by Jill Homer
“How are things going?” I asked Cricket, who I hadn’t seen since she passed me in Canada.
“Oh, you know, my bike’s falling apart,” she chuckled. “Not really. I’m just having them fix a few things, but they sure are slow here. At this rate, I’ll never make it to Butte tonight.”
“We’re shooting for Butte, too,” I said. “Did you stay in Lincoln last night?”
“No,” she said, “just beyond there, near Stemple Pass. It was cold last night. Nasty with wind and rain.”
“Oh?” I said. “I didn’t notice.” I acknowledged with some guilt that I had stayed in a warm and dry motel room that I hadn’t really earned.
At the counter, I waited for five minutes to pay for bike gloves as two clerks stood five feet away chatting with each other and ignoring me entirely. After I finally acquired my merchandise and walked outside, Jeremy, who also had been standing around for nearly a half hour without much help, announced in disgust that he was just going to try to get his bike work done in Butte. The three of us left together.
“Congratulations,” John said to me as we started up yet another pass. “You’re now in first place of the women’s race.”
“Ha!” I laughed. “Don’t be surprised if Cricket comes charging past us in an hour. That woman is tough as nails.”
The fourth pass of the day was a nondescript lump, with an 1,800-foot climb that took us out of the lowlands of Helena. I was feeling surprisingly energetic even though we had already climbed nearly 10,000 vertical feet that day. John motored ahead and I pedaled beside Jeremy, trying to make conversation. Jeremy was a short, broad man — not heavy, just strong. He was about my age, with short, light brown hair and a face frozen in a grimace. His bike was haphazardly loaded with bulging bags, several of which were simply hanging off his handlebars. He generally replied to my questions with single-word answers, if at all, but rather than take offense as I had with Steve, I felt pity for Jeremy. His eyes were glazed and he was breathing heavily. He appeared to be struggling.
“I was going to ride a singlespeed in the Tour Divide,” he unexpectedly blurted out after several minutes of silence. “And at the last minute decided to put a cassette on, so I have nine speeds. It’s still not enough. My legs are killing me. I have never needed a low gear as badly as I do right now.”
I looked down and for the first time noticed his cadence. He turned a single, plodding stroke for every two of mine. My legs spun easy while his worked considerably for every laborious rotation. And there we were, moving at the same rate of speed, even though I was exerting just a fraction of his effort level. I could only smile sympathetically. The bicycle is such a simple machine, and yet the presence of two extra cogs on my crank and a front derailleur to move the chain around made a world of difference between my bike and Jeremy’s. Single-speeders tout purity and simplicity, but I fall squarely in the school of thought that technology is a wonderful thing and should be used to its fullest wherever practical and available. Jeremy did not seem inclined to disagree.
John waited at the top and the two of us shifted into our big rings and soon surged ahead of Jeremy, who was spun out in his too-small top gear. We dropped into a thick-forested canyon that seemed eerily isolated from the civilized world. I zoomed in the scale of my GPS screen, seeking reassurance from the fact that we were now paralleling Interstate 15. But the ridge of some very large mountains hid the interstate from view, and we were descending into a world populated by hillbillies and bears.
We turned off Lava Mountain Road, and labored along the deeply rutted, rock-strewn jeep track. “There is a turn here that’s crucial,” John said. “Watch your maps really closely, because it’s easy to miss. It’s a right turn that the maps say nothing about. I missed it last year and was lost for more than five hours. Geoff and David missed it too; that was the night they had to sleep in a bathroom.”
“It was a shower stall,” I said. “At a campground in Basin. I remember that night. I remember having this strange feeling of dread when I heard Geoff’s call-in at seven at night announcing he was leaving Helena, and then watching his SPOT tracker make circle after circle in a random area between Helena and Basin. I don’t think they got to camp until after three, at a point when he already wasn’t sleeping much during the nights. I think Lava Mountain was the turning point for Geoff. The beginning of the end.”
“He still rode halfway through Colorado after that night,” John said. “Right on my tail.”
“Yes, well, for Geoff, he’ll force himself into top performance until he absolutely can’t function any more. I really think that’s what happened to him. People lose interest in this race and drop out; they tout it as a mental battle. But in Geoff’s case, I really think his body stopped working. Total shutdown.”
“You think so?”
“I believe it,” I said. “And that’s my main goal in this race, avoiding that. But I’m not too worried. As long as I can keep myself warm and not too frightened, I’ll be fine. I’m as conservative as so-called athletes come.”
John and I came to a junction that the maps said nothing about. My GPS track turned distinctly to the right. “This is it,” I announced. “This is the bad turn.”
John glanced around. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is it, but not certain.”
I smiled. John had his photographic memory and four full races through this section of the trail. I had poor navigational skills and a $200 GPS unit, but I was willing to hedge all of my bets on that one right turn. “Do you think we should wait for Jeremy?” I asked.
“He’ll see our tracks. He’ll find it,” John said.
“Maybe I should draw an arrow in the mud,” I said.
John frowned. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “Helping others with navigation is against the race rules. Something like that could get you disqualified. I’m not even sure what it means for you and me to be traveling together, but that GPS of yours seems to know where it’s going, so I don’t feel like I’m guiding you anyway.”
“Huh,” I said. “I hadn’t even thought of that before. This race really strives to be brutal, doesn’t it? The rules won’t even let two racers help each other.”
“Well, self-support is exactly that,” John said. “Since my race is over, I’m only worried about over-influencing you, but you seem to be self-sufficient with or without me.”
“Are you kidding?” I laughed. “You’re like a Great Divide coach! But, yeah, it’s mostly a moral support thing. I know I’d be fine on my own.”
“You would,” John said. “And will. I’ve been thinking about dropping out in Butte. Beyond there, I don’t even think there’s a real town until Jackson, Wyoming.”
“You could always jump on I-15 and ride to Idaho Falls,” I said. “I used to live there. They have a nice airport. But do what you gotta do.”
We continued up the rocky road and I felt a pang of loneliness. For much of the first two days we spent together, I had only wanted John to leave me alone. But we had talked through our life stories, established our boundaries, and found mutual fondness of the hard miles and of each other. I was no longer sure I wanted to give that all up for self-imposed solitude.
The final pitch of the Lava Mountain Road was so steep and rutted that we both had to walk our bikes. Bike pushing is a brutal discipline — much harder than walking and even more difficult than riding when you’re dealing with more than fifty pounds of metal and gear. My shoulders burned and leg muscles strained with every ounce of power I could muster, and still I felt like I was pushing a proverbial rock up a mountain, which I was.
But bike pushing is also a fine art, a chance to slow movement to a crawl and observe the surrounding world through a heavy, almost blissful fatigue. Tree bark took on a compelling texture I would have never noticed had I simply flown past during a gravity-fed descent. Sprigs of grass and tiny purple flowers swayed in the gentle breeze, and chattering squirrels scrambled up and down trees. Everything moved as though suspended under water. Wh
en eyes are tired and muscles are sore, life seems to fall away in slow motion, like a beautiful dream on the edge between consciousness and sleep.
Lava Mountain topped out at more than 7,000 feet, our highest pass yet. The terrain continued to roll noncommittally through a thick forest of dwarf spruce until, from a clearing far above a narrow valley, I-15 came into view. We coasted into the town of Basin just before sunset, having already ridden twelve hard hours. The slow-motion movement of Lava Mountain was still swimming in my mind. I was ready to stop for the day. But there was no motel in Basin, only a campground, and goals cannot be given up without good reason. I leaned into my handlebars as John fished energy bars out of the compartment on the front of his bike.
“It’s only thirty more miles to Butte,” he said. “Just one more pass, and it’s a small one. We can do it in three or four hours.”
“If you say so,” I said apathetically.
We turned onto a gravel route paralleling the interstate that the map called a “Non-maintained Cattle Access Trail.” The old railroad bed was strewn with large, loose stones, which seemed to grab our wheels and force them backward like a line of rollers in a sadistic fun house. John’s bike kicked up a cloud of dust as he fought the rough surface. I bowed my head like a child who, being mercilessly shaken by an enraged caregiver, goes limp in response. Only a few hundred yards to our right, trucks and cars streamed by on the smooth pavement of I-15. I knew the interstate would take us precisely where we wanted to go. It would likely be hours sooner than we would reach Butte at the rate we were traveling.
“You know, all this effort to avoid pavement has got to be the best part of the Divide,” I deadpanned.
“Believe me, when the route starts dumping you onto highways, which it will from time to time, you’ll change your mind about that,” John said. “Do you really want to be riding with trucks on an interstate? Trust me, this is much better.”
I looked out toward the traffic stream on I-15, now separated from us by the meandering blue ribbon of the Boulder River. As the sun slipped behind the mountains, its golden light dyed the grass-lined banks in warm tones of sienna and orange. I narrowed my vision until the freeway and deep canyon walls faded into the background, and imagined a stream flowing through a Midwestern prairie — rich, open and quiet.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It is pretty here. It’s just getting dark. And suddenly I feel like it’s really late. My body doesn’t want to move anymore. I really want to be asleep right now.”
“It won’t be much longer,” John said.
The railroad bed cut steeply up the mountain, away from the hypnotic parade of red taillights on I-15. In the monotone dusk, we hadn’t noticed all the clouds building overhead. But just as darkness fell, it started to rain. And as quickly as the first droplets fell, the storm exploded into a drenching shower. Within seconds we were soaked, but stopped to pull on our rain gear just the same. As I stripped off my shoes to pull on my vapor barrier socks, John paced around with the same nervousness he had displayed before Seeley Lake.
“It was like this last year,” he said. “I think storms just get caught on the Continental Divide before Butte, and just sit there and get really bad.”
We continued climbing through the downpour. The rain came down so hard and thick that it seemed to cut out the light from my headlamp, and I could hardly see John’s light as he pedaled faster in the distance. Before I even noticed its brick entrance, the rail trail disappeared into the yawning hole of an abandoned tunnel. Suddenly engulfed in complete darkness, I began to shiver — not from the chill, but from a primal sort of fear. A low continuous moan echoed through the corridor. I glanced around nervously and listened for hints of an train whistle, even though the tracks had long since been ripped from the ground. Since there were no longer trains to fear, I feared the ghost train, with its shrill moan calling out from the eerie depths. Without even noticing, I started pedaling faster, anxious to escape the black and chilling tomb.
I was relieved to see John’s light again as he waited for me near the exit. As I shined my own light in his face, a look of distress washed over his pale skin.
“Do you think we should stop here for the night?” he asked.
“What? Here? In a train tunnel?”
“At least it’s dry in here,” John said. His chin was quivering and his bottom lip looked blue.
“What about your complete lack of camping gear?” I asked.
“I have my bivy sack,” he said. “I just need to put on my dry clothes and get warm.”
“Trust me, you’re not going to get any warmer if we stop,” I said. “It’s like the underworld of the dead in here. It’s claustrophobic and creepy. I would rather walk to Butte in a snowstorm than stay here. But you can stay if you want. I’ll even give you my sleeping bag.”
“You sure you don’t want to stay here?”
“John, I’m sorry. There’s no way I can sleep in here. It’s like a spooky haunted house.”
John grumpily followed me back out into the downpour while I breathed big gulps of relief in the fresh air. “You should just sprint ahead,” I told him. “You’ll warm up if you start moving faster. You can’t stay warm if you stay with me. I’ll just meet you in Butte. You’re stopping at that bike shop hotel, right?”
“I’ll be fine,” John grumbled.
“Well, if that’s the way you’re going to be, I’ll just step up my pace,” I said. “I want to be done with this freaking day. Do you mind if I listen to my iPod?”
“No, go ahead,” he said. “I’ve got one too.”
Together but separate, we tuned in to a soothing cloak of electronic sound, blocking out the pattering rain and brightening the cold darkness. John listened to jam bands like the Grateful Dead and Donna the Buffalo. I tuned in to modern alternative, the Arcade Fire and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. We both laid into the pedals and nudged our speed back into the double digits. We crossed onto a paved frontage road, with the yellow and red car lights of I-15 flickering through sheets of rain. We ramped up the speed to thirteen miles per hour, and then fifteen, still climbing. I couldn’t fathom where I was finding the energy. The day already fell solidly into the top ten most physically taxing cycling days of my life, right up there with my twenty-four-hour-races and individual days on the Iditarod Trail. But John was cold and I was motivated. We were a blur of gummy-bear-powered speed.
We crested our sixth and final pass for the day, Elk Park Pass, elevation 6,368, just before midnight. The gradual climb suddenly dropped steeply in front of us. The wide valley below revealed a sprawl of sparkling city lights, a continent of warmth in a cold and black universe. I gasped in astonishment at the glittering beauty, so novel and complex after eighteen hours mostly spent crawling through 130 miles of open meadows and woods. We rocketed down the shoulder of I-15, hunched deep into our aero bars like road racers in the Tour de France, blinking rapidly against a fire-hose spray of rainwater.
“This is the greatest city in the world!” I screamed into the wind, knowing with smug satisfaction that neither John nor Butte — population 34,000 — could hear me. The golden continent rapidly grew larger until it engulfed us like an oversized blanket. Towering over us now were streamlined overpasses, neon-lit restaurants and ten-story hotels, marvels of modern architecture as great as the Manhattan skyline. I grinned, because I knew that day, I had earned the privilege to rest well.
Chapter Twelve
Savage Side
I woke up draped in the silky sheets of a luxury king-sized bed, deeply sore.
General muscle and joint soreness is always accompanied by wide-ranging emotions. There is comforting soreness, the kind that comes in the midst of hard training, because it signals sought-after muscle growth. There is satisfying soreness, that post-race glow when a person knows they have met their goals and can finally rest. There is debilitating soreness, the kind that follows injuries, lapses in judgment or an insistence on pushing oneself too hard.
And then th
ere is Divide soreness. Divide soreness is not so easily pinpointed, because it descends in waves over days and weeks. It starts as a sharp tinge in the larger muscles on day two or three. Then it slowly cuts into smaller fibers. Then it seeps into the blood, working its way into the recesses of long-forgotten and little-used regions of the body, such as pinky toes. Just when you find yourself wondering why your pinky toe hurts, soreness has found its way into your brain, casting a pain-soaked pall over even the simplest thoughts and decisions. Finally, Divide soreness needles through to the soul, full of bile and perpetual fatigue, convincing the unfortunate individual that Hell is not death’s purgatory but a state of being on Earth, and nothing will ever look or feel good ever again.
Of course, the mercy of Divide soreness is that it doesn’t in fact last forever, and comes and goes frequently during the course of the same race, and even the same day. But, leaving Butte, I felt none of the euphoria I had experienced while descending into town. The city looked gray and bland in the light of day, a scattershot of concrete in a wide, barren basin.
“I checked the SPOT standings before we left town,” I said to John as we pedaled toward yet another wall of mountains. “I was actually surprised. We really are right in the middle of the pack, right in the thick of it. In fact, the leaders haven’t even left Montana yet, but I think Matt Lee will cross into Idaho today.”
“See, and you’re not even trying yet,” John said.
“Oh believe me, I’m trying,” I said. “It just doesn’t seem like it to you because you’re on a joy ride. You only notice how slow we’re going when you get cold.”
John had taken me up on my recommendation of Idaho Falls as a good place to leave the Divide, and decided to follow me to southern Montana, which meant we would be riding together for at least two more days. I was glad he hadn’t decided to abandon the race in Butte, but grumpy enough that morning that I really felt like asking him to press ahead so I could indulge in a few hours of tuned-out solitude. John, on the other hand, had slept great the night before and was able to slam down a huge breakfast even though he insisted on going to the grocery store rather than Denny’s, which had been my preference. I had only managed to consume a yogurt and a pound of strawberries before I started to feel ill, and the only thing competing with muscle soreness for my attention was a discouragingly low energy level.