cell. He explained that by upping his power output seven percent across the board during training rides, he could build long-distance endurance in shorter blocks of time. He explained how pushing above his threshold for short bursts of time at the beginning of each hill allowed him to breathe more easily on the long climbs. I nodded enthusiastically and understood little of what he was telling me.

  “How about you?” he asked. “How do you structure your training?”

  “I go until I’m tired,” I said. “And then I do it again the next day.”

  “That’s probably not very effective,” John said.

  “Perhaps not,” I said. “But it has made me who I am. And here I am, strangely, riding with you.”

  John laughed. “Point taken.”

  We dropped down Whitefish Divide and started almost immediately up another pass. Snow-capped mountains slowly became snow-covered slopes, until a solid blanket of snow covered the road several feet deep. A fine mist floated over the mostly frozen Red Meadow Lake, coating the alpine landscape in a silky curtain of gray. Light rain fell as I pulled on my rain layer — pure PVC plastic, cheap and effective. John donned decidedly more technical gear, thin layers of vests and jackets made out of coated nylon and Gortex, and little red booties to keep his feet dry.

  I looked out over the snow traverse with no end in sight. “Ain’t no one coming out of that with dry feet,” I said. “I’m just hoping the old frostbite doesn’t give me trouble.”

  We climbed onto the snowfield and commenced pushing our bikes across the icy crust as our shins sunk deep into the porous snowpack. Each step was difficult and progress was painfully slow, with the moist chill gripping my face and hands as I labored in the uncomfortable humidity of my non-breathable jacket. Through the delicate mist, a scene of haunting beauty swirled all around us. Shrouded pine trees clung precipitously to the steep mountainside. The lake ice blended with the pale gray sky, and similarly colorless snow filled the remaining space. I started laughing.

  “This is awesome!” I called out. “This is my kind of race — exactly the kind of crap I train for! You are good at speed, John, but I am good at ridiculous.”

  “You’re just crazy and you like snow,” John grumbled as we stomped through the slush. “I can’t feel my toes.”

  “The secret to comfort in wet weather is not to stay dry, but to stay warm,” I said. “Three years in Juneau taught me that. Sweat yourself out if you need to. The rain will find a way in no matter what you wear, so no point trying to keep yourself dry. Just layer up in synthetics and find a way to block out the wind. Wet and warm. That is the key.”

  “How are your toes?” John asked.

  “They’re wet,” I said. “But I’m wearing my vapor barrier socks, and that helps trap my body heat, so they feel pretty warm.”

  We moved about a mile in forty-five minutes. Rotten snow continued to cover the road, which was descending so gradually that I began to wonder if we’d ever drop below snowline. John was starting to shiver noticeably.

  “I’m going to have to put on my warm fleecy layer,” he complained. “I was really hoping to keep it dry.”

  “Wet and warm,” I said. “Wet and warm. Your fleece isn’t doing you any good buried in your trunk.”

  He stopped to put on the rest of his clothing. As I stood in the misting rain, I took comfort in the thought of a second dry base layer still stuffed in my bags. At worst, I could put on my dry clothing and curl up in my sleeping bag and bivy sack for the night. John, whose strategy was to travel light and fast, carried only an emergency bivy and no sleeping bag. With no extra clothing, his only option was to keep moving until he found shelter. I did not envy his position.

  Our conversation tapered as we trudged through what turned out to be another half mile of snow, then shivered down the long descent. We sprinted toward Whitefish, working our body temperatures back to normal on the rolling terrain. It was not yet dark when we pedaled into town and stocked up for the next day, so we opted to continue twelve more miles toward Columbia Falls. From a Whitefish payphone, John called ahead to a Super 8 motel that he had listed on his race chart. The laminated sheet listed every motel in every town where he planned to stay on each leg of his heavily structured Tour Divide schedule. Although he planned to end his third day farther south in Big Fork, he included Columbia Falls as an “emergency” option. The towns were he did not plan to stay had no such listings.

  “This is very handy,” he said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Until a big pile of snow slows you up and you have to restructure the whole thing.”

  “There is no restructuring,” John said. “I just keep moving until I’m there.”

  I laughed. The rural streets glowed orange beneath the sinking sun.

  In the warmth of the Columbia Falls motel room, John took a long shower and I called my dad for Father’s Day.

  “Father’s Day is next Sunday,” my dad informed me. “But I’m glad to hear from you. How are things going?”

  “Really well,” I said. “I partnered up with a racer named John. He’s one of the fast guys, so he’ll probably only stick with me for a day or two. But he’s really knowledgeable about the route and the Divide in general, so it’s nice to have him around.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” my dad said. “We were really hoping you wouldn’t end up riding in this race alone.”

  “I’m still probably going to spend a large chunk of time out here alone,” I told my dad, quietly hoping that was true.

  John nudged me out of bed at 7 a.m. and we left Columbia Falls together, working our way through a snaking terrace of rural streets as I blinked at the whirring pavement.

  “Wow, I am feeling crappy today,” I told John. “How are you doing?”

  �
�My knee still hurts,” John said. “But it’s manageable as long as we keep the pace down.”

  The pace felt plenty fast to me. “So do you think you’ll push ahead?” I asked.

  “I better give it one more day,” he said. “I don’t have the accommodations listed on my sheet, but I looked at the maps and I think Seeley Lake would be a good place for us to stay tonight at the pace we’re moving. It’s a bit off route, but as I recall they have a couple of nice motels.”

  “Seeley Lake,” I said hoarsely. “How far is that?”

  “Only about 120 miles,” John said. “But there’s three passes in there and a big one, Richmond Pass, which last year had a lot of snow.”

  “Well at least I have snow to look forward to,” I said grumpily. “Helps break up the monotony of pedaling.”

  “Red Meadow Lake was a cake walk compared to Richmond,” John said. “You climb more than 2,500 feet, and just when you think you’re done with it all, you veer off onto this road that’s covered in solid snow, off-camber snow that’s so steep you can’t even walk through it without feeling like you’re going to slide off the mountain. And it goes on for miles. Last year, during the Great Divide Race, I found a water bottle with a note underneath it left by one of the Tour Divide riders, Felix Wong. It said: “To whoever finds this note, get yourself out of this Godforsaken race while you still can!’”

  I laughed. “Felix Wong was a drama queen. I know. I listened to all of the Tour Divide call-ins last year.”

  “Yeah, it was a bit overdramatic,” John said. “But that’s what we have to look forward to at the end of the day.”

  We flew through the town of Swan River without even taking a break. A few miles beyond town, I demanded that John stop so I could pop a few caffeine pills. “I feel like the energy is draining out of my body faster than I can replace it,” I said. “It’s only day four and I already feel like a shell of myself.”

  “There are good mornings and bad mornings on the Divide,” John said. “You won’t feel this way every morning.”

  I wheezed. “Want to bet? God, and right now we’re just riding flat pavement. How will I ever survive three passes?”

  “Maybe that caffeine will kick in,” John said. “In Seeley Lake, we’ll make sure to get you some coffee.”

  “Seeley Lake, okay,” I said. I felt a rush of annoyance at the second mention of the town. I resented being told where I was going to spend the night. That was supposed to be my decision. If I curled up into a snow hole on Richmond Peak, then that would be my stopping point for the night. If I had a surge of energy and felt like pushing beyond it, I would. Having finite destinations cast a soulless shadow over the Divide, as though we had the ability to control all of the challenges the route threw in our paths. John of course believed we did have this power. But I was more inclined to put my faith in the overarching reign of chaos.

  We veered onto a U.S. Forest Service road. John pointed out numbers carved into trees by loggers, landmarks that he remembered with photographic exactness. He told me the road was by far the most concentrated region for bears in the U.S. section of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, and sure enough, less than thirty minutes later, a sow grizzly bear and two cubs sauntered across our path. I, in all of my Alaska experience, stopped cold and listened to my heart pound violently beneath my rib cage as the bears regarded us with quiet suspicion. John, in direct contrast to my stunned paralysis, laid into his pedals and charged toward the bears, barking like a dog as he rode within a handful of yards from three large animals with sharp teeth, big claws and a reputation for grumpiness. All three of their ears perked up momentarily before they bolted across the road and disappeared into the thick forest.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” I whispered as I crept up behind John, craning my neck to look toward the trees where the bears disappeared.

  “You have to assert your dominance over them,” John said with professional certainty. “Just like dogs. If they think you’re scared of them, they’ll react accordingly.”

  “You mean like leave us alone?”

  “No, they’ll act defensively,” John said. “They figure if you have reason to fear them, they have reason to fear you.”

  “They have no reason to fear me!” I called out, hoping my voice was loud enough to scare any eavesdropping bruins away for good. “I’m a soft piece of mush with a candy center.”

  John laughed. “But they don’t know that.”

  I suspected John didn’t really understand bear behavior at all, but I admired his boldness. As with most things in the life of a Great Divide racer, perception is half the battle.

  We climbed a seemingly endless series of small hills, dropping near streams and veering onto old Forest Service roads so seldom used that they had become long strips of grass with a sliver of singletrack where occasional cyclists still traveled down the center. John told me this section was perhaps the most remote region of the Divide.

  “Remote?” I protested. “Not even. My GPS shows us not more than five miles from the Swan Highway. We’ve been paralleling it all day; it’s right down there. I bet you could even see it if we were above these trees. No, this place is just grizzly bears and grass. To me, remote is the middle of southern New Mexico. Remote is the Great Divide Basin.”

  “Sounds like places remote to your GPS,” John said. “The highway may be right down there, but it’s not easy to get to from here. On the Basin, there are roads everywhere.”

  “Yeah, Oregon Trail roads, which haven’t been in regular use since 1869,” I said.

  “Still,” John said. “They’re there.”

  Three rangers in a truck approached us and stopped as we pulled beside them.

  “Wow, more bikers!” the driver exclaimed.

  “Did you see other cyclists ahead?” John asked in an overanxious tone that made me smile, because he sounded like he was already sizing up the mid-pack competition.

  “Three guys,” the driver said. “‘Bout, I don’t know, maybe five miles down the road. I don’t think they all spoke English, but they looked like Hell. You guys look sparkling fresh compared to those guys.”

  “Yeah, you can catch ’em,” another said. “Good luck!”

  John smiled triumphantly as the rangers drove away. “We can pass them for sure,” he said.

  I laughed. “Does it matter? There must be at least twenty guys in front of me, and Cricket, too. John, you’re in mid-pack now. We only care about ourselves, not the competition.”

  “Liar,” John smiled. “You know you care. Anyway, you do look like you’re feeling better than this morning.”

  “I am feeling better,” I said. “Either the caffeine pill or the grizzly bears revived me. I’m guessing it was the bears.”

  We pedaled up a small pass, coasted down, and then climbed another. My adrenaline surge faded rapidly as we approached the looming dread of Richmond Peak. We rode through swampy muskeg so thick with mosquitoes that we both stopped twice to layer ourselves in ever drop of DEET we had on us, and then rode as fast as we could across a muddy field that had once been a road.

  “The magic speed is ten miles per hour,” John said. “You have to ride at least ten miles per hour if you want the mosquitoes to leave you alone.”

  “What about tailwind?” I mused. “Or really, really persistent mosquitoes?”

  “Ten miles per hour,” John said. “They’ll never bother you as long as you’re going at least that fast.”

  I looked down at my odometer. We were traveling seven miles per hour. I felt I was going as hard as I could without passing out. “Then you go ten miles per hour,” I panted, “and when we reach Seeley Lake, I’ll buy more bug spray.”

  “Whatever works,” John said.

  The sun was settling low on the horizon when the climb began in earnest.

  “This is Richmond Peak?” I asked.

  “The one and only,” John said. The wide gravel road switch-backed up the aspen-choked mountainside. Across the narrow
river valley to the east, pine-studded mountains shimmered gold beneath direct beams of low sunlight. I watched John’s silhouette disappear around a bend, but his shadow remained stretched over the lower road. I spat quick, labored breaths and drew in oxygen with waning enthusiasm. The trees began to thin as the alpine line drew closer. I could see John’s shadow disappearing around distant bends, but had little ability to press harder to catch up. I marveled at the ability of real racers to surge toward a sprint finish when they too were running on little more than fumes, but my body knew too well that a whole lot of survival still lay in front of me.

  After two hours of climbing, the sun had disappeared below the horizon and John was standing at the crest of the road, waiting for me. To the newly revealed west, a spectacular light display shimmered through strips of clouds, draped in strands of red, gold and orange, and even blue and green, all woven together in the startlingly big sky for which Montana was famous. Our mountainside was bathed in a warm shade of peach. Cameras did nothing to capture the colors, so we put them away and stood in serene silence together until I noticed John was shivering.

  “Perhaps we should get moving,” I said.

  “You feeling okay?” John asked me through chattering teeth.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I took it slow to save some energy for the top. Let’s go get us some snow.”

  John pointed down the road. “You’ll want to go that way, and you’ll think you should go that way. That road drops down to the highway in about three miles; then it’s a straight shot to Seeley Lake. But we don’t get to go that way. We get to go the hard way. You’ll see.”

  The wide road fell away as we veered onto a Forest Service road that hadn’t been used by anyone besides cyclists and perhaps the occasional hiker in a number of decades. Six-foot-tall spruce trees grew down the center of the doubletrack, which was bumpy and rock-strewn after years of neglect.