by Jill Homer
“So Pete didn’t start with the Great Divide Race?” I asked.
“No, he started in Banff about two days before the race,” Mike said. “I think he crossed the border close to the GDR, but not with it.”
Since Mike set the record in 2004, he had slowly distanced himself from the Divide. The entire time, he maintained that he wanted the race to adhere to the traditional border-to-border route. Matt Lee, who had raced and finished the Divide every year since 2004, argued that Adventure Cycling Association, the organization that established the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, had since moved the route into Canada; therefore, the race should start in Canada. Mike and Matt would never see eye-to-eye. Matt eventually left the Great Divide Race and created the Tour Divide around a Banff start; he also modified several rules and practices that went against Mike’s aesthetic viewpoints on what self-supported racing should be.
In 2008, the Great Divide Race and Tour Divide were very much at odds with each other. Because of its historic precedence, its association with Mike and Pete, and because Geoff participated in it, I had remained a vocal Great Divide Race trumpeter right up until it came time to actually choose an event myself. I knew I had become a defector by starting with the Tour Divide. But I had my reasons and I felt they were good ones, and I didn’t feel shame about my choice, even as I looked Mike Curiak directly in the eyes.
“And Pete’s going to pass through here, pretty soon?” I asked.
“I expect him too,” Mike said. “I saw on his tracking page he was getting into Salida this morning.”
“Really?” I said. “Pete’s carrying a SPOT?”
“Just to map his own progress,” Mike said. “Only a few people have the information to get into the Web site. “Geoff Roes is actually one of them.”
“Really? Why Geoff?”
“He asked for it.”
It hadn’t occurred to me before, but Geoff was probably closely tracking everything going on in the Divide, just for the gratification his own interest in the race. This meant there was a good chance he was watching my every move. Or maybe he was purposefully ignoring that information. I wondered, given Geoff‘s and my role reversal as Divide traveler and watcher, what I would do. Our relationship may be fractured, but we were still sports fans.
“Do you mind if I ride with you for a bit?” Mike asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “That would be fun.”
Mike pulled his car over and grabbed a bicycle from the back. He had a frame bag just like mine, made by the same one-man company in Anchorage. He showed me its various pouches, one of which he said was specifically custom-made to hold candy. He opened it up and fished out a handful of Mike and Ikes.
“I also have a Pepsi if you want one,” he said. “It’s Pete’s favorite.”
“I’m not going to drink Pete’s Pepsi!” I cried.
“Don’t worry, I have extras.” He handed me a liter bottle.
“Four hundred calories of sugar goodness,” I said as I raised the bottle in a mock toast and guzzled most of it right in front of Mike.
We pedaled up the mellow grade, spinning easily enough to chat amicably. I did most of the talking, telling Mike about my impressions of the Divide, asking him questions about his Iditarod rides, and plying for information about Pete.
Pete, my Iditarod hero, had a long history with the Great Divide. After just missing out on the record and finishing second in 2004, he returned in 2005 only to experience a Geoff-like “total body shutdown” in central New Mexico. In 2007, he got sick and dropped out in Colorado. But each time, he pushed hard with single-minded drive to set the record, enough so that all the way back in Montana, John expressed anxiety about the rumors that Pete might be riding the Divide. John didn’t want to lose the Great Divide record, and he was pretty sure Pete was the only one who was likely to take it from him.
“So how’s Pete doing?” I asked Mike.
“Really well,” Mike said. “He’s hit some weather like all of you have, and he’s had some mechanical issues. He had a wheel taco on him on the bike path out of Silverthorne. He had to hitch back to town to buy a new one. He called me to ask about whether or not he should buy the wheels the Silverthorne shop had in stock. I said, ‘Do you have a choice?’”
“Man, Pete can not catch a break,” I said.
Near the top of Marshall Pass, Mike announced he was going to stop to take pictures of a field of yellow wildflowers that spanned the road. I stopped as well. Never one for close-up shots, I took photos of the stark mountains and gray-tinted clouds in a dark blue sky. “You know,” Mike said as we joined up again, “You’re one of the few people I’ve seen out where who really seems to be enjoying themselves.”
“That’s my whole goal,” I said. “Take my hits but take them slow and have a good time.”
Mike nodded. “I think you have the right idea.”
We stopped together at the pass, looking out over the rippled expanse of the San Juan Mountains. “Be sure to say hi to Pete for me when you see him,” I told Mike. “Actually, I guess he’s going to pass me today, so I’ll just tell him myself.”
Mike and I shook hands. For the forty-five minutes we spent together, he never said more than what needed to be said, so he simply advised, “Have fun.”
I rocketed down Marshall Pass in a fever pitch of excitement. Ever since I learned Jeremy had dropped out of the race, I knew that I had landed in a dead spot of solitude in the Tour Divide. The next racer in front of me was a day and half ahead, and the next person behind me was a full day back. I had already resigned myself to the fact I was not going to see another Divide racer for the rest of the trip. But this wasn’t just another Divide racer, it was Pete! A fellow Alaskan, a friend, and my ultra-endurance racing role model. I expected him to simply pass me, probably saying hello and grunting terse but genuine words of encouragement like “Nice job” or “Good work” before surging ahead toward his record-breaking individual effort. I knew it would only be a few seconds and it would be over, but I looked forward to seeing Pete with buzzing anticipation, just like a shy girl waiting for the most popular guy in school to walk down the hall.
Outside the only store in the town of Sergeants, I met a large group of cyclists that turned out to be the same affordable housing group I had intersected with the day before in Hartsel. The same tall youth who had criticized my choice of bicycle earlier was incredulous about the mystery of how I managed to meet up with them again without taking their route.
“There are no other roads around here,” he said.
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s what I was telling you yesterday. I’m not on the roads. I’m traveling on trails. There are some highways, but mostly it’s mud and dirt. This route does everything it can to avoid pavement.”
“So where are you headed now?” he asked.
I looked at my map. “Well, let’s see … I guess, well, yeah, I guess I’m on Highway 50 for the next twelve miles.”
“Imagine that, we’re going to same way,” he said. “Do you want to ride with us?”
I followed the group out of Sergeants. Nearly thirty cyclists strung out along the shoulder of the highway single file, all wearing identical jerseys and riding nearly identical bikes. With my sagging bike bags and fresh coat of mud, I felt like an ugly duckling drafting a flock of swans.
I joined the tall youth and a short, stocky friend of his at the front of the pack. We quickly put a gap on the next group back as I explained to him in greater detail what the Tour Divide was. He told me his group rode hard every day, covering 70 to 110 miles on their road bikes, and still helped with volunteer home-building projects in every town where they stopped.
“That sounds more exhausting than climbing mountains all day long,” I said. I had to practically yell over the roar of trucks flowing steadily beside us. One driver laid on the horn and his rig skimmed within inches of our shoulders. “And, man, touring on the road all day long, that would be really stressful,” I added. “I forget ho
w much roads suck.”
“You get used to the traffic,” he said. “It’s been a really fun trip.”
He asked more questions about my gear and where I camped at night. I tried to answer but it was becoming harder to reply as I gasped for breath and swallowed gulps of exhaust. I looked down at my odometer. We were riding faster than nineteen miles per hour, sometimes hitting twenty miles per hour on a nearly flat stretch of highway. It was faster than I usually traveled downhill on my loaded bike, and I was feeling the burn, with a racing heart and sweat beading up on my arms and face. It occurred to me that it was idiotic to expend so much energy on flat pavement when I had heaps of climbing in front of me. But this home-building cyclist already thought I was a pansy, and he had criticized my mountain bike. I was determined to keep up with him.
I pumped the pedals and fell behind his rear wheel. He responded with more acceleration. No longer chatting, we were full-out racing. The miles ripped by in a heavy blur, where lactic acid overflowed from the frantic pistons that had once been my legs. It stung my eyes and gurgled into my core. I was in pain, but damn if I wasn’t going to prove that my overstuffed mountain bike could hold its own. Even the home-building cyclist’s friend eventually fell back, and the rest of his group was nowhere in sight when I caught a glimpse of the merciful redemption that was my route cutoff.
“Oh … here’s … my turn,” I gasped. “It was … nice … meeting you.”
“You, too,” he replied. “Good luck in the Tour de … what did you call it?”
“Tour … Divide.”
“Yeah, Tour de Vise,” he said. “I’ll look you up.”
“Have fun,” I panted, whipping a hard left onto the gravel road and slowing to a jerky crawl as soon as he was safely out of sight. Pretty soon the truck traffic was no longer in earshot. Back out in the high mountain plain, I had a full view of every direction for miles, and I could see I was deeply alone again.
I squinted harder, trying to discern any hint of movement down the valley. I knew Mike’s choice of where to wait for Pete meant Pete couldn’t be more than a few miles behind me. I had pedaled hard on both the descent from Marshall Pass and the highway, but my best effort would still be too easy for Pete. I expected to see him soon.
I first met Pete almost exactly three years earlier, in 2006, during a summer when he stayed in Alaska rather than travel south to race the Divide. We both entered as soloists the 24 Hours of Kincaid race in Anchorage. As is the nature of lap races, the fast soloists frequently passed me. Pete always had a determined grimace on his face as he shot by, but he was always friendly enough to say hello, every time. In the middle of the night, I lost track of him. His tent was always empty and I thought he had dropped out of the race. I found out later he took an unplanned nap in the woods after dozing on his bike, but still rallied to win the race with twenty-one laps. I finished as the top female and fifth place overall with sixteen laps. It was a proud moment for me, and I decided that Pete was my cycling hero.
He was more interesting to me than Lance Armstrong or even John Stamstad, because to me, Pete was a real person. He ate junk food, drove a crappy van, and stumbled awkwardly through media interviews. And then, without glory or recognition, he went on to accomplish biking feats that were, in my mind, every bit as inspiring as winning the Tour de France.
As for my endurance racing career, 2007 was the tipping point. I returned from the Susitna 100 in February with a nearly useless “angry knee” (it was actually an advanced stage of chondromalacia patella). I couldn’t ride my bike, run, or even walk without limping, so I spent long mornings in front of my computer, fixated on the reports from the Iditarod Trail Invitational. That year, Pete shot far off the front, moving so quickly in good conditions that people spoke of him breaking the three-day barrier without trying. About halfway through the race, overflow-covered ice forced everyone to take long bypass that added thirty-five miles to the course, but Pete continued charging ahead of record pace. Then he disappeared off the radar for a while, and there were reports of temperatures dropping to forty below. Pete was missing for more than twenty-four hours, and nobody knew exactly where he was. I hit the “refresh” button on my computer incessantly. I watched and waited. I got up in the middle of the night, I snuck peeks at work, and still there was no word from Pete. And then, in his own unceremonious way, Pete popped back on the radar fifty miles from the finish, a mere five hours before the time he needed to break the current record. He reported that he had battled ninety miles of treacherous conditions across the Farewell Burn, riding through a minefield of frozen tussocks that knocked him off his bike “hundreds” of times. It had slowed him too much, I thought. No one can ride fifty miles of snow-drifted frozen river in five hours. But I continued to cheer from afar. I hit “refresh” on my computer. Five hours passed in a blink, and Pete had done it, he had arrived in McGrath, winning the race and shaving a mere twenty minutes off the Iditarod Trail record — Mike Curiak’s record.
I was transfixed, inspired, wholly immersed in the grand, terrifying spectacle of it all. “Next year, I’m going to ride in the Iditarod Trail Invitational,” I announced to Geoff.
“Yeah right,” Geoff had replied.
Two years later, on a lonely high road of the Great Divide, I still credited — and blamed — Pete for being the catalyst who set me on my path, inspiring me to make the amazingly complex leap from single-day races to self-supported multiday and winter events. He even helped with the transition, giving advice every time I asked and offering to fix my bike. And Pete had the added bonus of being a genuinely nice and admittedly good-looking guy, two years younger than me, with a broad chin, a shy smile, and dark, curly hair that exploded in all directions every time he took off his helmet.
I started looking over my shoulder frequently. When I stopped for food or bathroom breaks, I never ventured far off the road lest Pete shoot by as I was hiding behind a bush. I was anxious about the prospect of missing him. I recognized how silly it was to harbor such strong anticipation about something so simple, but I felt helpless to fight it. Ravaged by two weeks of unceasing mood swings between the highest highs and the lowest lows, my emotions had bled out into the open, laid bare to the world, where they could be deeply cut by everything that touched them. My feelings of happiness, pain, agony, excitement, and even love, were as naïve and affecting as a child’s. And just as I had engaged in childlike competition with the home-building cyclist, I developed a childlike fixation on an inevitable meeting with Pete.
I climbed another 10,000-foot pass and descended amid massive sandstone boulders that appeared to have dropped out of the sky, likely deposited by a long-melted glacier. “These rocks are so incredible,” I thought. “This would be a cool place to ride with Pete.”
Evening fell as I pedaled up a new canyon, still feeling strong even as I surpassed the hundred-mile mark for the day. Sunset hovered in bright strips of crimson over the violet mountains. “So beautiful,” I thought. “I wonder if Pete can see this, wherever he is?”
But only silence and stillness followed. I crested Canaro Pass in the darkness. The sleep monster settled over me with crushing accuracy. I had traveled 125 miles that day. Del Norte was still another thirty in the distance. I thought I could manage a late push into town but I was fading fast. A primitive Forest Service campground named Storm King appeared on my left. I slowed my bike and hesitated.
“If I camp there,” I thought, “Pete’s going to pass me in the night and I’m never going to see him.”
The voice of rationality, so easily repressed by my childlike emotions, finally had to shout to get my attention: “That doesn’t matter! It’s not a big deal!” But the child in me resisted the demand for sleep even as my eyes drooped and body sagged. My maps indicated a long stretch of private property that meant if I didn’t stop at the campground, I’d have no choice but to pedal another thirty miles into Del Norte. There was nowhere to camp before town. With an air of defeat, I coasted down the campground�
��s entryway.
“Oh well,” I thought as I laid out my sleeping bag and bivy sack. I perked up after a big meal of tuna, Corn Nuts, and gourmet 7-Eleven brownie, and was heartened by the fact I had gotten through another long but physically strong day. I popped my nightly sleeping pill in my mouth and lay down. I blinked rapidly in an effort to keep my eyes open to the blaze of stars overhead, still straining to hear the rattle of bicycle wheels rolling down the gravel road. But as my eyes drooped to a close, I accepted sleep gracefully, feeling pleasantly sad.
I don’t know how much time had passed — an hour, maybe two — when strange noises rustled me awake.
“Bear!” My mind raced as I jolted to a sitting position, jerking my head around for a view through the tiny air opening in my sleeping bag. I swung my entire bivy sack all the way around before I saw the dark, human-shaped figure directly behind me, about twenty feet away. The initial adrenaline rush of my bear scare did almost nothing to cut through the disorienting haze of the sleeping drug. The figure appeared as a shadow, blurry and distorted as though obscured behind a thick plate of glass. A pinprick of light perched on the figure’s head whirled around but never pointed directly at me. It appeared the figure was unpacking something. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a bike.
“Has to be Pete,” I thought, though I was strangely indifferent about the prospect. The silhouette seemed to be moving in slow motion. I tried to push the light button on my watch, but it wouldn’t work. I stretched my arm out of the tiny opening in my sack and fumbled around until I found my helmet. I wrestled the opening a little wider and tried to turn on the headlamp mounted on top. That wasn’t working either. “Argh, this is just some kind of weird dream,” I thought as I lay back down. I lost consciousness within seconds.