Late Night Babble

When touring with bert you must quickly get used to the sight of his skinny ass disappearing towards the horizon, as he rides as if he is in a race but just happens to have bags on the back, or alternately as if he has an urgent deadline to meet.

His chosen technique seems to be:

1. Rest behind me for a while making the most of the slipstream, babble on at me in a low voice about how things are 'mad' or 'insane' or 'sick' whilst looking in another direction so I can't hear what he's saying
2. Accelerate smoothly and strongly past me until about half a mile ahead, then stabilise at that distance without looking back once
3. After about half an hour drop back for a rest
4. Repeat

This is actually fine with me (apart from never being able to hear what he's saying) as I don't like riding in team mode, i like to cruise on kinda solo, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind. Sticking on someone's wheel, or taking turns in a road train is not for me. I like it when the rider group strings out over a mile or so, different little groups forming and splitting, i like to move between them all.

When bert is out front it looks fantastic seeing the little bike against the immensity of the landscape, it really brings it home what I'm doing, somehow it gives it context. Sometimes its fun to ride together, springing surprise sprints on each other, or trying to go the fastest downhill without pedalling, or sneakily sabotaging each other by forcing the other towards a puddle or horrible bit of road, or quietly grabbing onto a bit of bike for a free tow. Sometimes its cool to ride apart, content in our own thoughts. Sometimes we ride alongside, chatting and giggling (for some reason saying 'fuck yeah!... FUCK YEAH!' acts like a natural drug on me, it fires me up whilst making me laugh my head off). It's all good. When something goes a bit wrong, like getting a flat, it's great to have backup and a second pair of hands.

Yesterday he decided to stay in front of me for a while to take the wind for the last few miles into town. He would kindly get in front, then his eyes would go red and he would stick his head down and accelerate at a pace I could not match, after 10 minutes look back to double check that i was still there, appear surprised, drop back until just in front of me, put his head down and pull away again in race mode, repeat every 10 minutes.

The boy has oil in his blood I am sure, he is an incredibly fast and strong cyclist. Luckily my ego can take being wiped all over like this even after nearly 3000 miles.

For some reason the idea of ceremonial pissing, mostly by bert, has developed, and every significant sign is marked as our territory, particularly continental divide crossings. Today he took one by the side of the road, immediately a family car appeared round the corner, the occupants providing a mixture of grins, shock and cheery waves.

We are out of the high altitude area for a while now and the difference is tangible, breathing whilst climbing hills actually feels like it's doing something and we are both sleeping better.
Altitude has become extremely important for planning purposes, just like weather, you have to plan in slower paces, more water consumption, colder temperatures, chances of snow. It's really begun to feel like an expedition lately.

Montana is another beautiful state, each mile of this journey seems to become more impressive than the last. Riding along yesterday was powerful, we passed canyons, bluffs, buttes, with mountains streaming past either side, the geology clear as we followed the valley. The landscape here seems raw and on a huge scale. Sometimes wildlife will interact with us, a buzzard hovering above staring at us, deer bouncing along the roadside as if racing us, horses charging out of the hills and galloping alongside, herds of bison grazing the verge fixing us with a terrifying glare amplified by the large and vicious horns.

Bison turn out to be far more dangerous than bear, many more people are killed each year by bison, and it is unsettling to have to sneak past them on the hard shoulder. Bert spoke about the police warning us about a wild bull bison on the road, we pushed hard through that section, the roadside lined with rangers and police standing on their trucks, the bull hidden somewhere in a section of high scrub bushes. We were constantly scanning for it, waiting for it to burst onto the road and come for us as we struggled up the hill. Luckily we seemed no threat to it, or perhaps the rifles on the trucks put it off. A road crew a couple of miles later shouted out 'watch out for bison!' whilst giving us smiles and thumbs-up.

The roads are so empty out here it's unreal, after the road crew we rode for miles along a lake and into a canyon, the road was ours, and we practiced trying to ram each other off the road like bison. The valley was blocked and flooded by a landslip a few years ago and it still looks raw, half the mountain is like a raw scar, and the thought of the poor campers that were buried under it is sobering.

Life in the UK really is tame compared to out here. Everything is tougher, you have proper weather, dangerous animals, earthquakes, volcanoes, isolation, everything. I gotta admit I love it. No wonder everyone drives SUVs out here, you'd be crazy not to. Mind you, we overheard a guy yesterday saying how his car gets great gas mileage of 20mpg.

This morning on the way out of Ennis we climbed a hill steeper than anything in the Rockies, passing over them into a long valley that looked amzingly like high parts of wales, and for the first time this trip we experience a typical british day of drizzle, grey sky and light winds. Pretty cool really, and the dark skies make the empty landscape somehow even more impressive.

The rockies are quite suprising, the plains they rise from are so high that the rockies are more like a range of high rolling hills, the roads are at such gentle inclines of about 6% that they are not really a challenge in themselves, it's more the weather and altitude that make them a real barrier.

Many of the tiny villages (although they always call them cities) and towns we ride through have barely changed since the 1800's, just substitute horses for cars, slightly update the building techniques and it's pretty much like all the cowboy movies. A wide main street, a saloon, somewhere to stay and a gas station. Three Forks, where we are today, is the sort of quiet small town off the main road where you can walk down the middle of the main street without worrying about cars, and the kids hanging out say hello politely as you walk past.

Well, bertie is dancing in his sleep with his ipod on, bless him. I'm listening to kings of leon on headphones after a stint of sitting on the porch in a rocking chair. All is good. Only a couple of weeks to the pacific, I have a strong urge just to keep going to alaska but the budget is saying 'no chance'.