Chapter Twenty-Two

Independence Day

 

Never underestimate the disorienting power of pedaling.

On its surface, human-powered motion seems rather straightforward, slow and steady. Because of its unhurried pace, observations from a bicycle are thorough, sometimes excruciatingly thorough. Tiny contours in geography, subtle details in plant life, and changes in weather are all scrutinized and analyzed. Even as fatigue and malaise begin to soften the edges of intellect, cyclists must still observe their environments. Bicycling demands constant if involuntary attention to detail, even when the mind loses focus. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, cyclists’ line of thought tends to shift between confusion and reassessment. Cyclists find themselves pondering, “Where did this canyon start?” or, “When did the forest become desert?” or, “Why in the world is there a river across this trail?” before accepting their new reality without ever really understanding how or why it changed.

Thus was my state of mind as I flipped through the TV channels inside my hotel room in Grants, New Mexico, searching for the weather report. The smiling visage of my state’s governor, Sarah Palin, flickered on the television screen, so I stopped to watch. Through gasps of disbelief, I learned that this ambitious politician had resigned from her position as governor of Alaska to pursue a vague retirement that sounded like doing a lot of nothing. Not only was she inexplicably quitting her job, but the announcement that she would no longer head up a small state of 650,000 people somehow mattered enough to the whole world to land breaking coverage on a major cable news channel. I was already starting to believe I lived in the Twilight Zone, so this small shot of reality from the outside world only bemused my numb sensibilities.

“The whole damn world’s going nuts,” I laughed. I forgot all about the only news that really mattered to my existence as a cyclist — the weather report — and tuned intently into a stream of useless gossip and commentary. After about twenty minutes of Sarah Palin, my cell phone rang.

“Hey Jill. Congrats on making it to Grants,” John said on the other line.

“Thanks,” I muttered, a little stunned to hear his voice.

“From watching your SPOT, it looked like you slowed down quite a bit during the second half of yesterday, but you really made up for it today. That was what, 150 miles?

“155,” I said.

“That’s really awesome,” he said. “How are things out there?

“Pretty much exactly the same as when you left,” I said. “Cold, wet, and stormy.”

“Really? Cold? The last time I was in Grants, it was 106 degrees.”

“I’d be surprised if it broke seventy today,” I said. “It rained for three hours straight this morning. It was downright Juneau-esque.”

“That is strange. So how are you doing?” John asked.

“Good,” I said. “Well, I was crazy sick yesterday. Parasite or food poisoning or twenty-four-hour stomach flu, I don’t know which. I tried to figure out what bad food I could have possibly eaten in Abiquiu. I think it might have been the yogurt. Anyway, I threw up several times. I had no energy, no ability to climb. I walked up every single hill. It was pretty miserable.”

“You mentioned in your call-in you weren’t feeling well,” John said. “I’m sorry. I know that can be rough out there.”

“Yeah, rough doesn’t quite cover it,” I said.

“I know you have a lot to do and don’t have much time to talk on the phone, but I thought I’d call you to talk about the next four days.”

“Four?” I said. “I was thinking three. Tops.”

“Well, yes,” John said. “It’s only a bit over 400 miles to the border. Three is definitely doable. I just thought you might want to play it conservative because of the weather and the limited supplies along the way.”

“Why?” I asked. “What do you know about the weather?”

“I just checked the radar and saw that massive storm sitting right over you.”

“Massive storm? It’s not even cloudy here,” I said. “I just looked out my window. I can see stars.”

“Maybe it’s south of you,” John said. “Either way, it’s right in your path, and that probably means a really muddy road into Pie Town. It’s going to take you a while to get there, probably most of the day. But they have a nice hostel in town. You probably want to plan on staying there tomorrow.”

“Really?” I said skeptically. “I was hoping to get south of Pie Town tomorrow.”

“To where?” John asked.

“To wherever I can,” I said, starting to feel an old frustration bubbling up. “That’s half the fun of riding this thing.”

“Well, also remember that it’s the Fourth of July tomorrow,” John said. “Those two Pie Town restaurants keep really strange hours, and the chances that they’re open on a Saturday that’s also a holiday are almost zero. I wouldn’t count on them for any food. Get everything you need in Grants.”

“I was already planning to,” I said in a tone as reproachful as a scolded child’s. I felt that John was being condescending or at the very least thought of me as a clueless novice after all this time, even though I had covered more distance on my own than I did with him. Still, I had to admit that I was really hoping Pie Town would at least have drinking water, so his advice was useful in that regard.

“Well, if you do decide to stop in Pie Town, the next stop is a private ranch near Wall Lake. I’ll give you the number. Tell them my name when you get there. They definitely give you a room.”

“Thanks, John, but really, I’ll be fine,” I said, not hiding my exasperation. I knew he was trying to be helpful. Still, he was making a completely unveiled attempt to wield the reins of my Tour Divide effort from afar, for whatever reason. And for whatever reason of my own, I vowed — even if I had to swim through mud until midnight — that I would pedal past Pie Town on Saturday.

A few seconds of silence pierced the unspoken tension. “I’ve watched what you’ve been doing, but I’ve wondered how you’ve been feeling,” he said after the long pause. “It’s really good to hear your voice again.”

In a rush of self-consciousness, I thought about my bike and body troubles in the Great Divide Basin, being stranded in Rawlins, my crash outside Steamboat Springs, Pete’s accident, and my exhausting battles with New Mexico’s weather and mud. A lifetime had passed since John and I last spoke.

“I’ve felt all right. How have you been?” I asked. “How’s your knee?”

“It’s fine,” John said. “I’m already back into training. My short Divide race did nothing to slow that down. Knee’s getting stronger, too. But I miss touring with you. I still come home from training rides and take showers wearing all of my clothes, just to relive the old glory days on the Great Divide.”

“Ha!” I said. “I hate the clothing showers. That’s one thing I won’t miss. I found the guest washer-dryer at this motel and locked myself inside the room naked just so I could wash every piece of clothing I had, even my rain gear.”

“Did you really?” John asked.

“Actually,” I said, “I snuck out with a towel on. A half hour is a long time to sit naked in a public laundry room.”

John laughed weakly. “Well, I don’t want to keep you,” he said. “But please call me if you need anything at all.”

“I will.”

I hung up the phone wondering what it all meant — John, Sarah Palin, the reasons why these flickers of the real world might be reaching out to me, and the reasons why I just wanted to shut them out. I turned off the TV before I found the Weather Channel, confident John’s radar observation was accurate. I felt a little despondent. I took a sleeping pill and slipped into oblivion, only a single notch deeper than my usual disorientation.

On July Fourth, I woke up to brilliant sunlight and crisp air. It tasted like morning in the early fall, with hints of seltzer and wood smoke. I stocked up at the last gas station in town and checked my maps for the phone number to the Pie-O-Neer café in Pie Town. I had already accepted that clinging to the hope it would be open on a national holiday was a futile at best, but I had heard entire legends formed around the pie in Pie Town. That one stop was likely my only shot at human interaction in the next 300 miles, so even a miniscule chance was certainly worth a try. Plus, I would need to restock my drinking water somehow.

At 8:30 a.m., an answering machine informed me that the café was open Wednesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. They said nothing about July Fourth specifically, but at least there was a chance they were open that day. Still, even my best-case scenarios made reaching it seem impossible. Pie Town was eighty miles away. Even if there was no mud on the road, an impossible-sounding prospect in itself, my chances of pedaling that far in just over seven hours were unlikely at best. The answering machine beeped, and without planning to, I suddenly launched into a pleading message:

“Hi, my name is Jill. I’m traveling through town on a bicycle with the Tour Divide. Perhaps you’ve seen other bikers come through. Anyway, I’m calling from Grants. It’s 8:30 a.m. Saturday. I’m going to try to make it there by four, but it’s eighty miles and with the mud, well, it’s not very likely I’ll be there before you close. I was wondering if you could leave out some kind of lunch, maybe a sandwich or something, and a piece of pie, and a gallon of water, along with a check, and I’ll leave cash. I don’t even care what it is. I pretty much just need calories at this point, calories and water. Please. I’m good for it. I have a lot of cash. My name is Jill Homer.”

I set out with determination to make the 4 p.m. deadline, come what may. As the derelict highway buildings of Grants faded behind me, a bubble of emotion expanded inside my gut. I felt a strong mixture of gratitude and love, as well as loneliness, fear, and despair. I couldn’t discern where this flood of feelings was coming from. My situation was positive, even pleasant. I was rested, well-fed, and riding on pavement within sight of a town full of people. Despite these comforts, tears started to trickle down my cheeks, which erupted into streams, which erupted into open sobbing, complete with flowing snot and phlegmy gulps of air.

Whenever endurance cyclists embark on long races, people often ask us afterward about the specific moment when we first realized we could actually finish what we had set out to do. I always dismissed this question as unanswerable and misleading. To some, I would say that I knew I would eventually finish the Tour Divide when I was all the way back in Montana. To others, I admitted that I wasn’t even sure when I made the final right turn sixty-five miles from the border. But if I am truly honest with myself, those minutes I spent sobbing on my way out of Grants stand apart as a defining moment of clarity.

As my tears began to slow and my gasps became softer, I pleaded an open prayer to entities I also felt were indefinable — to my inner strength, to my resolve, the desert, the open road and the powers that be. “Please be with me. Please stay with me. Please help me get through this.” Something about leaving Grants told me that, barring breakdown or disaster, I was going to finish the Tour Divide. Since I had no control over breakdown or disaster, I pleaded for help from anything that might.

The powers that be nodded benevolently and swept me along the smooth corridor of Highway 117. The rugged but sheer cliffs of El Malpais National Monument cast the pavement in cool shadow. After thirty-eight miles, the route joined the washboard ruts of a wide county road. The jittery corduroy soon faded into smooth but soft clay. The area had indeed been pummeled by thunderstorms the night before; blood-colored puddles glistened in the road’s many dips and potholes. As I rode, my wheels kicked up large clumps of red mud. Still, beneath the late morning sunlight, the mud had hardened just enough to roll into balls and fling away rather than stick to my bike.

“Think light, be light,” I chanted, as though sheer force of will could reduce my weight and keep my wheels floating over the jelly-like layers of mud. Atop a paper-thin veneer of solidified clay, I pedaled apprehensively but quickly, coming close to sinking into the soft mud that undulated beneath my tires, but never quite breaking through the dry layer. I smiled at the knowledge that if I had passed through the same area just a few hours earlier, I would have been mired in wet sludge. Every once in a while, the universe rewards late risers.

Just after 2 p.m., after covering nearly eighty miles in five and a half hours, I strode triumphantly into the open doors of the Pie-O-Neer café. The single-room restaurant was set up modestly with modern tables and old Western art. A guitarist and bassist strummed acoustic country ballads as couples chatted softly over heaping plates of pie. A woman wearing a ruffled apron rushed out from behind the counter and threw her arms around me in an enthusiastic hug. “You made it!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe you made it!”

“I made it,” I said, smiling widely.

The guitarist had just finished a cover of Johnny Cash’s “Long Black Veil.” “So you’re Jill?” he asked. I nodded. “We did not think you’d make it here until late tonight,” he continued. “It rained all through the night last night, just poured. I knew that road was gone. I sometimes take my horses out there and I know how bad it can get. Even they can’t get through the mud sometimes. We thought you’d be stuck in it.”

“I thought so, too,” I said. “But it had hardened up in the sun. I got really lucky.”

“Well, anyway, congratulations on getting here from Grants in just a few hours. That’s some incredible riding.”

The woman in the apron nodded. “You should have seen Matt Lee when he came through. It was late but I let him in the door. It had been raining hard and Matt was covered in mud. He had this crazy look in his eyes and he just fell in the door mumbling, ‘I need food.’ I said, ‘I know you need food but you’re not coming in here until you clean off that mud.’ I practically had to push him back out the door. I thought, ‘This can’t be healthy.’”

I laughed. I was about to launch into my “Here in mid-pack, we have more fun” speech when she grabbed my shoulders and rushed me to a nearby table. “But you must be starving, riding all the way from Grants,” she said. “What do you want to eat?”

“Um, what do you have?” I asked.

“Well, we don’t have much. The menu’s over there on the wall.”

Before I even looked at it, I asked, “Do you have salad?”

“Well, I don’t have salad, but I have some spinach and tomatoes and other veggies in the fridge. Tell you what, I’ll make you one.”

“That would be awesome,” I said.

“And our special today is spinach quesadilla with fresh salsa. We also have a tomato vegetable soup.”

“Those sound amazing, too,” I interrupted. “I’ll have them both. And salad.”

“Do you want something to drink?”

“Um …” I wavered. I had already ordered three meals.

“Come on, the other Tour Divide guys were just knocking pops back faster than I could replenish them. What do you want?”

“Do you have Pepsi?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said.

“And you can’t leave here without trying a slice of pie,” she said.

“Of course I can’t.” I took a lingering look at the back wall, lined from end to end with towering desserts. “Um, I’ll try the coconut cream,” I finally said.

“Good choice,” she said. “That one won an award last month from a national magazine.”

As I waited for my mountain of fresh food, the guitarist asked me if I had any requests. I couldn’t think of many country tunes I even knew, so I requested more Johnny Cash —“Ring of Fire.” I imagined riding south toward the desert regions of the Great Divide as he sang, “I fell in to a burning ring of fire; I fell down, down, down and the flames went higher.”

As promised, the woman served up cans of Pepsi faster than I could knock them back, and brought me plate after plate of food, hot and fresh and brimming with all the real nutrition I had scarcely known in three weeks of a diet heavy on junk food from gas stations and greasy spoon diners. The woman asked me how my lunch was. “You have no idea how replenishing it is to eat healthy for a change,” I said. “If all Americans could feel this way after eating a spinach salad, McDonalds would go out of business. Which would be awesome, because then people like me could actually find healthy food to eat on the Great Divide.”

The woman laughed. She asked me about the trail prior to Grants and I told her about how surprisingly remote New Mexico had been. A man wearing a trucker’s cap turned from the next table over and launched into a stern warning about the dangers of New Mexico’s backcountry. “There are cougars out there that hunt people,” he said ominously. “I hope you have protection.”

I pointed to the can of bear spray I had been carrying since Canada and had never even come close to discharging, unless I counted the time I pointed it at the vicious dogs of Vallecitos. “I’m from Alaska,” I said. “So I’m well versed in the defense against predators thing.” I wanted to tell him that I was far more afraid of mud and lightning, of fatigue and bad judgment, of loneliness and fear itself, but it seemed pointless to argue about the most pressing dangers of the Divide.

I spent much longer in Pie Town than I had intended, basking in the warmth of small-town friendliness and scraping up the last remnants of whipped cream from my pie plate. I was so full that I had difficulty breathing normally, but couldn’t remember ever feeling more satisfied. I sat back in my wooden chair and listened to the country band croon about an unhurried life I had all but forgotten.

In the late afternoon, the woman in the apron and guys in the band walked outside to see me off. “It’s just about closing time and we’re all headed to the lake,” she said. “But you have a great ride, and don’t hesitate to come back when you’re through these parts again. Happy Independence Day!”

“You too,” I said, shaking all of their hands. “Thanks for making the best lunch in the entire span of the Rocky Mountains.”

I left Pie Town at 4 p.m. into a brand new day. I felt like I was just waking up from a restful sleep, even though I had already pedaled eighty miles that day. “Someday,” I thought, “I’m going to be a veteran of this race and people will ask me the secret to success. I’m going to answer, ‘human kindness.’”

The roller-coaster terrain crossed the Continental Divide twice. I pedaled past ranches until the valley narrowed into a canyon. Large, triangle-shaped mountains loomed over me once again. The remote road intersected with an abandoned town site, a centuries-old Spanish mission. I got off my bike and explored the eerie remnants of a slab and mortar church, peering into the cracks of boarded windows and gazing up at a hollow bell tower.

Just beyond the town site, I entered Gila National Forest. My maps informed me: “Camping OK next 14 miles.” I pedaled beneath gnarled and grand juniper trees, rose back into the ponderosa forest, and crested the Continental Divide once again at a spectacular overlook of the San Agustin Plains below. I could see thunderstorms building over the distant mountains beyond the valley. It was still early in the evening. “If I don’t stop near here,” I thought, “I’ll have to pedal all the way through that valley before I’m back in a spot where I can camp.” But I was feeling too incredible to stop. I launched into a gleeful descent toward the darkening sky.

The Forest Service road bisected a remote state highway and crossed onto a country road sparsely lined with private ranches. An occasional ranch house broke the monotony of the sagebrush plains, but for the most part I was wholly alone in sweepingly open space. The wind blew briskly at my side, whipping around and changing directions intermittently as booms of thunder clattered across the desert.

The thunderstorm I had seen hanging over the horizon began to close in. The bulk of the storm seemed to be moving the same direction I was, but I was approaching the dark clouds faster than they were streaming away. I glanced over my shoulder and noticed another storm approaching from behind. Sheets of rain hung like curtains beneath the black ceiling, and frequent flashes of lightning tore through the darkness.

A primal sense of entrapment gripped my core. My heart pounded. I was pedaling in a tiny window of calm, chasing one violent storm even as another chased me. If I pedaled too quickly, I would catch the first storm. If I pedaled too slowly, I would be caught by the second storm. I shivered at the prospect of both scenarios, and vowed to do everything in my cycling power to hover in the hurricane’s eye.

Shortly after I made this decision, I heard a sickeningly loud zipping sound shoot out from the back of my bike. The rear tire became more and more bouncy and sluggish until I had no choice but to stop and deal with the flat. I had been using “Slime” inner tubes, which were filled with green sealant intended to block any punctures in the tube. They had worked beautifully for the duration of the Divide, and I had yet to spring a leak that wasn’t quickly blocked, requiring only a few refresher hits from my air pump. This was the first time a tire had gone completely flat. It was my rear tire, which required the loosening of the brake caliper before I could remove the wheel. A rear flat usually took me at least ten minutes to change when I was fresh, and as many as twenty when I was hurried and frustrated. I knew I did not have twenty minutes to spare before I would be caught directly beneath a barrage of lightning and rain. I did not even have five minutes.

“Be brave,” I chanted through gulping breaths as I hopped off the bike. “Be strong.”

A thick streak of green slime coated the down tube of the frame. I was sure all the sealant had leaked out and there was nothing left to fill the hole. But it was possible that I had just sprung a larger leak that took a while to clog. It seemed worth a try to pump up the tire rather than change the tube right away. The extra time it would take if it didn’t work wasn’t going to save me from the storm either way, but if that’s all it took, there was still a chance I could outrun the air strike.

I breathed in and out with every stroke of the air pump, continuing to chant, “Be brave. Be strong.” As I pumped, the sun slipped beneath the nearest mountains. The sky, already under siege, burst open in an explosion of crimson and gold light. The sudden blast of color reflected off the dark clouds in a contrast so bright that the entire sky shimmered. Where sunset’s saturated light met the sheets of rain, broad rainbows swept over the desert. I counted five rainbows at one point, arched in wide spans that framed the phosphorescent clouds. And beneath the rainbow stage, steaks of lightning performed a violent ballet.

The scene did nothing to reduce the panic gurgling in my gut. But from where I sat in my shrinking window of calm, trying my best to breathe to the rhythm of my air pump, I knew that I was witnessing a moment of powerful beauty — beauty that was more even powerful than fear. I briefly closed my eyes and tried to absorb the gaping awe, primal wonder and sheer terror that nature was unleashing before me. I felt like I was clinging to the precipice between heaven and hell, and if I happened to fall, no matter which direction I went, I would be wholly absorbed forever.

I snapped my eyes back open and injected a few last shots of air into the tire. It was still fairly soft, about eighteen pounds per square inch. But I didn’t hear any more of that terrible zipping sound, and I thought there was a decent change that it would hold the air. I hopped back on the saddle and spun wildly, trying to regain the distance I had lost on the second storm. I pedaled right into the heart of the largest, brightest rainbow and its undulating electric dangers. I was still fully aware that I was the tallest object for miles, on an open plain without even a sagebrush bush large enough to huddle behind. I briefly thought about veering off on a ranch road and sprinting one or two miles to the nearest structure in search of shelter, but I fought the urge. “Be brave,” I chanted. “Be strong.”

The spectacular light of the sunset lingered much longer than I even thought possible, as though it, like me, was afraid to fade into the darker regions of eternity. It didn’t take long to catch the aftermath of the first storm. The road was coated in wet mud and two-inch-deep puddles, but the sky overhead remained mercifully dry. The second storm slowed its advance and started to veer toward the east. As it changed its course, the front storm followed. My own route turned west and began climbing back into the mountains. When I reached the mouth of a canyon, I stopped one last time to look out over the plains of San Agustin. Sunset’s crimson and orange flames were almost snuffed out, except for thin, blood-colored streaks that still bordered the horizon. Lightning continued to pierce the purple twilight, followed closely by booms of thunder. As I watched the storm march east, I noticed tiny blue flashes of light erupting from the northern horizon. They confused me at first — they were too low to be lightning, but too large and sporadic to be light from a ranch house. I squinted and realized they were fireworks, exploding over a ranch at least twenty miles distant.

“Oh yeah,” I said out loud. “It’s the Fourth of July.” I paused to focus on the fireworks as tiny streams of blue light sparkled and then faded, over and over. All the while, flashes of lightning and booms of thunder nearly overwhelmed the tiny celebration.

“Why don’t they just look up and realize that the most spectacular show is going on in nature?” I wondered. Their efforts seemed so small and pathetic in a world that was so vast and so powerful. Humans were nothing out here, nothing at all.

Darkness encompassed me with the rising canyon. For a while I could still hear the thunder from a growing distance, and then only the wind and stillness. Rainwater coated the road and the air was moist and cool. The last tailing clouds from the storms were starting to break apart. A nearly full moon rose overhead, casting a ghostly glow on an assemblage of sandstone hoodoos that bent like petrified zombies in front of craggy cliffs. I rolled out my sleeping bag on the bare dirt beneath a cluster of ponderosa pines. Moonlight filtered through a canopy of needles. With what felt like a paltry sprinkling of effort and a heavy dose of grace, I had knocked out 140 miles in the fourteen hours behind me, with only 250 more to go.

“Thank you,” I said in continuation of my morning prayer. “That was a good day.”