Worms to Catch Read online

  He said, ‘There’s a house over the road and we saw you looking out here. Come and kip in our garden shed.’ They were a Native American family, Indians as they used to be called – a lad, his mum and dad – and they were more lovely people that I met on the ride. They brought me a cup of coffee and an apple. They hadn’t heard of the Tour Divide, so I sat with the son, who’d have been 20 or so, and showed him the guidebook.

  I asked him what town I was near, and he explained that we were on the reservation. I’m not sure if they were Apaches or Navajos or what. They didn’t have a clue who I was, so they weren’t being nice to me because I’d been on the telly. They were just nice people. I loved being anonymous on tour in the middle of a massive foreign country.

  I left their shed at four in the morning and I was in Grants, where the Tour Divide trail crossed Interstate 40, which is part of the old Route 66, at eight. There was a big truck stop so I treated myself to my first shower since leaving the hotel in Banff. I was about 2,400 miles in and on my seventeenth day of riding, so I didn’t know if I needed a shower or not, but I was going to have one anyway and it was mega. It cost me $11, though. I thought it was dear, but they gave me soap and the use of a towel. You had to book your shower, so while I was waiting I went in the diner and ordered summat called Chester’s chicken. I was tucking into it when someone came to find me and told me my shower was ready. I took my chicken with me and sat naked on a bench in the shower, eating it. I caught the reflection of myself in a mirror and couldn’t believe how much weight I’d lost. I was sat there, filling my face and thinking, Who’s that? I looked like I’d escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp. If I hadn’t have been biking I’d have been a fat bugger, the amount of rubbish I was eating.

  I had been thinking about the infections I was risking and was keen to wash my backside and feet. I didn’t want anything like an infected sore to stop me, because I wasn’t having any problems with fitness or motivation. I finished my fried chicken, stepped under the shower and watched as the water ran brown with dust, flies and 16 days of whatever else. I could hardly believe what was coming out of my hair, and it had been cut short with clippers just before I left Canada.

  I washed my cycling shorts and socks in the sink, but I didn’t wash my T-shirt and I don’t know why. Perhaps I subconsciously wanted to experiment with how it would smell after being worn for 20 days of nearly 3,000 miles of cycling. The answer wasn’t unexpected: ripe.

  Back on the bike, this time on Route 66 for a while then on a trail to Pie Town. And that was a slog. After 130-odd miles I rolled into Pie Town, arriving just before the shops closed. What a place. There was a pie shop, of course, but not selling meat pies, only fruit pies. They’re missing a trick. I ate two apple pies when I was there – family sized, not Mr Kipling’s – and took a cherry one with me. I also had a cheeseburger and a quesadilla.

  Also in Pie Town is the Toaster House, a hostel for riders and hikers doing the Tour Divide or the TransAmerica Trail. You can’t miss it, with its knackered toasters fixed to the fence all around it and loads of old shoes nailed to the outside wall. Inside, there are maps pinned up and a load of stuff in the fridge. This hostel was operated on an honesty-box system, so you paid for what you took. There were beds and seats – it was brilliant. I wasn’t the only one staying there that night. There was a hiker, heading northbound, who I had met in the pie shop. He walked bits of the Continental Divide every year. He asked if I was staying there, and that sort of made my mind up that I would. It was six in the afternoon by the time I’d finished filling my face, so my plan was to get going at midnight and have a right good push through the Gila Wilderness, a section that’s described as the most brutal, because of the heat. It’s a desert. It’s not like the Sahara, because there are loads of trees, but it’s as dry as a bone. People I spoke to said, ‘Have you been through the Gila yet?’ They pronounced it ‘Hee-la’, and it made me think it would heal me, like they say in Lincolnshire when something you’re about to do is dead hard. ‘That’ll heal ya.’ It’s like bad meaning good. Even Mike Hall had said, ‘Are you ready for the Gila, mate?’ And that was, what, a week ago? Setting off when I planned to meant that I’d be doing the lion’s share of it in the cool of the night.

  I wanted to get the brunt of the climbing done before four or five in the afternoon, when the heat was worst. People talk about the midday sun, but I always thought the late afternoon felt the hottest. The bloke who was staying in the Toaster House told me where I could scoop up water, but it needed purifying.

  I gave my bike a check over, had a yarn with the hiker for an hour and set the alarm on my phone for 11 before getting my head down. I hadn’t had any bother sleeping since leaving the hotel in Banff, but I couldn’t settle on this night because I knew I had such a big day ahead of me. The climbs weren’t mental – 9,000 feet or thereabouts – and Pie Town is nearly one and a half miles above sea level, so, again, I wouldn’t be climbing from the sea-level base of a mountain to the top, but it was the continuous slog of hairpin after hairpin, at an altitude I wasn’t used to before I left England. I work in Grimsby. You can’t get more sea level than that unless you grow gills.

  I woke up at ten, ahead of the alarm, and forced myself back to sleep for the extra hour, then I woke up again by myself, checked my watch and it was three in the morning. I’d set my alarm for eleven in the morning by mistake. It was a bit of a bastard, but you can’t let these things knock you off course. I was already thinking, Oh, it’s alright. I had some porridge at the Toaster House, got my gear on and set off.

  My plan was out of the window, but you have to stay positive. It’s the negative thoughts that will stop someone from finishing a ride like this. The negative thoughts; the broken bones; being attacked by a grizzly bear; having your calf muscle chewed off by a stray dog; riding off the side of a cliff; sunstroke; dehydration; hypothermia … but mainly the negative thoughts.

  Then, three hours in, my gears stopped working. I’d done a load of research about what gears to run and decided on a Rohloff Speedhub. It’s different to any of the gear systems I have on my other bikes. Most mountain bikes have front and rear derailleurs, with a mechanism moving the chain from sprocket to sprocket. The Rohloff hub I had fitted has all the gears within the rear hub, like an old-fashioned Sturmey-Archer set-up. And the Rohloff has 14 gears. I liked the idea of it being enclosed so it wouldn’t get damaged by rocks or worn by all the dust and grit and shit. In the end it wasn’t the hub that had stopped working, but the controls to change gear. I squatted at the side of the trail, with the few essential tools I had with me, trying to fix it, but it wasn’t having it, so I had to single-speed it. By that I mean I had to choose one gear that would let me climb, but wasn’t so low that it was useless on the flatter sections where I’d have to pedal like hell to get anywhere. I knew that some lads did the whole Tour Divide route single-speed, and in very quick times, so I was still staying positive. I set off again.

  The landscape was rockier with nowhere near as many trees now, but I was making good time, averaging 15 mph, until the climbing started. The temperature was rising into the early 40s, which meant I had to push it up some of the climbs.

  This was where I felt I needed the most mental strength of the whole ride. Although the route is designed to follow the Continental Divide, and is never more than 50 miles from it, the Continental Divide is like the equator – it’s geographical, not manmade, and the trail can’t follow it exactly for long. But for eight miles that day, I was on the line of the Continental Divide itself.

  I was having more bother with the gears when a fit bird in a 4x4 pulled up next to me. ‘Are you alright?’ she said. I told her I was, and I asked where Pinos Altos was. I knew that was the peak of the climbing and the highest point of the rest of the route. I thought, or hoped, it would be about two miles, but she said, ‘Ten miles, maybe more.’ It was nine at night, the light had just gone, and I thought, Oh, fuck.

  She said, ‘Just chuck your bike in th
e back, no bother.’ But I wasn’t even tempted. Earlier in the day, when I was pushing up the mountain on tiptoes because it was so steep, I was thinking, If some bugger comes past now I’m getting a lift. But as soon as someone handed it on a plate, I thought, Nah, you’re alright, love. There was no way I was getting to within a day of the end and caving in, however hard it got. No way.

  By the time I got to Silver City at just gone 11, I was starving. I hadn’t eaten properly since Pie Town, and there are 185 miles of desert and mountains between those two towns. All I had set off with was one pie in my bag. I found a 24-hour McDonald’s and started filling my face: chocolate milkshakes, two of them, apple pies, burgers. I was back and forth to the counter, ordering more every time I finished what was in front of me, and no one gave me a second look. It’s America, it must be what they do. I finally finished filling my face at one in the morning. I didn’t get sick of eating on this trip, because it had to be done. There wasn’t much else happening apart from pedalling, so I would look forward to eating, and eating till I could eat no more was alright. I don’t think I could face another Subway now, though.

  I knew there was only 150 miles to Antelope Wells and the end, and that there was not much climbing left. When I’d been planning the ride, back in England, I thought I’d push to the end from Silver City, without stopping. Now I was here, and because I’d had such a hard time getting up to Pinos Altos, riding single-speed, I decided I’d have a few hours’ sleep.

  I slept in the back of McDonald’s car park without a care in the world. I’ve seen rats as big as Jack Russells around the bins in McDonald’s car parks in Britain, all of them enjoying the cold and greasy all-you-can-eat rodent buffet, but there could have been a herd of them filling their furry faces inches from my head and I wouldn’t have noticed. Seventeen nights spent sleeping in different degrees of rough had toughened me up, no doubt about it.

  My temporary home for the night, and I mean Silver City, not the McDonald’s car park, got its name from nearby mines for the precious metal. The town’s claim to fame is being the childhood home of Billy the Kid, the outlaw, gunfighter and murderer. It was the first place he was jailed and the first place he escaped from jail.

  I got up at four and walked back into the McDonald’s for more food. While I was waiting, a fella with his mate got talking, worked out I was British and said, ‘You heard about Brexit?’ This was the early hours of Saturday morning, so we were already out, but I explained that I didn’t know anything about it. I filled my face again: three pancakes, sausage, apple pie, Egg McMuffin, two coffees, and took more for the journey as I set off for the finish in Antelope Wells.

  The first 18 miles were on tarmac, State Highway 90, and easy going. At the end of that stretch there was a cool shop where the route turned off to follow a dirt trail again. I stopped for two ice creams and more coffee, sticking to the rule of eating and drinking when I got the chance. I had started thinking I had finished. I was still 100 miles away, but I knew I’d done it, though there was still a sting in the tail.

  The countryside was more or less flat, but as hot as an oven. I was into the Chihuahuan Desert, which stretches into both America and Mexico. For some reason, with about 20 miles to go, I started having my first negative thoughts of the whole ride, wondering if I could keep going. But I didn’t let them bother me for too long – I just kept spinning the pedals. There was a really bad headwind that wasn’t helping. After hundreds of miles of rough trails my fingers went numb from the vibration, and months later I was still struggling with grip.

  The miles clicked down, like they had for the past 18 days, and then I saw it: Antelope Wells, and the Mexican border with its long fence. There aren’t any antelopes or wells there and, according to the internet, it’s the least-used border crossing of the 43 that dot the 1,989-mile border between the two countries. It’s remote, alright. There were some guards at the post, and that was it. They didn’t bother coming out of their border post. And there’s nothing to say you’ve survived the Tour Divide. No banner to ride under or someone with a flag. Nothing, exactly like Banff. If you’re doing a ride like this it’s enough to know yourself that you’ve finished and you did it.

  Sharon was there to meet me. I hadn’t spoken to her since I left Heathrow, three weeks ago, and she’d had to organise a load of stuff to get there, flying into Phoenix, Arizona, getting a rental car and finding Antelope Wells. I already had a plan B if she wasn’t there to meet me, but she was. She’d been there, in the baking heat, for six hours with a Subway sandwich waiting for me. I was impressed. Plan B, if she hadn’t been there, was getting back on the bike to Deming, 80-odd miles away, where I would hopefully get on a bus or something to Phoenix airport.

  When I finally stopped pedalling I started to cry. I’ve never done a race that’s made me cry. I don’t know if it was the relief of doing what I set out to do or what. It was the strangest feeling. No snivelling or shoulders shaking or anything, just water coming out of my face. Where the heck was that coming from?

  I had a beard, for the first time ever, because I hadn’t shaved for three weeks. I was a bit sunburnt, but not too bad. Sharon took a couple of photos of me by the Antelope Wells sign. Another woman was waiting for her fella, who was a couple of hours behind me, so we had her take a photo of me and Sharon together. There wasn’t any big celebration. It just ended. One minute I was cycling across America, the next I wasn’t.

  I had cycled 2,745 miles, and probably a bit more, in 18 days and 6 hours, quicker than the time that established the Tour Divide record, set by Matthew Lee in 2008, of 19 days and 12 hours. I averaged 149 miles per day, every day. I’d soon learn that Mike Hall, the Yorkshireman living in Cardiff who I met on the route, set a new record of 13 days, 22 hours and 51 minutes. Impressive.

  I took the wheels off the bike and stuck it in the back of the rental car, and I climbed in the passenger seat. Sharon never complains if I haven’t had a wash for a while, but she said I stunk the car out that day.

  We headed towards Phoenix and stopped in a cheap motel, where I had my second shower of the trip. Sharon brought my trainers, shorts, kecks and clean T-shirts, so I could finally get out of the clothes I’d been wearing for going on three weeks.

  Even though I’d been sleeping rough and eating shit, I wasn’t bothered about finding a luxury hotel or treating myself. We just went to a trucker’s caff, like a Little Chef, which was attached to the motel. I think Sharon wouldn’t have minded a few days’ holiday in America, but I was ready to get home. I sent Spellman an email to see if he could sort us an earlier flight. He got on the case and arranged one for the next day. I was in bed for nine and slept till eight the next morning. Nothing radical.

  I wasn’t sure before if the whole Tour Divide experience was going to break me, but it hadn’t. It made me realise that if I put my mind to it I can do anything. Instead of wondering how, or even if, it had changed me, I had the same feeling as I did driving home after the wall of death. Both these things had taken so much time and effort to build up to. With the wall of death it was building the bike, learning how to ride the wall, then going as fast as humanly possible on it live on TV. For the Tour Divide it was riding further and for longer than I ever had, relying on myself and sleeping rough. At the end of both of them I wasn’t looking forward to relaxing and taking it easy – I was itching for the next big challenge. I just wasn’t sure what it should be.

  CHAPTER 13

  Racing hasn’t retired me, I’ve retired from racing

  BEFORE LEAVING FOR the Tour Divide I told Andy Spellman and North One that I wasn’t making decisions about any future TV work until I got back. If I wasn’t halfway through filming a programme, like I was with some of the Speed series, everything was put off, because I didn’t know if it was going to change my attitude towards the job. The telly stuff I do seems to go down well and folk want me to make more of it, but I still turn a lot down. I do enjoy making the programmes now. I never watch them – I doubt many peopl
e who are on telly watch themselves, but perhaps they do. I’d love it if I could just make the programmes and they were never shown, because I enjoy the process, the people I work with and the folk I meet in the course of it all. The main thing I have a bit of a problem with is the attention it brings, but living where I do and how I do, not going out much and not living in a big city, it isn’t too bad. I came back from America thinking that I’ve got the balance about right. Trucks, telly, motorbikes, biking, doing a few barrow jobs for mates, when they need help, like skimming a car cylinder head or porting bike cylinder heads. One thing it really made me realise was that I should have given up racing motorbikes earlier than I did. I’m writing this a few days after getting back, and I’m not sure how much the experience has changed me, but that was the big thing, the light bulb going on.

  Riding the Tour Divide couldn’t have been further away from the Isle of Man TT, both physically and mentally. It reminded me that most people are genuinely nice, when I was beginning to think that a lot of them were rude. I was getting the feeling that people had seen me on telly and only wanted to talk to me to tell someone else that they’d talked to me, and not because they were into what I was into or they had something interesting to say. America made me realise that it’s not all like that. The people I met on the Tour Divide didn’t know I’d been on telly a few times – they just wanted to help the person they’d just met, even though I smelt like a dead badger. They’d open their shop early, invite me in for a hot drink or fire the grill back up, even though they were just heading home, because they’re nice people and they want to help other people. I’ve got manners and I ask for things politely – I think I’m a nice person, and I like it when other people are.