Wednesday 15 July 2009

Life is a rollercoaster, you've just got to ride it.










Greetings one and all, and welcome to the second of our blog entries for our little Trans America cycle ride. We hope you’re sat comfortably because it’s been quite the eventful time since the last instalment, full of ups and downs, trials and tribulations. Some might even compare the experience to a rollercoaster ride…

But first things first, here are the hard and fast statistics for the past few days.

9/7: 70 miles, Ennis
10/7: 74 miles, West Yellowstone
11/7: 87.5 miles, Colter Bay
12/7: 66 miles, Dubois
13/7: 74 miles, Lander
14/7: 124 miles, Rawlins

So this brings us to a grand total of 1522 miles in 19 days. Not a bad effort, even if we may say so ourselves. The last week or so has actually been spent moving mainly south rather than east, following the mountain ranges that form the backbone of the country. In doing this we have crossed 6 continental divides, and that of course has meant a lot of climbing. Fun, fun, fun!

Back up in Montana we got our wish for improved weather and we passed through several old frontier towns. Some such as Nevada City had been left basically untouched and were pretty cool, but others like Virginia City had been completely refurbished to look authentic but cars lining the street and things such as the attempted old style bank advertising its ATM inside kind of detracted from the result. In any case, it was clear that back in frontier times they must have been scarily lawless places. We wondered whether we, the bad-ass cyclists, might have fitted in, but admitted that we wouldn't be fooling anyone!

A sad event occurred in West Yellowstone as it was there that Tony had to leave us to fly back home. We were very disappointed to see him go, lured back to the no doubt thrilling world of accountancy, and did encourage him to make that simple phone call to his boss and quit the job. He wasn't to be tempted though, being the diligent young man that he is. Tony was a wonderful companion out here, both on and off the bike, and we look forward to much more cycling with him in the future. He left us with a fantastic moustache, crafted from 2 and a half weeks of beard growth, and we hope that some of you at home were able to see it before he removed it completely "because I have my professional career to consider". Tony's departure felt like a real milestone on the trip. He had shepherded us as far as he could go, before having to say "you're on your own now boys".

At first we fared very well by ourselves and had a wonderful day riding through Yellowstone National Park with its many lakes, waterfalls, sulphur springs and ravines. Old Faithful proved not entirely faithful as the scheduled eruption time came and went with nothing happening, but the wait was well worth it. We also had the extreme good fortune (well, we considered it fortunate although others may not feel the same way) to see a grizzly bear. It was clearly a clever bear too, as it chose to walk away rather than towards the two fearsome bright lycra clad monsters who would obviously have beaten it in a fight.

But alas, things soon took a turn for the worse. The road, or the sorry excuse for one, between Yellowstone National Park and Grand Tetons National Park was quite simply atrocious, full of holes and ruts and loose stones, and unfortunately one of Rob's spokes fell victim. Toys, quite understandably given that we had just had our bikes serviced in West Yellowstone, they were running really well, and the next bike shop was a further 140 miles away, were thrown out of the pram. An exceptionally kind gentleman offered up one of his spokes (not a spare one, but one that was actually on his bike) but sadly it was the wrong size. Although it's possible to ride with a broken or missing spoke, it is far from ideal as it affects the smoothness of the ride and can damage the wheel, but in this case it was our only option. So we got our heads down, crossed the second highest mountain pass of the whole trip, Togwotee Pass at just under 10,000 feet, and made it to Lander. There we found an excellent and friendly bike mechanic who fixed Rob's spoke and wheel. So Rob gathered up his toys and things were looking up again.

And that brings us up to 14th July 2009, a date that will forever be etched in bicycling history. It may have captured your attention already due to the high mileage that we covered that day and probably deserves a whole blog section to itself. 124 miles is a long way in any circumstances, but when it is through desperately desolate Wyoming (we dread to think what it is like in the winter), in searing heat, and invloves climbing a total of approaching 4000 feet, it is something else entirely. Our first target, for lunch, was Jeffrey City. Let's just say that "Jeffrey Hamlet" would be more appropriate. Aside from several run down buildings from its uranium mining days, it now essentially consists of a cafe with a moody bartender/waitress and a friendly alcoholic who does most of the work for her. Sometimes you just get the feeling of wanting get the hell out of a place, and so it was with Jeffrey City after wolfing down some cheeseburgers. So we cycled in the direction of Muddy Gap where we planned to stay the night. When we arrived there we found a petrol station and...... nothing else. The owner of the petrol station obviously had a sense of humour though, as his minivan had the phrase "Where the **** is Muddy Gap?" emblazoned across its side. "Not somewhere you want to stay the night" would be one answer to that question, so we manned up, said to each other that this would be a day to tell our grand children about, and peddled on. Now, what you might hope for as the last 10 miles of a 124 mile ride is a nice gentle down hill stretch, but that wouldn't make a good story, so we were treated instead to a final climb over yet another continental divide. Lovely. It may come as no surprise that we rapidly checked into our first motel of the trip. Oh, and did we mention that Rob's spoke broke again. No? Well, it did. What a day....

Despite the spoke setback, which we are confident will be sorted out very soon, we are still having a wonderful, wonderful time. In fact, if we managed to get across the whole country with no problems whatsoever it would be a bit disappointing as it all adds to the adventure. The people we are meeting continue to be incredibly friendly (indeed donations from people we have simply met and chatted to have nearly reached $100), the scenery continues to be staggering, and the challenge of getting up every morning at 5am and riding for most of the day continues, bizarrely, to be rewarding.

We must offer a final word of apology to those of our avid fans who went out and bought bandanas following our previous endorsement of them. We, the fashion gurus, have decided however that the bandana craze was just a passing fad and has been replaced by headbands. We're sure this trend will endure, so don't hold back on your purchases.

Thank you once again for all the support we are receiving in its many forms from our friends and family all over the world. We like to think of ourselves as two fairly tough and resilient young gentlemen, but the support really perks us up when things are hard and keeps us going. We are quite simply delighted with how well our fundraising is going for the brilliant charity that is Cyclists Fighting Cancer. Please do visit their website at http://www.cyclistsfc.org.uk/, which now features a story about us, and please also do keep donating at http://www.justgiving.com/robertdstevenson1/ and help us reach our target.

Pedal power.

1 comment:

  1. Loving the updates boys, it really is very impressive. Good luck with the rest of it! Neily

    ReplyDelete