The thermometer had sunk into low teens and the intrepid trio of travelers had courageously slept indoors at a hotel in West Yellowstone braving the comforts of warmth, friends and family. From the outside of the hotel room, it looked quite normal, indistinguishable from the other 87. Theoretically, if you looked inside you would see a hotel room resembling the rest. But, an aerial view inside the room would expose an abstract painting splattered with an explosion of geometrical shapes from the neon dry bags and Thermarests which disrupted the conservative array of pre-installed furniture and 7 adults having to play hop scotch with the few square inches of unoccupied space to get across the room. With the wave of a magician’s handkerchief, the 7 adults spilled out of the impossibly small hotel room and made all the food at the continental breakfast disappear. This would not be as remarkable if the buffet did not include omelettes that were a chemically crafted combination of neon Velveeta and Egg-Beaters.

Just as promised, the Yellowstone National Park had been closed to the vehicular masses, and reserved for our own enjoyment and safe passage. Days before, I asked a Park Ranger if we could still ride our bikes through the park after it closed. “Let me put it to you this way, a snow plow slid off the road,” Was her cold response. It seemed quite obvious she was ready to get all the tourists out of the park so she could be on vacation.

“Sweet! So you’re saying we can,” I thought enthusiastically as she walked off.

Old Faithful erupted, exactly as described by the hotel clerk, except for one detail. We did not have to share the view with 4,000 other eager tourists. I could swerve blindly from one side of the road to another, a personal over-sized bike path through some of the most beautiful scenery a mortal could imagine. Buffalo somehow managed to appear out of nowhere while I got lost in my pedal strokes. I suddenly found my way, startled by the appearance of the car-sized creature a mere 5 feet away from me, silently chewing on some grass.

Towards the end of our day we had climbed into the snowy elevations and crossed the Continental Divide. We dropped down into West Thumb to find a camping spot before it got too cold. Wind and snow inspired us to seek more comfortable accommodations in a nearby building.

We explored the psychedelically painted pools of scorching effervescent liquid. Steam rose from the pools with an ethereal quality, dancing with the chilling gusts of cold air and fading towards the heavens. Streams of super-heated geyser water trickled towards the shore, singeing the delicate waves on contact. I had found myself on another planet with no signs of human life for hundreds of miles and explored the area with the care and interest of an astronaut. We were treated to an explosive sunset that blasted its way over the mountains, foreshadowing the powerful storm that would follow.

Weather patterns brewed up a fierce climate while we relaxed with the comfort of our indoor accommodations. Cued by our departure, the storm was released the moment we stepped onto our bikes. A dualistic presence of ice and rain ensured that we would experience the worst of both worlds. Rain soaked us as we climbed up towards the next divide crossing where it promptly fluctuated between a combination of snow and ice. An unrelenting wind picked up, ferociously sweeping its way through the park, carrying the ice into our face with tremendous force. Seventy feet off the road I saw a fifty foot tree come crashing down, echoing its power across the valley. “Of course this storm waited for us to get back on our bikes,” I thought.

It was hard to enjoy the view as we rode out of Yellowstone. I put my face down to avoid the wind and icy debris. Progress was slow, despite pedaling as fast as I could against the elements. After leaving the confines of the park, the weather relaxed a little and gave us the chance to achieve a reasonable day’s mileage. Enriched by our human-less national park experience, we were enticed to head through the Grand Teton Park with the same private reservation as Yellowstone. We opted to yellowstripe the Great Divide section for more pristine “bike paths.”

But, our fearless leader Sean passed the turn and we wound up riding along a busy road just East of the vacant wilderness pavement. The weather was so poor that it didn’t really matter, because the Grand Tetons were shying behind the clouds and the wind/ice forced us to put our heads down and grind away at our gears. Our next stop was Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

We dropped into famed ski town beneath towering snowy cliffs and a hanglider floating overhead. I looked up at the colorful triangle and thought how nice it would be to experience moments without gravity and resistance. Two qualities that ensure each and every day, no matter how good of shape we are in, will be exhausting and challenging. But then I realized that in some twisted way; that is also why I enjoy it so much.

In Jackson Hole the next day, we drank beer at the local brewery with Peter Wuerslin and Tim Young, two guys who traveled the world on bikes in the early 80’s on what was deemed the “Too Tyred Tour.” They passed through civil war torn Central America, crossed the Darien Gap down through S. America, and flew over the pond to S. Africa with their remaining funds. Earned some money and continued up through Africa, designed innovative bikes to pedal on railroad tracks to cross the sandy deserts of Sudan. They passed through Iran & Iraq during the war and were the first bicycle tourists ever to enter Tibet. 55,000 miles and 6-1/2 years, they finished their tour around the world. I was what would be described as star struck, sitting across the table from these guys.

Bike touring really didn’t exist in that scope, when they began their journey. Bike racks had to be custom designed to accommodate their gear and special bike frames were also created for the occasion. Communications were comparatively primitive, with fax machines being touted as state-of-the-art. They weren’t just riding their bikes around the world, they were bicycle nomads, living on their bikes.

They couldn’t just have a bottom bracket air mailed to them if theirs broke. They had to get the parts machined, they had to fix things, invent things, to continue their journey. Their life was bicycle touring, much as someone else gets up each day and goes to work, they get up each day and ride their bike. Conversations with them proved invaluable and helped give us insight into our own experience and journey.

They had traveled with three people and commented on the advantage of the “democracy of three.” Decisions will always weigh towards one side, and no matter what the decision is, you have to go with it. A four-person group could reach a 2-2 decision that has the potential to split up the group, making three a powerful number. They continued by describing how they felt like brothers and the extent they would go to stick up for each other, under any circumstances. “We were a force to be reckoned with,” Tim said.

Their philosophy of bike touring as a lifestyle was really inspiring and helped solidify our own direction with the adventure. We had yellowstriped some of the dangerously snowy sections of the Great Divide Route and were frustrated by our inability to stick with our plan. We wanted to get bikes designed to ride in the snow so we could continue. Our attempts to get sponsored with snow bikes were futile and we felt defeated when we detoured away from the snowy passes. It would cost a little over 1,000 dollars for each of us to get frames that could accommodate a 3-4” wheel that could get some traction on the snow. Unfortunately, there is no way we could afford this. We are not a well funded expedition attempting the world’s first something or other, we are simply bicycle nomads trying to migrate south towards warmer weather. It appeared so simple under their perspective.

At this point, we would have a better chance at continuing the off-road bike touring if we dropped in elevation some, which was our priority. Trails like the Kokopelli from Grand Junction to Moab, Utah, and the Arizona Trail from Utah into Mexico, offered a promising alternative. If we stayed close to our designated route, we would be forced to take busier highways, plowed and maintained for the multitude of vehicles traveling. Our experiences with black ice and vehicles swerving off the road, just a few feet from killing us, have left us to fear and respect the automobile, especially in icy circumstances. Some of the off-road routes on the great divide trail could put you over a steep pass and drop you down at the base of another. A two-three day ride under normal conditions, and twice that in the snow. The thought of the sky dumping a couple feet of powder overnight, could turn the joyride, into..well.. our last ride, I suppose. Our next stop was Pinedale, Wyoming and an opportunity to get back on the great divide trail. We would consider our options when we got there.

In the Jackson Hole community, effigies were burned as sacrifices to the snow gods, grown men danced various jigs outside of the local brewery to encourage the powder to fall, and we remained the only sacrilegious people in confines of the city that did not want snow (except for Tim and Peter). Luckily, we were granted a snow-free day to pedal out of town, despite our inability to craft up any ceremonial dances to preserve the sunshine. We sailed south along a chocolate ribbon of road, cutting up through the freshly frosted canyon. After one final icy stretch, we made it out and onto level ground. I drifted far behind the others, feeling spent within an hour of riding. No amount of candy or Peruvian frosting given to us by Goat’s dad, could revive me. It wasn’t until after it got dark that I saw the familiar flashing red light in the distance of Sean.

But Goat was nowhere to be seen. The freezing temperatures had taken their toll on my feet, and riding into the night only made my frostbitten toes worse, I could only imagine what Goat’s felt like. Sean was miserable as well and ready to camp, and it was out of the ordinary for Goat to blast ahead of us like this. I reached a junction with a truck stop just 10 miles shy of Pinedale.

I parked my bike near the street and left my flashing light on while I sought warmth inside the building. At first, I wandered through attempting to coax the blood to flow to my feet once again. I cursed the holes in my shoes and aimlessly sauntered through the store, pretending like I was there for something besides the free heater. Eyes of the clerks began falling on me, suspiciously; so I made conversation, hoping to comfort them with my unusually haggard presence.

“Have you seen another cyclist stop through here?” I asked, as I sat down at a table near the counter and began taking off my shoes and socks.

“If you ask me, I think you’re crazy to be riding this late in the cold,” She said and looked at me like I was dangerously dumb.

I struggled to maintain a level of courtesy with my reply, “Uhm…well..I actually just asked you if you had seen another cyclist.”

“Nope. Can’t say that I have. When’d ya last see him?”

“Noon-ish, I suppose. Just south of Jackson City.”

Her face seemed to flush with concern. She said, “Honey, he may be in trouble. Jes last year, a snowboarder your age was hitchin’ ‘long this road, found a few miles from here, stabbed ‘bout 27 times.”

“Wow. Did they ever find the murderer?” I asked.

“Nope. They shor haven’t.” She slowly and dramatically shook her head back and forth, like I had just given her news of another fatal tragedy.

Just then, the bell on the door jingled and let in a cold gust of air as Sean walked through the door. I couldn’t help but laugh thinking about how I had looked coming in just a few minutes before. Frozen moisture from his breathe had added an extra ¼ inch of ice to his beard. Failed snot rockets caught on his mustache leaving two green icicles above his lips. His bloodshot eyes rolled around the room while he tried to pull off his gloves. He laughed when he found me sitting at a table with my shoes and socks off, trying to rub some circulation back in my feet. Somehow, his feet, inside Keen sandals still had plenty of life to them. We were not the picture of sanity, verified when I glanced up at the clerk behind the counter, shaking her head.

“Have you seen Goat?” He asked as he inspected his icy beard with his frozen hands.

“Nah.. But the lady behind the counter informed me that he is probably bleeding on the side of the road from knife wounds.”

“Oh really,” he replied incredulously. “That’s too bad. I sort of enjoyed his company.”

The lady interjected, “I’m closin’ it on up in here. Ya’ll are welcome to hang ‘round outside. But I gotta lock up and you don’t wanna be stuck in here all night.”

I surveyed the room and saw the shelves of food. I was certain I would enjoy a night in the food mart. But I obediently stepped outside and paced around in the cold. We were both dumbfounded by the disappearance of Goat and exhausted enough to set up camp without him but Sean claimed he had seen Goat’s tire tracks and was sure he was ahead of us so we pushed on. A huge raised pickup almost hit Sean as he crossed the sizeable intersection. I followed behind and feared something was wrong with my bottom bracket.

I had one seize up on me just before setting up my bike for the trip and wanted to get the best one available to prevent any failures. A bottom bracket should not fail. Phil Woods was reputed to have some of the best bottom brackets, so I splurged 150 dollars on the finely crafted component, handmade in San Jose CA. It started to feel a bit loose; soon it evolved into an aggravated grinding rattle. And within about 15 minutes the cranks developed a significant wobble that accompanied the painful sound of clenching metal. The right side of my bottom bracket completely blew out and little ball bearings were littering the highway. I thought back to the day it arrived in a sleek box, with each little piece sitting in a slot perfectly form fit to it. A work of art, really. Goat and Sean settled for the bottom of the line Shimano BB, which set them back about 8 bucks. I was furiously disappointed with Phil. My pathetic bike hobbled towards the edge of town where Goat was patiently waiting for us.

The man seemed un-phased by the ridiculous cold we slid through all day and night. Didn’t see any need to stop at the gas station, had no frozen limbs to defrost, and so he kept going. We were expecting a package at the post office the next day, and we had to pick it up early before it closed. So he charged ahead stretching our daily mileage into about 80. Camped out on the side of the highway behind some bushes and I woke up early to get into town.

The post office was closed, and the sign on the door explained that it was Veteran’s Day. We would have to hang out in Pinedale over the weekend. I found a hardware store/bike store and was able to get a new bottom bracket, a bottom of the line Shimano. There was a nice coffee shop with free internet access that we spent a good amount of time at. Small enough place that our conversations were quite transparent. And a guy working on his computer at the other table heard us whining about having to spend the next few days in the snow. He invited us over to his house to spend the weekend.

          By: Sean     

             During our five day stay in Butte Montana my subconsciousness would continuously scream in anxiety: “Move south, winter has come”. So persistant was the thought that it may as well have been seared into my brain with a branding iron;  I very much feared encountering more of the snowy conditions endured through the first three continental divide crossings. Yet our speed and direction are ruled by our perserverant qualities of calm complacency mixed with an immutable resignation that snowy fate will have its way no matter how quickly we kick our legs. Indeed it is only natural for us to relish the comfortable homes provided by our acquaintances in big towns, if only that we learn to appreciate more the rigorous demands of roughing it in the Rockies. So we sit around drinking coffee and feign absorption in any article of literature lying within reach, and only when we feel akwardly aware of our role as the blurry mooch in the eyes of our working class hosts do we pick up and leave.
                  Leaving Butte I had begun to tow on my bike a little something extra to pass away the cold lonely nights out in the wilderness. Out of the communal funds we purchased from E-bay a Martin Backpacker guitar, being a slightly trimmed down version of a regular acoustic. In order to ensure the safety of the delicate instrument I found a hard shell rifle case. It was my hope that the case with its intimidating dimensions, would help me to fit in -if only superficially- among the world class gun carriers of Montana. Perhaps I would no longer feel so inadequately stocked when walking into Montanan bars and cafes that inevitably display colorful signs and banners welcoming the hunter into its exclusive interiors. Riding along a dark frontage road, the blazing lights of Butte behind me, and slightly muted roar of highway traffic to my left, I felt relief at finally being on the move again and ecstatic over my new medium of entertainment.
               We waited to find camp until we could at last not see the dimmest glow emitted from Butte’s city center. There was a small river on the side of the road, and a small dirt turnoff labeled with two decorated crosses marking the sight of a fatal motorist accident. It was a clear night offering a mesmerizing view of stars and moon when the headlights from the highway weren’t flooding one’s vision. While dinner was being prepared I began strumming some tunes on the guitar. Because of the narrow body I had to stand while playing, but that was nothing new, I didn’t have a Thermarest chair converter like the other guys. That night it snowed hard and the wind blew fiercely, we had not anticipated a storm but here it was pounding away at our thin canvas home seeming to say; “well it sure is good to have you fellas back out in the open again”.
                Next morning the air felt colder than the night before. Not wanting to soak my socks through so early in the day, I just slipped my sandals on and made the first treads to the bikes through the thick white blanket. I brought the cooking supplies back to the tent to make breakfast, sat down to prepare the food, then realized I had forgot the fuel. Unfortunately my feet were freezing and so I began prepping them for a second early morning ice bath. While rubbing my frozen toes, Goat dressed himself and without hesitation began trudging through the snow barefoot to get the fuel. Jacob, still in his bag, peered outside and announced that we should dig a nice ditch alongside the two crosses for him to retire in. I hammered my Dromedary bag against the ground trying to break ice chunks apart, but the damn thing was hard as rock. Had we a blow torch and pickaxe at our disposal we might have been able to thaw our water supplies after an hour of intensive labor, luckily we had camped by a stream that was only partially frozen over. It took over an hour to prepare the big morning meal -the stove was unusually grumpy. The next hour was allotted for eating and digestion at the end of which we predicted there to be a remainder of four and a half hours of light for us to get over a high pass on Roosevelt Drive.
                  We found the paved end of the road in rideable conditions. Then after a good two miles of climbing we came to the dirt section of the road that would last the next twenty miles. Though the layer of snow on the road was deep there had been a good amount of traffic to plow some narrow paths for us to follow. Unlike the continental crossing of old, Roosevelt Drive provided a gradual elevation climb over the mountains which meant we wouldn’t be sapped of all strength just to reach the summit. While cresting the top of the pass we were bombarded with gentle snow flurries. My black fleece pullover quickly turned white with the clinging powder. As we began a long downhill section I noticed how icy the road was; my rear tire was sliding all over the place and it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to maintain the balance of my rig which towered high with the added gun case. Later on I would discover that the bolts connecting the Xtracycle to my bike frame were loose and that my rear hub also was loose; a combination that hampered my ability to steer through the ice. It didn’t take long for me to lose control of the bike and crash into a snow mound. There must have been rocks beneath all that soft stuff cause when I sat up blood was spilling into my mouth. Jacob instinctively whipped out his Digital-camera snapped a shot of my wretched state.
                The descent off the mountain became steeper with every mile. Both Goat and Jacob were sliding off the road occasionally as their breaks froze. The cable running to my rear break was corroded and bent and ceased to function at all. At a small fork in the road, about ten miles from the highway we were trying to reach I lost sight of Goat and Jacob. I was sore and badly in need of water and I didn’t care if it took me all night to get to the highway. In the course of a half hour I managed to crash at least a dozen times. Concerned that I might severely injure myself, I simply hobbled alongside the bike through the steepest slopes; the sun was dissolving behind a mountain chain in the distance, it was beginning to look like it would take all night to get down.
                Freezing air began penetrating my thin layers of soaked clothing; a layer of snow stuck between my Keen sandals and wool socks, my beard and hair crusted in ice. I was now running down hill to keep warm. It was necessary to keep a triangular space between my body and the bike, my feet up high on a snow bank for traction, and my forearms pressing down upon the handle bars to keep the tires rigid. Orange and red headlights were soon visible from the highway, then the black shadowy figures of Goat and Jacob riding toward the mountain. Becoming impatient with my sluggish pace I jumped onto my left pedal with my right foot and coasted the rest of the way down, using my left foot as a break. Goat sounded relieved that I had managed to not kill myself on the trail; “we were just going to flag down a car to search for you, the temperature is dropping way to fast to keep outside”.

                   Goat told me that he and Jacob had been biking back and forth from the bottom of the hill to the freeway overpass for the past half-hour to keep warm. Jacob had already leaped over some barbwire fences to investigate a derelict wood house. We could soon see him running back to fetch his bike giving us the green light to invade the abandoned grounds. Two of us stood lifting the rusty barb wire while the other slid the bikes underneath, then we followed a nearly frozen creek up to the backside of the house. Immediatly I stripped off all my frost caked clothing and furiously slipped into every single dry shirt and sock that I owned. All of us were dangerously dehydrated having had but a few sips of water at the begining of the days ride, so Goat went right to work setting up the stove to boil creek water. Jacob and I set to work making a barrel fire with all the yellowed pages of newspaper and splintered blocks of wood littering the house. After stoking up a sizeable inferno we all hovered close around the hobo furnace trying to ignore the freezing air that still licked at our backsides. I noticed Goat intently paying attention to his feet for a change, he had still been wearing his soaked Ski-boot liners and was undergoing the painstaking task of drying them without melting holes into the material. We each sipped at the boiling water, desperately trying to turn our blood to liquid again. Having taken care of the most important survival measures, I tried talking to Goat about preparing some food for dinner. His tone was oddly dispassionate for a subject as essential as food. When I pressed him further he reacted irritably and told me through as shivering mouth that he needed to get into his sleeping bag, that he was feeling particularly haggard. Jacob and me pleaded with him to stay by the fire, but Goat just shrugged off the sugestion and said it wasn’t working. He set out his Thermarest on the inside floor among piles of broken glass and damp carboard and resumed battling his hypothermic condition inside a sleeping bag.
                  A pot of oatmeal usually makes in under fifteen minutes, we’re used to eating it at the end of the day when we’re exhausted and near physical incompetence. That night the oatmeal took at least half an hour to make. Our stove radiated the heat of a few candles and would periodically die out completely whenever Jacob went near it. When the oatmeal was ready I put it near Goat and then briskly ran back to the fire to warm my frozen hands. Five minutes later I went to eat from the pot myself to find that Goat had taken just a few meager bites, and that the gruel was already cold. Jacob was busy boiling water to make a hot-water bag for Goat’s sleeping bag. By the time he got at the oatmeal it was nearly frozen to the pan.
                   Goat instructed me to unzip his sleeping bag at the bottom and place his dromedary bag of hot water at his feet, which weren’t warming up, and were becoming exceedingly painful. The water bag managed to leak into his sleeping bag at some point during the night and caused him a great deal more discomfort than added heat. 
                     Our blazing hobo furnace was my only consolitory comfort that night. It was questionable whether I would survive bundled up in my synthetic cocoon which was rated only to twenty degrees, so I sat in a frosty chair fueling the fire till my eyes secreted some protective glue in response to the noxious smoke and chemical fumes. I went into what had been the bathroom, kicked around sawdust and broken glass, blew air into my Thermarest and covered the top of my sleeping bag with my rain gear for further insulation. I crawled inside the bag shivering and proceed to kick my legs and rotate my body in circles trying to generate heat. It was a process that would have to be repeated a dozen times that night; I would fall asleep for fifteen minutes, wake up shivering, then shake limbs once again. Each time my eyes opened they were haunted by the sight of a horror movie ambiance of dilapidated walls, decaying wallpaper, and a dirt crusted toilet bowl.
                   I was the first one to wake up the next morning and quickly worked to set the barrel fire ablaze. Goat seemed in slightly better spirits, yet it was painfully evident that he had sustained some gnarly frostbite on his toes. The quiet reserved voices around the fire reflected disparaged spirits; Goat would be in pain for some time, and it would be necessary for him to begin wearing shoes. Attempting to elevate the mood with some music I began playing my guitar. only to stop when my hands grew too numb ten minutes later. We all began reading the 1978 editions of the Butte news publication, the big headlines relating the gruesome details on the mass suicides of the Jim Jones religious cult. There was also an intriguing article written about a search party discovering frozen bodies of hunters that had lost their way and had been forced to hold up in some remote shelter during a storm. Realizing that it might take all day for our stove to cook a decent meal, I began chopping frozen vegetable for a stew. Had I realized that all our food would be frozen for days, I might actually have packed a rifle instead of a guitar. To kill an animal up in these hills would ensure good eating for at least a month. The sight of a perfectly preserved elk carcass strapped to the back of my bike would certainly put me on good terms with the locals from Butte throughout Wyoming, and possible through Colorado as well. What was more, the gun barrel would generate heat that would temporarily warm my hand. The more I thought about it the more I cursed my love of music for being incompatible with the carnal instincts necessary for survival. For my guitar to save my life, I’d have use the steel strings to strangle an animal. After sometime I felt disgusted with myself for considering the benefits of a firearm. I believe that we were all a bit disoriented that morning; still mildly dehydrated, and strung out from lack of sleep, we had just experienced our first sub-zero night -we later found out that it had dropped as low as negative ten degrees.    

We searched around for internet hoping to establish our plans with the Grand Canyon. My conversation with the park ranger in the region above the Canyon was dismal, offensive even. Just uttering the idea of fixin’ to reckon on thinking about possibly attempting to access the North Rim, forced him to treat the conversation as if was made collect from an asylum. The next plan was to call him up pretending to be a cross country skier, interested in playing in his forest on my winter friendly sports gear. This ploy gained nothing useful from the ranger who picked up the phone and said patronizingly.“Well, if you look up the weather for Jacob Lake, that should tell you everything you need to know.”

          By: Jacob

             Our lady of the Rockies shown bright on a cliff high above the old mining town of Butte.  Once boasting over a hundred thousand people and the fame of being the first town to get electricity, it is now a fragment of what it once was.  Hardly a quaint ghost town, however, with about 35,000 people you can see the city sprawl from the top of the divide as you coast your way into town, traversing acres of scorched earth (mining), under the watchful eye of the 60 foot illuminated statue.      

                 We contacted a Couchsurfing host by the name of Abigail who was somehow willing to let 3 strangers she’d never met instantly take up residence in her home.  After getting the grand tour of the house, we unloaded our worldly possessions off our bikes and moved in.  Replaced the family photos on the mantle, hung up our towels in the bathroom, and began walking around the house in our boxers. 

         Couchsurfing is one of the newest and most unrecognized marvels of the modern world.   It reminds me a lot of hitchhiking, except that you get to have a slumber party and use their toothbrush.  While it may not be for everybody, there are over 100,000 people signed up, creating a global network of places to be “the dude on the couch.”

          The conversation could go something like this, “Hi, I’m Jacob, a fellow Couchsurfer who you have never met in your entire life. I just came into town and read that you had a couch available to sleep on?”

            “Yeah, very true.”  They would then continue to humbly acknowledge that they have little to offer but would be happy to have you over.

            “Where can we meet up?”

            And within 5 minutes of entering a town it would be set.  The first night is easy enough, after that you have to prove to them that you actually don’t smell that bad after a shower, and that you can cook without smearing bacon grease over all surfaces in the kitchen.     

         Abigail is a partial owner of a vintage clothing store that she describes as a boutique, and not to be mistaken as a thrift store.  She is 24, goes to school, and works until late in the evening.  Her photograph on her Couchsurfing profile shows her with brown hair, but we saw her with very blonde hair and a smile just as bright.  She grew up in California and could tolerate the unrelenting, and often incoherent nonsense that bushwhacked bicyclists pour out in an attempt to communicate.  We got along nicely.

        The apartment was shared between Abigail, Nick and another couch surfer.  Nick’s father, Ron, had taken up a more permanent residence in the house a couple days prior to our arrival.  He (and his Shit Zhu dog that would compulsively hump your leg) instantly became a household fixture, growing roots the moment he arrived.  You could even hear his limbs permanently grafting themselves to the home as he woke up at 5 AM to loudly wash the dishes and drink his morning cup of coffee.    

          Nick is an eccentric individual, capable of hours of humorous banter, punctuated with a loud contagious laugh.  The dynamics between him and his father are nothing short of a comedy routine you might encounter in the performance hall of a cruise ship.  Constant bickering exposing the underlying absurdity of Nick’s couch surfing dad filled the home with the warmth of a quality family dispute.  The two danced around the generation gap with a flair for the dramatics and an entertaining father/son role reversal.

          Due to health conditions Ron has recently retired from his career as a car-salesman and has moved in with his son.  The medication he was prescribed, lead to the loss of his botom front teeth, which was recent enough that he was constantly tonguing the area, as if playing with dentures.  His straight grey hair was long enough to comb back, but still short enough that with any intervention, could stand straight out, giving him a mad scientist look.  He wore surplus military pants pulled up to his belly button and a t-shirt with a picture of Osama Bin Laden framed by the words “Wanted: Dead or Alive.”   He is an endearing character, and the extent of his personality and charm could only be refined and established with a long life and a few tours in Vietnam.  From the moment you meet him, he is like your best friend you haven’t seen in years.  I believe he must have been one hell of a car-salesman before he retired and moved into his beloved town of Butte, MT.

         After a couple nights in town, we could see why he liked it, and not only because we were enjoying the same rent-free accommodations.  It feels very much like a small western town.  While checking out the nightlife we saw dogs running freely around inside the bars, a man get thrown through a window in a bar fight as high schoolers casually hung out around the pool tables.  I had a conversation with a lady that night who found out I was from California and quickly made it her goal in life to recruit me to dissuade all people from Cali from ever coming to her city. 

          The one notable quirk about the Montanans I’ve met was that the overwhelming majority of them can’t stand “the Californians,” who are somehow responsible for all the problems in their state.  Getting a rational explanation for their feelings about us “left-coasters” is nearly impossible.  A few have shared their frustration that Californians buy up all the land and block access to public property or they are bunch of “tree-huggin’ hippies who don’t care ‘bout nothin’.”  The best example of this underlying state discrimination is a comment from the lady we rescued after she slid on black ice and rolled her truck (nearly hitting Goat in the process), injuring her neck.  After we laid her down on a Thermarest and put our sleeping bag on her and rushed to get further assistance she commented, “You guys are so nice.  I promise I won’t say anything bad about Californians ever again.”    

         Being in Butte on Halloween weekend, we had to attend the festivities and use our imaginations for costumes since we had not planned on dressing up. Goat was Floyd Landis, adorned in bicycle spandex, complete with a yellow jersey, Sean was a California surfer boy, sporting only board-shorts and curly hair, and I dressed as a hobo with a bindle on a stick.  Pretty outrageous costumes for Montana, realizing that at the beginning of winter, not too many folks wear costumes that do not include a shirt or long pants.  Throughout the night, I was happy as a hobo heading out of town to be wearing plenty of clothes to ward off the Montana cold.  Couldn’t help but laugh at Sean out in the cold northern night, shivering without his shirt on. 

        Sean & I quickly got bored at the party, abandoned the house to explore a huge metal mining rig, towering 100 feet above the city outlined in red LED lights.  Hovering above the city, we could see the expanse of lights for miles around.  A tremendous feeling of wellbeing swept over me, with the realization of what a crazy adventure we were on.  That we get to ride through this city and back out into the wilderness; that we get to ride our bikes every single day across the globe.  At that moment it felt like “Our Lady of the Rockies” was smiling a gentle approval. 

            It wasn’t until our first night back out into the Rockies, that I began to wonder if her smile wasn’t sinister in nature…..    

By Sean
      A city of 25,000. The sheer mass of Helena initially frightened and intimidated the backcountry-loving bike nomads. Upon the first peddle stroke into the deadly congested city limits, boisterous oaths were uttered from all, “we’ll just be passing on through”. In reality we ended up passing from one couch surfer’s home to another, from seedy bar scene to dimly lit bohemian espresso shop, antique bookshop to farmers market; for nearly a week we embraced metropolitan society.
     Our second couch-surfing crash-sight belonged to an older couple who were not at all aware of how couch surfing worked. Their son signed them up for the program at the same time that we were forced to depart the residence of our first host. The couple offered us a warm studio above their garage, and after some nervous consideration decided to feed us in exchange for various odd jobs that included cooking, gardening, and cleaning the house. Perhaps an overabundance of cold snowy mountain trails had succeed in diminishing our usual haughty disdain for modern indoor comforts. We settled uneasily into domesticated routines while retaining our shaggy wild animal appearance; Goat would fashion dough for pie crust, Jacob would vacuum every floor in the house and search the internet for piano chords to play reggae tunes on his new Melodica, I would play the dark wooded upright piano of impeccable tone till my fingers are numb and then go out and uproot leeks for soup. Our host in this quaint Helena abode attempted to persuade us to fashion a commune on some land they had purchased up in the hills, maybe build tree houses, turn the earth, and cultivate silent minds. It did not take long to cultivate a desire to depart from this comfort, from this metropolis that rolls out in unkempt suburbia over the flat stretches of plains creeping up to snow capped mountains.
     The phone rings, no one of the household is present to pick up, the message clicks on, its a man we’ve never met offering fair warning of the divide trail. “Yeah, about those cyclists, they’d be nuts to ride out onto the trails, there’s six to eight inches of snow on all the roads, and its the first day of hunting season”.
     Yes indeed, hunting season has begun and well over half the male population of the county are oiling rifles, polishing scopes, filling coolers with beer, and sharpening their filleting knifes. We had been warned by several concerned citizens to take the safety measure of wearing orange vests to prove our neutrality in the escalating war on the wild. Despite being flashy and fashionably flamboyant, the vest may prove not to be an adequate precaution against heavy fire since men up in the hills will shoot anything that moves. As Vice President Cheyney demonstrated last year being buddy with the man with the gun doesn’t ensure one’s safety, and we were hearing reports of old men suffering from Glaucoma out on the trails. At best wearing the vest might provide us an appearance of being legitimately oriented to Montanan back-country etiquette. Then if a hunter were to shoot one of us he could not simply accuse us of sabotaging the festive activities that happen only once a year. The orange vest was essential to our survival out in game land, to leave it behind would be tantamount to parading around the north pole in grinch costumes on christmas day.
     We weren’t too concerned with the reports of heavy snow accumulation; we hoped that the endless caravans of hunting bound vehicles would pack that slush down to a manageable surface. It so happened that we were waiting for new tires to replace the wide knoby monstrosities that we had installed on our bikes just a few hundred miles back. The wide treads had been slowing us down and we figured the real heavy snow wouldn’t appear for at least another few weeks. However cruel and miserable the outcome the change may prove it would be a useful experiment to see how much worse -or better- the narrow tires faired in the snow.
     Straddling the polished leather saddle of our newly revamped mountain bikes we busted out of Helena with a vengeance, determined as ever to conquer the Great Divide trails. Ten minutes out of the city and a considerable headwind thrashed our faces, the trail degraded to soft mud below puddles of melting snow. We climbed a gradual hill of seven miles, coasted down a pleasant downhill section of four miles than climbed another steeper hill of at least nine miles. It was an exhausting day; my feeble limbs softened by nearly a week of domestic leisure were sore, my lungs felt constricted from rising altitude, and personally I felt that the narrow tires weren’t helping my momentum. Approaching the beautiful and nearly frozen-over Park Lake we were informed by a man in a pickup truck of our failure to wear striking colors. Except for my plaid bell bottoms, everyone was wearing dark or camouflage clothing splattered with mud; we were quite indistinguishable from dirt. In an official self-registration campsite, we found one occupied sight containing two pickup trucks with one pulling a motor home, the other a trailer with two ATV’s, complete with gun racks and beer coolers. No sounds, not even the irritating buzz of a gas powered generator providing quality indoor visual stimulation, our neighbor campers must have exerted themselves to the extreme during the day to have crashed before sundown. We pitched our tent finished off a bottle of whiskey that had been purchased to congratulate our previous triple Divide crossings, and dozzed off. Late that night, at some obscene hour reserved for the squeals of hovering banshees and the howlings of rabid wolves, I was roused from blissful unconsciousness by Ozzie Osborne wailing something unintelligible. It was Iron Man blasting through four hundred watt speakers, accompanied by the war cries of some young hunter dudes riling themselves up to begin shooting. I expected gun fire followed by blasting caps, white flashes of burning magnesium, penetrating laser pointers dancing around the tent, who knew what incendiary display would accompany the preparation for a late night hunt. Early the next morning Goat told me that people often hunt at night intrigued by the possibility of sneaking up on a dear asleep on its legs. Goat’s slumber hadn’t been disturbed by last nights’ pep rally, leaving me to believe that he wouldn’t serve as an alert look out -should the occasion ever arise that we would need to monitor the premises of our camp.
     Simon and Garfunkel’s tune “Slip Slidden Away” became the soundtrack to my mornings’ ascent up the snowy ice bound roads as we set out to conquer the remaining thousand feet of elevation. There came a point where our trail map prescribed a steep climb up a ‘rough four wheel drive’ trail for two miles and being the trusty navigator I grew a bit disheartened at the prospect of following a trail that may very well be buried in snow, with no human tracks to follow. As it turned out, the trail wasn’t ridable, we dismounted and pushed our bikes up rocky ledges, snow up to our ankles. looking ahead I cringed in horror at Goat’s feet hoping gracefully through the blinding white powder wearing only ski-boot liners, I was wearing Keen sandles with snow building up between sock and sole and generally feeling inadequately insulated. For two miserable miles our generally neglected arms were sapped of all strength, one holding the handle-bars steady, the other yanking at the saddle. It was nearly impossible to position oneself in a manner that would avoid having the back of our calves chaffed by our peddles and/or xtracycle bags. It would take an experienced oarsmen from a Viking slave galleon to efficiently haul our loads up that hill, anybody less would no doubt succumb to nervous and physical exhaustion. Any hunter within a mile would no doubt be drawn to the wretched gutteral sounds eminating from our disgruntled throats; surely we were easy targets for the itchy finger assailants. At about the mileage where we should have been able to see the summit, Goat turned back and began descending the hill. “The trail just ends at a tree, and the hunter’s tracks lead up the slope of a hill that we can’t climb,” Goat flatly offered his prognosis. A good part of me desired to fling my bike off the side of the hill and try my luck at suspended animation for the duration of winter, yet reluctantly I complied with the inevitable and backtracked two miles to the beginning of the trail.
     After some discussion we concluded that this would be a good point to begin altering our route, and opted to follow an steep downhill route toward a town called Wicks. Disheartening though it was to know that an early descent would ensure more uphill climbing overall, we believed it better than trudging through blankets of snow and risk getting lost for a second time. The road conditions downhill were incredibly rocky, with deep rain indented ruts that would catch tires as they struggled to steer through hair-pin curves. On one downhill the cold air was blasting my face at such a speed that my eyes teared up obscuring my vision. My tires got caught in a rut that led to the edge of a rocky cliff and reflexively I rolled off the side of my bike onto the rocky slope. Immediately my bicycle flipped ontop of me as I attempted to brace myself from sliding further down the slope and the two of us shared a worthwhile moment of intimate bonding. After throwing my bike further down the hill and cursing my miserable existence I looked up to find Jacob holding his camera; I cursed him as well and set about finding a spot to convalesce. Finally we found camp beside some grazing cattle, and ended the day content in achieving negative mileage.
     The next day we came into Wicks. I mistook the line of gutted buildings for a ghost-town until a white S.U.V pulled up in front of an oversized trailer home. The old couple that stepped out of the car asserted that we were lost which I confirmed with a nervous laugh. I noticed the corpse of a recently shot deer strung up to dry from the roof of a derelict shack across the street, and that served as a slight intimidation while asking for directions back to the main highway. The man told me that it was necessary to backtrack on the road I had just come down some six or seven miles, he was describing a route that we had been avoiding in favor of a shorter one through the mountains. After informing the man of the presence of a direct road from Wicks to the highway his wife laughed out loud, “yeah, Finn Gulch, my god you boys will still be riding on that till night comes”. The man reasserted his advice that we backtrack seven miles, saying that biking up Finn Gulch as foolhardy; “You don’t realize how many people we have to pull out of that mess in the winter!”. The woman sent us off with a bag full of her ‘Wicks Famous” cookies, telling us to be safe. Naturally we ignored the local wisdom and ascended Finn Gulch amidst the boisterous protests of innumerable dogs that erupted in spasmodic discontent in every yard along the road. Indeed the hill proved to be treacherous being close to a twenty percent grade covered with slushy snow, it was however little over two miles long, and as we crested the hill top and gazed over the vast stretches of mine terraced hills we laughed in triumph over local wisdom. It would be all downhill from here to the city of Butte, where we would inevitably begin again exploit the warm local hospitality.

We are very appreciative of the flood of concern for our wellbeing. Our inbox was pleasantly innundated with lots of worried emails. Overall, we are in good shape and are pushing South, with a brief detour through Yellowstone to see the geysers, etc. We have been working on updates for the website but have been quite overwhelmed with the intense conditions we’ve encountered.

The weather was so cold that the digital camera would not take pictures. The Alphasmart word processor we use to type up our entries was also too cold to operate. None of us are prepared for Sub-Zero temperatures and have encountered them with increasing frequency lately. Hit a blizzard outside of Butte, MT, camped out, and woke up with an unrelenting cold spell for the next week. Temperatures would drop to 0 degrees before sunset, and on a bike going down a hill against the wind, 0 degrees becomes MUCH colder.

Goat has pretty bad frostbite on his feet, covering his big toe and the pads of his feet. I got a bit on my big toe because of the hole in my shoe, but nothing compared to his situation. Every day has been outrageous and exciting. One day Goat and Sean almost got hit by some lady who slipped on black ice and flipped her car and hurt her neck. We all crashed on that stretch of ice as well (among many others). Another day we’re battling sub-zero temperatures and impossibly snowy downhill sections resulting in multiple crashes. One night we had to help Goat fight off hypothermia, racing to boil water and get it into a container to warm up his sleeping bag. Not ideal bike touring conditions.

As you can see, the weather has already taken it’s toll and we are now in the coldest part of the United States, hurrying South. We will be working on updating the site as we head through Wyoming. There is a bit of catching up to do. Lots of exciting stories we hope you will enjoy. So please check back often, we appreciate your support and interest in the trip.

By: Sean
A total of three continental divide passes spanned the trail between Lincoln and Helena. These passes would prove to be a most formidable barrier to our progress, taking as it did about an hour and a half to move a mere five miles while riding up the first pass.

As soon as we made it over the first divide we bundled up in moderately dry clothes preparing ourselves for the incredibly steep downhill. I had been wearing but a tee-shirt, Columbia Dry pants, and wool gloves the entire day of climbing through the light snow flurries. To supplement these inadequate layers I put on my non-breathable nylon coat, and a knit hat. The freezing air penetrated right through the coat the second I pushed off on my bike, yet at the same time I felt liberated from the consistently strained lungs and diaphragm, and general overheating endured during the long uphill. Coasting down the narrow pathway of jagged rocks, small ice patches, without working breaks was reminiscent of snow-boarding; one had to use defensive steering to avoid rolling out of control in a tempestuous pace. At the bottom of the hill, I waited for my two biking companions to follow, watching as the twilight faded behind a ghostly grey hill that bore only one small tree casting an awkward movie set-design shadow. Goat and Jacob were either taking an incredibly careful and lazy decent down the pass or something was wrong. I began biking back and found them with the tool kit between their upturned bikes. They had dismantled their rear derailleur in order to clean out the frozen mud that was clinging and impairing the momentum of the tiny pulley cogs that allow the chain to shift into different gear. My derailleur turned out to be frozen stiff as well forcing my shivering arms to hunker down and affectionately clean and dry the tiny pieces to the pulley.