STATESIDE

Chapter One

As my wife, Gina, and I tried to squeeze two cubic metres of clothes into a one cubic metre suitcase I glanced at the clock. It was only half past nine on a Friday night but I was determined to get a good night’s sleep and be fresh for the next day’s travelling. The suitcase was putting up one hell of a good fight, I was edgy and in no mood to take no for an answer, but the clasps finally submitted and with a quick flick of the wrist all the hatches were battened down and I was ready for the off.

It only seemed like yesterday that we were sat in the Trailfinders travel agents office in Birmingham City Centre sorting out our itinerary. A return trip to the Sierra Nevada to get up in the mountains on off road trail bikes was the order of the day. This part of our epic journey had already been booked with Matt Ernst’s Nevada Motorcycle Adventures and we were at Trailfinders to get some flights and arrange some fancy travelling either side of our motorcycling. Dave Spibey had come with us to book his flight. He was only having a week away specifically for the off roading but we were having four and he was catching up with us (or we were catching up with him) part way through our break. All we knew was that in the dead of the English winter in the Trailfinders office it seemed like our summer hols. were a million miles away;  But no, it was now that time and me and Mark were flying out to Chicago tomorrow, yeeeharrgghh !.

Saturday 16^th June 2001

5.30am came far too soon. The clock radio pumped out its familiar drone, a low key annoying buzz that makes you want to smash the thing into little pieces. Fortunately, the clock sits next to Gina’s ear and was saved from being pulverized by the fact that I could reach it. Still, I was pleased that it was now officially ‘holiday time’ and I hadn’t overslept.  I was still little edgy though. I always get like that until I make it safely to the airport, probably something to do with a morbid fear of breaking down en route and missing my flight.

My shower soon washed away any lingering feelings of tiredness and, dressed in no time, I was soon checking for the fourth time for passports, tickets, money etc etc etc. As I opened the front door the crisp early morning air hit my nostrils and made me shiver. I started to pack my bags into the car, checking again for passport, tickets, money etc, etc. - I must stop this , I thought, it is becoming an obsession. Rachel had said the night before that she wanted to come along for the ride to say goodbye so I took on the mighty task of raising her from her pit. All present and ship shape we were soon heading to the nearby 24 hour services to fill up with fuel. What should have been a very simple affair was greatly prolonged by an arrogant little dumpy shit of a Geordie white van man who decided that he would hold up the queue whilst he did his shopping. At this stage you should bear in mind that at 5.30am the queue consisted of him and me. All I wanted to do was pay for my fuel and go, all he seemed hell bent on doing was to demonstrate to me that Hadrian got it wrong and built the wall twenty miles too far North.

Arrogant bastard aside we filled up the car and were soon making our way along the M42 towards BirminghamAirport and I was dead excited.

The airport is only a 30 minute drive from our house and it wasn’t long before we were pulling into the quick drop off zone where I gathered up my bags, checked to make sure that I had my passport….no stop this !….gave Gina lots of hugs and kisses and “I love you’s” and then disappeared in through the automatic doors of the Eurohub. I don’t know why we were leaving on a direct flight for the States from the Eurohub but who was I to argue – American Airlines was waiting for me and I was ready.

Mark, Pam & the kids were waiting for me inside and they remonstrated with me for letting Gina go without letting them say hello and have a quick chat. Suitably chastised I explained that parking outside the door wasn’t allowed and that, having been an acceptable explanation, let me off the hook. We headed for the American Airlines counter where we found that we could check in straightaway, so we did. The check in clerk went through the usual security questions about who packed your case, are you carrying anything for anyone else etc. etc. (Mark actually committed perjury at this point because he was carrying my Swiss Army Knife in his suitcase but answered his security question in the negative – hang him !). Just as our cases disappeared along the conveyor and into the abyss the clerk told us that, because of bad weather in Chicago, the flight was to be delayed by one hour. As we had no onward flight we were not troubled by this other than the fact that we could have had an extra hour in bed.

We followed the signs upstairs towards the departure lounge but, as usual, the metal buttons on my denim shirt set off the detector as we pass through security. This instigates the mandatory body search and I was frisked which wasn’t much fun. Most, no in fact all, of the friskers that I have ever met are either males with no sense of humour or large dyke like ladies who have the look of Satan about them. I carry visions of these dark creatures in my mind but I always pass out at the stage where they frisk the inside leg and reach my inner thigh and then squeeze my balls mercilessly in the palms of their big workmanlike hands. Today’s frisker was a dumpy, humourless dyke and I held back the jokes – I wanted my balls and I wanted that flight !

I survived the frisking without meeting my bete noir and, having been given the all clear, we had arrived airside. We had a brief spot of newspaper buying followed by a longer deliberation at the Duty Free shop where we indulged ourselves with a couple of bottles of Powers Irish Whiskey (we also noted that, having passed through security, would-be terrorists were free to purchase Swiss Army knives from the Duty Free shop). Armed with our goodies we ambled around until we found a comfortable spot where we could indulge ourselves in our favourite hobby of people watching and Mark could have a smoke. We noticed that the weather in Birmingham wasn’t too brilliant either. Having been dropped of in the dry it was now decidedly wet outside and we watched it rain down hard onto the runway. We resigned ourselves to sitting out the delayed flight and Mark took the unprecedented step of deciding to have a beer which he swiftly followed with two more after which he announced that his lips were starting to go numb and he was no longer in control of his speech.

Eventually, our flight was called for boarding and Mark was rescued from total alcohol paralysis. We waited for the ever eager beavers to rush up to the front of the queue and claim their seats. We, on the other hand, calmly waited for a convenient slot and edged our way through the tunnel and boarded the plane. With all doors secured we began to taxi out to the runway. We felt the plane turn and we could see from the ground lights that we had reached the beginning of our tarmac and without any hesitation the pilot let it go. No delay, he  just opened the throttle and voooossshhhh and we were away.

The eight hour flight was uneventful and dragged a little. I read my book for a while and actually paused to watch and, unusually, enjoy the in flight movie , “Chocolat” but I dipped out of the second offering of  “ Miss Congeniality”. Nova Scotia came into view and an hour or so later we were over Lake Michigan beginning our descent and it wasn’t long before we saw the pleasing sight of Chicago’s urban sprawl out of the window below us. The houses and streets got larger and nearer until, eventually, we were part of the landscape and it was time for the great iron bird in the sky to touch down at O’Hare International Airport. Having got back to terra firma without any mid air dramas we were given the good news that, surprise, surprise, we now had to wait for a slot to become available so that we could park. Those who had connecting flights began to shift restlessly in their seats. We waited for over half an hour on the tarmac by which time the connecting flight people were very anxious indeed and despite sincere apologies from the American Airlines flight staff there were lots of under the breath mumbles. We didn’t really care because we had booked a hotel in Chicago for two nights and were not due to leave the WindyCity until Monday afternoon.

It was nice to get off the plane, to stretch our legs, and make our way to the baggage hall. Before we were reunited with our luggage we had to line up in the immigration hall to get our all important visa stamped into our passports. The ‘alien’ queue (that’s us) was heaving and I was desperate for a piss. I headed off for the loos to point Percy at the porcelain whist Mark guarded the luggage. When I emerged (relieved) from the dunny we ditched the alien queue and attached ourselves to the end of the almost empty US citizen queue which, obviously, moved a lot faster than the alien line. Despite taking time out for a slash we had in fact managed to get to the immigration desk much quicker than those who had joined the alien queue some time before us. Our path through immigration, although without hitch, was peppered with interesting questions about whether or not we were terrorists and the Department of Agriculture had several questions to ask about how close we had been to farms and farm animals over the past few weeks lest we infect the United States with foot & mouth disease. We debated what would be the outcome if we had replied yes to any of the questions put to us and we concluded that it was a bad idea because, like the airport friskers in the UK, the U.S. immigration people looked as if they had even less of a sense of humour.  By the time we got through immigration our bags were happily being taken on a mystery tour on the carousel. We grabbed them and made our way to the exit.

The doors parted and the cool air conditioned interior of the airport terminal was exchanged for a wall of heat. The nearby display boasted a whopping 98 degrees out there but this did not deter Mark from grabbing his ciggies for his first puff in nearly ten hours. We relaxed for a couple of minutes and while Mark was finishing his smoke I found that a cost of a taxi ride to downtown Chicago was fixed at $35 so we grabbed a cab and were off.

The expressway was stop start busy and the driver, who said precious little to us, changed lanes all the time vying for the quickest route through the traffic. We could see the skyscrapers of Downtown Chicago getting closer and it wasn’t long before we were being set down outside the HotelExecutivePlaza at 71 East Wacker Drive. Thirty five dollars plus a ten dollar tip saw our yellow cab leave and we entered into the hotel lobby.

Check in went very smoothly and we were soon on our way up to room 2002 on the 17^th floor. We were pleased to see that our room had a good view of the river and its environs. We sank into the sofa and relax for a while, taking in the city noises which were echoing around the nearby tall skyscrapers. It is about 4pm so we calculated that it must be 10pm back home – time for Mark to try out the triband phone and make a call home to Pam & the kids. It works so I take the opportunity to give Gina a quick ring to tell her that we made it safely to our first port of call.

A good shower, a change of clothes and a good shot of Powers Irish Whiskey and we head down to the hotel bar. At this time of day it was pretty empty except for a couple of black girls who, unlike everyone else, choose to ignore us and not ask us where did we get those wonderful accents. We sank three long cold beers before deciding to head out into the heat of the City in search of food.

The sun was mellowing in the early evening but the heat was heavy. We wandered a while taking in the new sights and sounds and eventually found ourselves outside a steak house just off State Street (I think that it was called Barbara’s) where Mark ordered a steak and I went for a dish of prawns with garlic mash. Mark’s steak was a huge chunk of meat that had been superbly cooked and was very tasty – I know this because I had a mouthful. My prawns were equally good. The menu had some interesting items on it and the black waiter was very helpful and answered my question “what is pumpernickel bread made of” with the answer “pumpernickel”. I thought that he was joking and I asked him again but I found out that he was deadly serious, his original answer stood. He was, however, totally lost when I asked what was pumpernickel. His answer was “ Pumpernickel is er, well…, um….   pumpernickel, dats wat it iz.”

Well fed and watered, Mark donned his Triumph baseball cap that followed him on all his trips, and we headed back out into the hustle and bustle of the City. Almost by osmosis we made our way back towards the hotel. We stopped for a while on the iron bridge near the ExecutivePlaza and watched the tourist boats going underneath us, quite eerie really because the footpath of the bridge was meshed iron and it was possible to look right down onto the river. Having watched enough we unanimously decided that we were whacked and, although it was only 8.30pm, we would head for an early night. A quick calculation in my head told me that it was 2.30am back home and it had been a busy day.  ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Chapter Two

Sunday 17^th June 2001

Going to bed early the day before was nice, we slept like logs, but you have to pay the price of waking up early as well. It’s 3.30am when we give up trying to go back to sleep and decide to get up. We spend a few minutes looking at the still buzzing Chicago skyline. The building of the Chicago Times opposite shows no visible signs of life and the nearby IBM skyscraper has most of its lights on but there’s nobody home. In stark contrast, the twin corn cob towers of the Marina City buildings (which have multi-storey car parks on the first twenty or so floors with apartments on the higher floors) remain cloaked in darkness – their inhabitants, unlike us, obviously enjoying a good night’s sleep. The police and ambulance sirens wail and echo eerily around the tall buildings. The fire trucks blast their horns and impatient drivers honk endlessly at each other. We watch late night revellers milling around beneath us. Don’t these people have homes to go to ?

Time dragged by and as we sipped our hospitality coffee we watched old episodes of ‘Taxi’ and ‘Mash’ on the TV.  Slowly the night clouds turned into a very dark navy blue before they were tugged away and the sky began to brighten and make way for the dawning of a new day, our second day Stateside. The cloudless sky was now a lovely clear light blue and the City, seventeen floors below us, was getting busier.

We took a shower and left the hotel at around 7am in search of an all American breakfast. Surprisingly, the streets were quieter than we had first thought and there were not as many bars/restaurants open for breakfast as we imagined would be. We ambled around and found our eaterie called Ronny’s Steak House which was under the noisy overhead rail system, called the Loop. Most people remember the Loop from the movie scene in French Connection where Popeye Doyle has a long heart stopping car chase beneath it.

We entered Ronny’s and got past the initial etiquette and language barriers and the million & one ways of cooking eggs and sat ourselves down in an alcove in the hugest green leather backed seats I have seen. I began talking to Mark in a kind of southern black American drawl (yes missy, dat kinda thang). His horrified wide eyes met mine, this wasn’t the usual reaction I got to my funny voices, laughter was normal - abject fear was not. He pointed fervently with his eyes, his foot getting ready to deliver a huge kick if I started talking that way again. A gradual understanding seeped through to me and I made a half turn and from the corner of my eye saw just about the biggest, tallest, widest coloured guy I have ever laid eyes on tucking into a breakfast in the alcove behind me. I prayed that the man was deaf or if he wasn’t then I just hoped that he was the forgiving sort. He left before us without resorting to mindless violence, he must have been deaf then, and we let out a sigh of relief. Getting killed on day two of our journey was not in the plan and I make a decision to look around in future before I try my hand at piss taking.

We’ve eaten plenty at Ronny’s and we plod heavily out the door en route for Union Station. We are planning on validating our Amtrak rail tickets this morning. We are booked on the California Zephyr leaving Chicago at 2.05pm tomorrow (Monday) and heading for Sparks, Nevada but with a two day stopover in Denver, Colorado – the mile high city. After a couple of false map reading exercises we eventually get to Union Station which we find on South Canal/Adams Street. We make our way into one of the many entrance doors and find ourselves at the top of a flight of pink Tennessee marble stairs leading down to a large, impressive waiting room which would look more at home as a classical concert hall than a station building. This is the place that the film The Untouchables was filmed in 1987 and the very steps on which we are standing are the setting for the shooting scene where the mother lets go of the baby carriage.

We stood for a second or so just taking in the sheer magnitude of the building for it truly is a large building, we looked in awe at how the light softens after being filtered through the hall’s high vaulted skylight.  A black guy weaved past us and, as he started walking down the stairs and without a care in the world, he burst into a melodic song with the obvious intent of catching the wonderful acoustics of the place. Following the minstrel down the steps we make our way across the hall past the long wooden benches. I noticed a fire regulations plaque on the wall decreeing that the area that we are in now has a capacity to hold 3,887 persons – how the hell do they know that ? Are all the people exactly the same size and weight? What if the hall just happened to be full of a bunch of fatties on their way to a good eating convention, how many of those could be squeezed in? If you had 7,774 dwarves they could all fit in by standing on each others shoulders, in fact if they all had good balancing skills you could pack them in three high and manage 11,661 but then surely most of them would miss their train and the ones at ground level would just keep poking their noses into other people’s business.

By following the information signs, which had been thoughtfully written in English without Spanish subtitles, we find ourselves in the snaking queue in the booking hall. We stand in line with a bunch of boy scouts on their way to a jamboree and eventually we are called over by the ticket clerk, a guy who reminded me somewhat of Jeremy the anglo-russian guy in the TV series “Airport”. We handed over our documents, things were going swimmingly. His screen told him that our tickets were OK to Denver and, yes, the clerk confirmed that all was well for the second leg from Denver to Sparks. He tapped again at his keyboard and brought up our LA to Florida booking which, at the beginning of week three, would take us on the Sunset Limited train from Los Angeles to Orlando in Florida where we would meet up with Gina, Pam & the kids for a two week stay in a rented villa in Kissimmee. It was to be a trip of a lifetime lasting four days we would leave Los Angeles, California and head east through Palm Springs into Arizona and Phoenix, Tucson, out into the very bottom of New Mexico and into  El Paso Texas, San Antonio (home of the Alamo), Houston and then across to Louisiana through New Orleans through Massachusetts, Alabama and finally into Florida. We had booked reclining seats on the California Zephyr for the two twenty four hour journeys between Chicago and Denver and Denver to Reno but we pushed the boat out for the second part of the trip by booking a first class cabin.

The clerk stopped tapping away at his keyboard and took his eyes of the screen in front of him. “Hmm” he said. “There appears to be a problem with the second train, it has been cancelled because of rail works”. Appears to be a problem was an understatement. We were really looking forward to relaxing on that train after a week’s hard off road riding up in the Sierra Nevada’s with Matt Ernst’s Nevada Motorcycle Adventures which was to fill out week two of our journey. We had even afforded ourselves the luxury of a first class de-luxe cabin with en suite facilities.

We’d already decided that it was inevitable that something would happen along the way to change our plans and we had made up our minds to go with the flow and just enjoy the holiday. We hadn’t expected the first fuck up to come quite so soon but we kept our cool and asked the clerk what we could do. He suggested that we might be able to get another train on a different day or even arrive via a different route. Our spirits lifted slightly and we asked him to go ahead and try. “Oh no sir” he said. “I can’t do that from here you’ll have to telephone reservations and make revised bookings and then come back to me here to confirm your travel warrant”. Huh  ? Seemed like a long way round of doing things but the man says that how its gotta be done so that’s how it’s gotta be done. We made our way through the crowds to the waiting room where we found a bank of payphones. Mark disappeared for a smoke while I rang the toll free number and explained our circumstances to the reservations clerk. It transpired that the Sunset Limited train was out of action until the line could be fixed but they did not know exactly when that would be. It was possible to reach Florida using our travel warrant by travelling from Reno to Chicago and the Chicago to Orlando or Reno to New York and then down the East coast to Florida. This would have added two or three thousand miles onto our journey and at least another four days.

We found our way back to the booking hall where we noticed  that ‘Jeremy’ was busy booking in the scout master and about fifty of his cublets so we waited in line again until a window became free. This time we get a strawberry blonde Lucille Ball lookalike who openly flirted with us because she just “loved our accents”. She made it clear that she was looking for a husband. I made it clear that we were looking for a way to get from Reno to Florida and, although I was married, Mark made it clear that he was available. In between flirting and her getting Mark’s hotel room number we decide to ditch the Sunset Limited train. We were then faced with problem number two – our Amtrak tickets were for all our Stateside journeys including the Chicago to Reno on the California Zephyr which was running OK.  We make up our mind to keep the Amtrak warrant intact and to buy two single tickets from Chicago to Reno at $254 each – this way we can reclaim the full cost of the Amtrak travel warrant when we get back home. Problem solved we leave luscious Lucille and her moist gusset and make our way to seek out Kathryn Bishop Baker who, as manager of Amtrak customer services, promised us that she would make a note of our problem so that it could be traced when Trailfinders try and recover the cost of our unused warrants. She is very helpful but I am, as ever, cynical and expect her to ignore the problems of the white trash honky limeys. As luck would have it we are not far away from Union Station bar where we sink a couple of beers and talk over how we are going to get from Reno to Florida. In between people watching and glancing at the baseball match on the overhead TV screens we decide that we don’t give a fuck – we’ll get there somehow and we head out of the station exit doors and into the blazing sun.

We crossed the river and walked the sidewalk beneath the towering 1400ft of the SearsTower which, once the tallest building in the World, rose majestically up from the ground next to us and stood proud against the clear blue cloudless sky. We walked the length of the busy Adams St until we met West Michigan Ave and took a left towards the Chicago Tribune building. We were now on the sunny side of the street and it was hot. The skyscrapers give shade but we were now out in the open and the midday sun was relentless. We eventually reached the bend in the river by the Wrigley building and, taking the advice of a pretty ticket seller from Dublin, we decided to take a Wandella boat trip along the Chicago River and out onto the lake.

We took the steps leading down to the riverside and found ourselves on a small area of concrete in the shade that had been designated the docking and waiting area. We got ourselves a ticket each from the ticket booth and some ice cold water from the vending machine and sat ourselves down to wait for the boat to arrive. As departure time grew near (still no boat) the waiting area got busier with more tourists, mostly Americans, who milled noisily around us.

We were still people watching when the boat pulled in and emptied its belly of the last cruisers. We made our way aboard and sat amidships just beyond the tarpaulin roof which gave shade to those wishing to escape the sun’s heat.

We chugged along the Chicago river (which we later found out is the only river in the world where the flow had been reversed by man and probably the only river in the World that gets dyed green on St. Patrick’s Day) heading upstream further into downtown Chicago for a look at some of the older buildings. We were more interested in some of the taller, newer high buildings which had Hispanics swinging from tiny rope cradles as they cleaned the office windows hundreds of feet above our heads. We watched as drops of water fell from their buckets – it took a very long time for the droplets to reach ground zero. Near the Sears building and the Union Station where we had been a couple of hours earlier the boat turned around and headed back the way we came. The guide pointed out that we could just see the trains in Union Station and that, whilst the railroad owned the land, it had sold the airspace above it which had been used to build huge buildings. This had effectively entombed the railway beneath the concrete monoliths above. We retraced our steps along the river towards the lock with the guide pointing out other various goodies along the way like “Oprah Winfrey used to live there” or  “these are the studios where they shoot The Jerry Springer Show”. We headed out past Navy Pier and its funfair rides and approached the Chicago lock (Lake Michigan is some eighteen inches higher than the river !) pausing along the way to wait for a break in the water feature, a huge stream of water jetting from one side of the river to the other. We find our window and pass by the sleeping jet only to turn and see it start up again just after we pass through.

We enter into the huge lock basin and the boat is moored against the side wall. The huge gates close behind us allowing the equally huge gates in front of us to open without flooding the whole of downtown Chicago. We rise slowly to the level of the waiting lake and the boat, unhooked, we headed out into a man made high walled harbour – the tour guide told of the many fatalities that take place along the harbour wall at night when joyriders leave the lock and head out onto the lake at top speed forgetting that there is a harbour wall in front of them. They usually find out just at the point when their faces pound into the hard rock and they disappear up their own arses.

We, on the other hand, leave the harbour the proper way through the gap in the wall and make our way across the much choppier open waters of Lake Michigan. The lake is actually huge, more of an inland sea than a lake, with banks hundreds of miles apart. Flying over the great lakes last year and this reminds you just how huge they are – take a look at the map next time and see how much space they take up in comparison with the size of jolly old Blighty. The boat bobs around along the coastline as we get fed more gossip and facts from the tour guide about the height and construction and name of the architect of each major skyscraper. The sky is still a rich blue and the lake reflects this. The sun is starting to burn now and we are thankful when the captain turns the boat to make his way back and we are in the shade.

Back into the lock the routine goes into reverse except that we have a little drama as the occupants of a small speedboat decide that instead of tying their boat to the wall they would just hold it instead. They were no match for the very strong currents generated by the opening and closing lock doors and they lost their grip and were tossed around amongst the whirlpools. By now they had saucer like eyes and looked genuinely scared. In amongst their panic one of them managed to start the outboard motor and gave it full revs to escape the clutches of the swirling water around his boat. Unfortunately for him he wasn’t concentrating on where he was heading and it was too late before he noticed that he was in fact on a collision course with our boat. His little boat smashed into our hull with a thud. El Capitaine of our pleasure boat was not overly impressed but kept his cool. He tied them to our boat and the waters slowly lost their anger. They looked very much relieved at being allowed to live again and went on their way with the flotilla of other small boats with embarrassed fixed grins on their faces.

The trip had taken an hour and a half, just enough time to feel the skin tightening effects of the harsh sun. Being a tourist was thirsty work and we disembarked by East Wacker Drive and headed up State Street. We were thirsty and decided to get a Coke in the nearby Baskin Robbins. This was easier said than done. There appeared to be a language barrier in that the petite asian girl (asian as in Vietnamese etc) serving us didn’t speak English. She passed us on to a colleague who was programmed to take orders for ice cream or Dunkin Donuts but not for Coke on its own. In between all this we are being hassled by homeless guys asking for the price of a coffee. We eventually get passed on to asian number three who can speak English, who listens to what we want and then politely tells us that the Coke machine is broken. This has taken us nearly fifteen minutes – we are so frustrated, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck ! We leave Baskin Robins and look back along State Street and we spot Guvnors Bar a little way up the street it is whispering “cold beer, cold beer” into our ears  and we decide to go there instead. Wishing to avoid more homeless beggars we chose not to sit outside and hogged a couple of stools at the bar where we sank a two or three big Buds. The food looked appealing, breakfast had been a long ways back, so we ordered Chicken Ceasar salads and relaxed in our air conditioned surroundings. An hour or so later and suitably fed, watered and cooled down we stepped back out into the street and into the heat of the Chicago afternoon. Our hotel was only a block away (and, as we had found out from our boat trip, next door to Al Capone’s prohibition speakeasy tucked away inside the dome of the now crumbling terracotta building) and it wasn’t long before we were flaked out on the bed.

I tried to ring Gina at home but she wasn’t there. I spoke to Carl and asked him to tell his mum about the change to our travel plans and that we would let her know some time about what we were planning to do. Actually, what were we planning to do ? Mark and me chatted for a while on our options. I fancied going through Death Valley in a hire car to Las Vegas which, geographically, opened the door for Mark’s hankering to go to the Grand Canyon. We could then fly from Las Vegas to Orlando – but it was early days yet and we had plenty of time to make up our minds. We checked the clock. It’s gone 5pm and the old tart at the railway station hadn’t rung for Mark so it was time for a snooze before getting ready to face the Chicago nightlife.

Well refreshed by the snooze we woke up at 8.30pm to the sound of thunder crashing nearby. Streaks of lightning filled the sky and we watched the storm raging away behind the skyscrapers out over the Lake. We had a few close flashes and rumbles but for the most part the angry clouds stayed away. We both felt a little off balance, a little out of kilter with the World – probably the change in time zone catching up with us - we decided that we hadn’t quite adjusted our time clocks for a night out on the razz so we headed for the little 24/7 across the street, avoiding the beggars along the way and stepping over the two that sat in the entrance to the store.

Back at the hotel room we pigged out on pop and crisps. The time difference was taking its toll again and our eyes were very heavy - we eventually fell into bed exhausted at midnight having watched and old re run of FawltyTowers. Sweet dreams……..

Chapter Three

Monday 18^th June 2001

It’s 4.30am and the American Dream Machine changes the weather for the start of the working week – it’s raining, not heavy though and it is still warm and humid. It’s about the right time to make a call to the UK. I dig out the number and get through to Nick Young at Trailfinders and explain in detail the upheaval that we have had with our plans and I ask him to log the fact that we’ve had a “hiccup” and that we will deal with it when we get back home next month. “Don’t worry, Mr Lloyd” says Nick  “I cannot foresee a problem. We’ll sort it out when you return to the UK.”  ( I should interject here that Nick wasn’t joking – Trailfinders were superb and dealt with the refund with the minimum of fuss).

I put down the receiver and felt more comfortable that we had made contact with the boys back in jolly old Blighty. I made my way across the room and stood by the partially open window and watched the backward flowing Chicago River and all the little people seventeen storeys below on their way to work, all wearing the uniform of cream coloured macs, umbrella and clutching the compulsory cup of Starbucks coffee.

We had to check out this morning and so we did not want to tour the city in search of breakfast – we’ll eat in at the hotel – what a good idea – Hah ! Breakfast was not a memorable affair. We stood in the long queue with the suits and, looking very underdressed, we were shown to our table. The suits were in town for a conference and they arrived at their tables spouting corporate speak and, using their best pretend manners, they blasted their way through breakfast being ultra polite to each other. In hindsight one good smelly fart from me might have brought them all back down to earth but I did not want to let the side down. The service was crap and the food was very bland, not quite what we had expected. However, we eventually managed to extract ourselves from the dining area and, as it had now stopped raining, popped out of the hotel and did some more people watching leaning up against the chunky white stone balustrade by the side of the river. We chatted about how to get to the station and I thought that it might be pleasant to walk it again, after all it wasn’t that far – we had walked it only yesterday. Mark didn’t argue, he didn’t care, he just agreed, finished his smoke and we made our way lazily back to the hotel elevators (you see I can speak fluent American) and hit the “up” button.

It didn’t take long to pack our suitcases and get all our paperwork, tickets etc into accessible pockets for easy retrieval. It was too early to go to the station so we found ourselves with a little bit of time to waste. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves engaged in the old man’s pastime of “watch the workman” – you know the sort of old man I mean, he’s the old retired one stood there with his little shopping bag watching the man dig a hole, or the crane lifting girders, he’ll stand there all day just watching men work. Down at street level two builders were preparing the ropes for fitting to a cradle which they were going to use to pull themselves up the building next door to our hotel. We watched for a while but got bored as they seemed to work in slow motion and it was ages before they had achieved lift off from the ground on their wobbly platform and it took forever for them to winch themselves just a couple of feet.

By the time we were ready to leave our room a quick glance out of the window showed that the builders still had not made any significant progress so we gave up being old men, made a final check round the room and, satisfied that we had not left any crusty pants behind, made our way down to reception and checked out.

The sun was now out as we made our way along State St., our suitcases making loud regular rumbling noises on the sidewalk  (see ! more Americanese). It had been much easier the day before without the luggage and, coupled with the 77degree mid morning Chicago heat it was beginning to get just a little like hard work. We eventually reached the corner of State St. and Adams and made took a right turn down towards the Sears building which we could see in the distance and which we knew was just a stone’s throw from the station.

We must have dragged those cases almost a mile and a half through the hustle & bustle of Downtown Chicago and we were pleased to finally get into the Union Station. I was sweating buckets by now and was feeling pretty sticky and uncomfortable so we stopped and bought some cold bottled water and rested for a few moments. We followed the signs to the baggage check in, stood patiently in the queue and checked our bags onto the California Zephyr without any problem. We traipsed around for a few minutes looking for a customer service rep, find one and explained again the problem of our cancelled tickets and, so that we can make a claim when we get back to the UK, we asked if we could have a letter on Amtrak headed paper confirming that our second train had been cancelled. “No need “ says the rep. “That won’t be a problem so you won’t need a letter”. I’m not convinced but then she swipes us off our feet by telling us that, in any case, the train had been reinstated late yesterday and was now running. I’m getting a little agitated at this stage but she does proffer some additional information that does put a slightly different complexion on the whole issue in that the train was now only going as far as New Orleans.

We think it through. What the fuck, who cares – we’ve cancelled now, our bags are already checked in under our new tickets. To reverse all of this we would have to recover our bags, get a refund on our new tickets, validate our old travel warrant, check in again on our old ticket and then, in three weeks time, we would end up in New Orleans and still be 500 miles short of our Orlando target so we choose to put the Sunset Limited trip from LA to Orlando out of our heads

We make our way to the station waiting room which is akin to an airport departure lounge but a lot more basic, actually bordering on seedy I would say. We watch the comings and goings of Americans as different trains are called for boarding. We even catch sight of an Amish guy dressed in the Amish uniform of jeans, braces, waistcoat,  grey shirt, long beard and tall hat. We wondered what he was doing here because I thought (probably misinformedly) that Amish did not travel on mechanical machinery preferring one horsepower instead.

Just before our train was called for boarding I sensed a stirring in the waiting area. People were edging their way closer to the check in counter and they were gradually, and almost unknowingly, making a queue. Was this some kind of Sixth Sense that the yanks had ? Do they see dead ticket collectors ? Whatever it was it worked for them because within a matter of minutes the boarding call had been made for the California Zephyr and the rush began in earnest. Mark and I played it cool, we were British after all, and we stayed seated until the rear of the queue had reached a point not far from where we were and we joined the weaving snake shuffling forwards and onwards. We eventually reached the check in and we  handed over our tickets, made our way onto the platform where we found the long majestic silver Amtrak train waiting for us. We hauled ourselves up the steps and into the coach.

It now became apparent as to why there had been an indecent rush to get first in the queue back there in the station waiting area. The train was crammed but, as there were no seat reservations in place, it was pretty much on a first come, first served basis. We wandered aimlessly up the train and, decided, in the end, that we would have to sit next to strangers. The carriage seats were two abreast and we were right next to empty aisle seats, one behind each other so we stowed our hand luggage and plonked ourselves down. I sit down and I see Mark get talking to the youngish but rather large brutish looking redneck who he finds out is called Max. I, on the other hand, have struck lucky. I get Megan, a pretty typically American looking girl in her mid twenties who is travelling alone. I get talking to Megan whilst Mark tries to squeeze more room from his cramped space due to the fact that Max the Redneck likes to sit with his legs splayed open which has invaded Mark’s personal space. Of course, if it had been me I would have looked the redneck in the eye, spat my chaw at his feet and said “now lookey here you brute, just you move those thick set legs of yorn away from my personal space  or I’ll whack you one do y’hear” but Mark was obviously more of a coward than me.

I was looking forward to my journey now, sweet Megan filling my mind with all the fantasies I have ever read over the years in the letters pages of top shelf books. We were already fifteen minutes into the journey and, so far, she had resisted the temptation to gently rub my inner thigh with her smooth silky hands and I was beginning to despair – could these stories in Mayfair be made up ?. Any minute now, I thought, she’ll make a lunge for my crotch. The desperation was interrupted by the ticket inspector who, when he finds out that Mark and I are travelling together, asks Max the redneck if he wouldn’t mind sitting next to my Megan. “No !” I shouted in my head, “She’s mine” I just knew that within the next half hour she would have been humping me but now all I could hear was Max sweet talking my gal. What torture. I half look over my shoulder from time to time but it’s obvious that Max isn’t her sort = she being the gentile sort not into hunting and fishing - so I relax a little.

It is mid afternoon and we begin our 1,038 mile journey to Denver. Looking out of the window we soon discover that there is nothing to see except the rusting wrecks of old automobiles in almost every back yard of homes that line the route. The phenomena of collecting old scrap seems to have caught on in the States, we notice it a lot in most places that we visit. Matt Ernst, who we meet later in Nevada, explains that parts are often hard to come by so if you are hundreds of miles out in the plains it is best to keep all the scrap that you can as it may save you hundreds of miles in taking a trip to get a part for a broken down vehicle. I suppose it makes sense on a practical level but on an aesthetic level it makes the countryside look like a junkyard. The surrounding countryside is mind numbingly flat and remains that way for mile after mile after mile. Mark takes the opportunity to slip away to the smoking car for a puff or, at longer station stops, he stretches his legs on the platform and takes his nicotine al fresco. We go through changing weather, sometime hot and sometimes rain but the surrounding area remains flat. As it gets dark we can see lightning illuminate the storm clouds miles away in the distance and, the darker it gets, the more spectacular and frequent these shows become.

The conductor comes around dishing out free pillows but selling genuine, much sought after AMTRAK blankets for $8. We accept the pillows but decline the blankets and as we start to settle down for the night in our reclining chairs I become increasingly alarmed about the possibility of snoring loudly through the night. I am slightly panicked by the thought of keeping everyone awake and I become even more self aware of the problem. I dig down into my travel bag and find my ‘appliance’ that I had spent an absolute fortune having made by my dentist back home. It consists of two gum shield like fittings for the top and bottom jaw which are linked together at the back of the mouth. When fitted the theory is that it pushes your lower jaw forward and stops the back of the throat constricting and, consequently, eases snoring. In fact it makes the wearer look like Jaws in James Bond. It is approaching 11pm and I’m getting tired. I slip in my appliance and turn towards Mark and, slowly opening my lips, I give him an ‘appliance smile’. This cracks him up.

We carried onwards and ever onwards during the night. I awoke a couple of times when we arrived a stations in the dead of night, stopped to let freight pass or heard the rain patter against the window as we weathered a local storm but Mark tells me the next morning that the ‘appliance’ seemed to do its job and I didn’t keep everyone awake. Phew ! That’s a relief. While everyone sleeps I take the opportunity of using the washing facilities in the belly of the train. The confined space of the washroom isn’t helped by the swaying of the train but I feel much refreshed after washing all the relevant bits and having a shave. I catnap during the following hour or so during which time others are starting to stir. Megan had left the train early on in the journey and the Redneck not long after so we had the luxury of being able to spread out a bit. The countryside carries on passing outside the window and we begin the day with a little people watching.

We hear tales of a locust plague sweeping the very plains that we had just crossed but luckily we did not chance upon any swarms as we headed through the night. No, my window was totally free of insect remains. Unbothered by the creepy crawlies we concentrate on waking ourselves up. Mark visits the buffet car and we are soon having our first intake of coffee and we roll on towards Denver….

Chapter Four

Tuesday 19^th June 2001

It’s getting towards 8.00am and we near the end of the first leg of our adventure on the California Zephyr. We’ve passed through Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado just missing the top edge of Kansas along the way. The journey was over very flat terrain and perhaps the only excitement was crossing the great Mississippi river. The Colorado tracks are very bumpy in places and we stick with our average 43 miles per hour, the train dancing heavily as it goes.

The train finally reached the station and then promptly reversed out again into the marshalling yard where we sat for over half an hour with the station a tantalising few hundred yards up the track whilst they messed around hooking and unhooking freight cars that had travelled with us. It was hot and sticky and we were annoyed. We wondered why they could not have done this after the Denver passengers had got off the train.

By the time we finally get off the train we are four hours behind the timetabled schedule. We waited in the large waiting room at the station. It took ages before the staff opened the baggage hall for us to collect our suitcases. When we finally got our luggage back we realised that it must travel in a part of the train open to the elements because it is was absolutely filthy. The pristine green case that was handed over to the care of Amtrak in Chicago now resembled the bags of someone who had just returned from a round the world trip. To say it was dusty would have been an understatement.

We pushed ourselves past the queue of travellers and made our way out of the impressive Union Station in Wynkoop Street. We have made reservations at the Best Western Central Denver Hotel and we grab a cab and ask to be taken to 200 West 48^th Street. The cabbie looks blank so we ask him for the central Best Western, after all it can’t be that far if it’s central can it? He finally works out where the hotel is and we start off on our journey – we appear to be going through back street neighbourhoods and it seems to take forever – I get silly ideas into my head about being taken somewhere barren and robbed at gun point but I also think that this guy must be riding round in circles to clock up the fare.

When we eventually arrive at our destination I sigh with relief and it is obvious from its location that the Best Western Central is far from central being some five miles from the station in downtown Denver and I secretly admonish myself for thinking badly of the cabbie. In the dry heat of the day we unload our bags and tip the driver. We are pleased that the receptionist allows us to check in early and we make our way up to our room. The view turns out not to be magnificent but we don’t really care.

We settle in, take a shower and have a change of clothes and then it’s off to the hotel bar, except that it is currently midday and the Best Western bar does not open until 4pm. It is hot, we are thirsty from the trail and a hint of panic sets in until the receptionist points us in the direction of the Holiday Inn across the road. “they’re open” she drawls. Welcome words we think and make our way to the hotel door. “Would you like a courtesy bus to take you over there?” she asks. We look at each other puzzled and she repeats her question. We confirm that we had understood her correctly in the first place and that the white building across the road is where we should be heading (and not some Holiday Inn four or five miles away) and she tells us that we are correct. “In that case we’ll walk” we say and with that we set off on our hike of almost three hundred yards. The Yanks can’t be that lazy surely!

The bar of the Holiday Inn was set in the middle of a large room cum restaurant and it was deserted. The bar tender appeared from a side door and welcomed us and made some small talk with us whilst we gulped down our first cold beer of the day. This was swiftly followed by another at which point the barman, whose name I forget but was probably Randy or something similar, sweet talked us into having a steak sandwich for brunch. Whilst we waited for our sustenance to arrive we watched “Randy” stock up his bar with liquers. We were curious and he explained that the hotel policy was that each time the bar closed the spirits have to be taken down from the optics and off the bar and stored in locked cupboards. “This means that you have to set the bar up each & every day” we enquired. “Yep, kinda crazy ain’t it” rasped Randy. We agree.

We sit and reflect upon the train journey, Union Station in Chicago, the characters on the train itself and then we embroiled ourselves in talk about the car wrecks in the back yards of the Mid West homes. We reckon that all that raw material could be recycled to provide the United States with enough metal for the next century. A workman, who believes that he is Daddy Cool arrives at the bar, it’s obvious that he’s in love with himself, we make some small talk but nothing memorable though.

Our steak sandwiches arrive and they turn out to be sides of beef with bread either side – they are huge! We munch our way through with the help of a couple more beers and decide, after putting the World to rights, that we should make our way back to the hotel for an afternoon kip. We cross the scrubland (coupled with the heat it is almost desert like) negotiate the rail tracks and then the road before we reach the sanctuary of the hotel courtyard.

We fall onto our beds and soon we disappear into a wonderful afternoon alcoholic haze and slumber through until later in the evening. We are still tired and give up on the idea of going into Downtown Denver and opt for a drink at the hotel bar and a meal later in the Palm Grill restaurant. The drinks were welcome, it was still very hot, but the meal and the service was abysmal. We chose to call it a day and get some shuteye. As we get into the lift a Chinese delivery boy joins us and we are trapped in the elevator with that old familiar and inviting smell of a Chinese take away. We wished that we had done that instead.

Back in the room we grab the ice bucket, fill it from the machine tucked away in the corridor, and each pour ourselves three fingers worth of Powers Irish Whiskey. The smell of the Chinese food was still in our nostrils, it smelled good, and we resolve to have a chinky the next day. The Powers starts to work on our eyelids and we simply cannot fight it any more. We give in to the Sandman and drift off into a deep sleep.

Chapter Five

Wednesday 20^th June 2001

We have a light breakfast over which make the decision to go into Downtown Denver today with the specific tasks of getting hold of an updated the California Zephyr timetable so that we don’t miss the train tomorrow morning and also to see a bit of the City.

The hotel courtesy bus dropped us off on the corner of Larimer Street and 16^th which is the beginning of the 16^th Street shopping precinct that is a mile long and bursting with shops all the way. We both agree that the girls would love it here but have to concede that our credit cards would take a bashing and a half. 

The yanks have even laid on free buses that run the length of 16^th Street but we chose to walk and soak up the ambience. We search and eventually find a drug store which enables us to stock up on essentials such as foot powder and plasters. I try on a pair of sunglasses in the shop next door but even the petite Chinese girl who is enthralled by our accents cannot part me from my dollars.

We reached the top of 16^th Street, past the Colorado State University and onwards past the Civic Center which was mostly the court house (where we see low life drawing heavily on their cigarette butts, presumably having a last puff before the might of the US criminal justice system lays a heavy hand on their shoulder) and up to the State Capitol Building. We look and tick it off in our minds as a place visited although we couldn’t actually be arsed to clamber up all those steps in the dry heat to actually go inside the thing. Still we were right outside it so it counted. We take a piss in the local metro train station and, as it’s very hot and sticky, we buy some bottled water.

We cross over the road and into the park where we find a Brandenburg Gate lookalike and take refuge in  the shade of the concrete pillars sip from our water bottles and watch the World go by. The cloudless sky is a deep blue and the modern skyscrapers of downtown Denver rise like stalagmites from hazy ground. It all looks very sanitized and clean. We look around and discover that Denver maintains its clean look by allowing only Hispanics to do all the cleaning jobs – we conclude that Spanish speakers must have a special talent for keeping house. So far we have warmed to Denver and have noticed that the begging problems that we encountered in Chicago are missing from this City.

We ambled back down 16^th Street stopping at Barnes & Noble as we went so that we could cool down in the air conditioned shop and also to look for some detailed Nevada maps in readiness for our trip with Matt Ernst the next week. The travel section was well stocked and it wasn’t long before I had found what I was after – I love maps – and I knew that I would spend hours poring over this little beauty. It helped that we had been in Nevada the previous year and we had a rough idea of the geography of the place. We already knew from Matt Ernst that we would be accompanied on this year’s ride in the Sierras by a group from Wisconsin. Mark Jenkins, a New Yorker that we had met last year and stayed in contact with, told us that these guys would be known as Cheddarheads or Cheeseheads as Wisconsin is the dairy state of America. Armed with this we thought we would see if these guys had a sense of humour and we searched the Barnes & Noble shelves in search of good chedderhead joke books. Having spent a lot of time looking (some of it with the help of the Barnes & Noble assistant) we discover that most ethnic American jokes are aimed fairly & squarely at Rednecks which I suppose is a throwback to the Civil War North/South divide. Anyway, cheddarhead jokes were few and far between so we ditch the idea and decide to rely on good old British Humour instead.

We found our way back to the Union Station where we popped in to double check timetables and station layouts etc (always handy to know your surroundings especially if you later find yourself in a rush to get somewhere). The lack of urgency in the place tells us that being on time is not a habit that folks get used to in these parts. We think back to the day before and muse that if our train was four hours late coming in then this could be a regular occurrence which would mean that it would be probable that our train from Denver to Reno could well be four hours late leaving ! We take in the ambience of the inside of the station building. In a way it is very similar to Chicago’s Union Station but nowhere as big and as opulent. The large seats look like and are laid out like grand church pews and you can almost sense the theatre of the place as it would have been 120 years ago.

We leave the station and step back out into the sun. The midday heat is getting to us and we notice that being in Wynkoop Street we are also right next to the Wynkoop brewery (Denver is awash with micro breweries and is famous for its ranges of different beers).

We chance upon the doorway of the Wynkoop brewery bar and restaurant and make our way towards two empty bar stools which had our names on them. The place was bright, airy and well maintained and had an array of ‘home brews’ on tap as well as some ‘guest’ beers from the UK.

We slowly supped three pints (yes they actually did it properly here and served by the pint) over the course of a couple of hours and decided to have another look at the main shopping drag.

We retraced our steps back along 16^th Street but, by now, the late afternoon heat was robbing our bodies of strength. We plopped ourselves down on a vacant bench and spent an hour or so just watching the World go by. We saw wondrous things like a small, but vociferous, protest march outside a record shop (no idea what that was about – probably ran out of the latest Dolly Parton single), we witnessed the police department swoop on a gang of youths who had committed the heinous crime of skateboarding on the path – one lad was actually laid on the ground and handcuffed – overkill or what !  By 6pm we were both experiencing the same weird feeling that the area was beginning to fill up with nutcases. It started innocently enough when an old, well used and not totally sober Hispanic tried to sell us a battery razor that we surmised he had just stolen from the nearby pharmacy store (we thought this because it was still boxed and price tagged). When we told him we didn’t want to buy it he then thought he would hedge his bets by asking us, and showing us in an animated way, if we wanted to purchase a shave from it instead – We politely decline but his market stall selling techniques have attracted like minded crowds and the atmosphere is ‘heavier’ than we feel comfortable with. Almost by telepathy we rise together and make a gentle unrushed departure from the crowd who were all vying for customers for their contraband.

Thoughts of the previous night’s take away entered our heads and we headed down to the historic part of town by Cherry Creek in search of a Chinese restaurant. We were singularly unsuccessful in our quest and agreed to call it a day. We telephoned the hotel courtesy bus and 30 minutes and a ten dollar tip later we were back at our hotel trying to extract information about the Chinese take away from the receptionist. She gives us a number and we go up to our room to rest. Mark crashed out and I tried to ring home but UK time was about 6.15am and there was no answer and I guessed that Gina and the kids were still in the Land of Nod. I grabbed the remote and channel hopped but most programmes were showing details of a serious tornado – the more I watched the more the realisation dawned upon me that we were in fact extremely close to this whirling pit of angry weather and I began to take far more interest. Mark snored on gently whilst I watched the plotting of the tornado on the television screen – it was heading our way and warnings were being issued by the TV presenters.

The tornado situation was gradually unfolding into a serious full scale alert. Scenes of devastation at Denver airport were being shown and this was only a few miles away from where we were sat (or in Mark’s case – lying prostrate on the bed snoring loudly). The sky outside was very dark and the wind and rain was whipping hard against the window panes, the light was an eerie sepia brown and traffic on the nearby highway was moving at nothing more than a snail’s pace.

Against my better judgement I woke Mark who was decidedly grumpy at being forced out of his sleep. I tried to explain to him the seriousness of the situation and stressed that an alert had been issued telling all citizens to head for the basement areas of their buildings and take refuge. At first he was unforgiving – I was Mr Bastard who had come along to spoil his sleep but with a few puffs on a cigarette and a few moments absorbing what was being said in the television news report he was beginning to understand that, at that moment, we were not ideally placed in the World to guarantee absolute safety.  Cowardice won us over and we decided to head for the hotel cellar – as in beer cellar – and we rode out the storm in the bar.

The raging winds died down and the storm passed over. We later discover that the major part of the tornado had missed us by just 20 miles to the East of Denver and it had left 200 people homeless in the small township of Watkins. The television beamed in pictures and eye witness accounts spoke of and video footage showed scenes where houses were pounded relentlessly for fifteen minutes by hailstones the size of golf balls.

We were hungry now but not in the mood to go into Downtown Denver. We recalled the previous night when we shared the elevator with the delivery boy bringing in a Chinese take-away (or carry outs as the Yanks call them). We asked the reception girls if they knew where the delivery guy had come from – of course they knew and it was only a matter of minutes before we were back in our room ordering food from the Golden Dragon. Having ordered, we waited for what seemed like an eternity before our doorbell rang and cash was exchanged for food. Thirty bucks bought us more than we could possibly eat and we ended the night with full bellies, it also served to remind us that we hadn’t eaten since the previous day. The tornado reports on the television were now old news and old re runs were top of the bill on the box so we hit the sack and start mentally preparing for the next leg of our journey.

Chapter Six

Thursday 21st June 2001

We both wake up at about 5.45 am and agree that having an early night meant that we had enjoyed a good night’s sleep and we were ready to take whatever the day could throw at us. I scramble around in my jeans pocket and find the telephone number of the automated Amtrak information line which tells me that our 8.25am departure was now planning to take place at 11.25am. Prophecies from the day before were becoming true – we must be witches for who else could have foretold such a happening. The delay did not phaze us as it now meant that we had three extra hours. We get ourselves ready and have a leisurely breakfast, check out and wait on the forecourt for the courtesy bus. We have it all to ourselves and the Hispanic driver tells us that not only did he complete his own shift yesterday but he then went on to cover for his amigo by taking on his night shift as well and here he was back today to do his own shift. He revels in the fact that he hasn’t slept for 36 hours – no mean feat in Denver where the altitude and daytime heat are surely conducive to sleep. Manuel speeds his way towards Downtown Denver but from my back seat vantage point I cannot help noticing the reflection of his eyes in the mirror. He can barely keep them open and he is displaying all the usual signs that a weary driver does when he is confronted with the fact that he either stops and rests soon or he drives off the road asleep – things such as opening the eyes wide, rubbing them with your fingers, opening the window – I’m a little uneasy at this stage. Mark, who doesn’t have access to Manuel’s reflection is totally oblivious to the fact that he is about to die and in desperation I try and spark up a conversation with Manuel to keep him awake. I soon run out of things to say and our tired Hispanic’s only interest anyway is to shut his eyes and sleep.

Am I pleased when we reach Downtown Denver and I can see the Corrs baseball team stadium which sits adjacent to grand façade of Union Station. We pay off Manuel and I get the chance to tell Mark how lucky he is to be alive – Mark thinks that I am overreacting – hindsight is such a wonderful thing. We take a look at the entrance top the station. The stop at Denver was there when the original Sante Fe Railroad first reached the City in 1881 but the station was built some thirteen years later in 1894.

The station clock tells us that it is 10am and we have arrived in plenty of time. We take our luggage to the check in where the clerk tells us that as we are finishing our journey at Sparks that “No can do Sir” which translated actually meant that Sparks does not have a facility to handle baggage offloads so we are going to have to store our worldly goods with us in the train carriage. This does not fill me with glee. Seating on the railcars is like the upper deck of a bus with all the toilet facilities and luggage storage areas below on the lower deck. Getting on and off the railcars is done via the doors on the lower deck – this means that at every stop we will have to take a cursory glance out of the window to make sure that some low life isn’t making off with our bags.

We trundle our cases back into the station waiting room and choose our space to sit. There are not many people waiting but this changes as time moves on. My guess is that “those in the know” ie anyone American, always expect the damn train to be late so they don’t turn up on time anyway. Around eleven thirty or so the station starts to fill up and we notice the latecomers turn into eager beavers moving themselves and their luggage closer to the station entrance doors. It turns into yet another people watching event and a common pattern emerges which starts with a small shuffle in the seat followed by gradual, almost undetectable edging of the luggage with the feet moving it gently closer to the departure area. Some of the more brash Americans just upped sticks and plonked themselves down as close as possible like Jumbos at the end of the runway at Heathrow waiting for the order to take off down the platform.

With all pre flight checks completed we watched as the gates were opened and the echo from the PA system announced something unintelligible which made the brash Americans take flight on to the platform at full pelt in search of their favoured seats. In true British style we walk unphased along the platform and find our seats on the upper deck of the car three which just happens to be the smoking car (smoking is only allowed on the smoking room on the lower level of the designated car). We set our luggage down in the lower deck storage compartment in the hope that it will still be there when we reach Sparks the next day.

With the train settled we eventually pull away from Denver Station at around noon. We start our journey on the Union Pacific Railroad out past the Corrs Stadium and must have notched up at least 200 yards when we hear a commotion coming from behind us. We hear a woman’s voice calling out a name and within seconds she is tearing past us running with flailing arms squealing out the word “Jack”.  Somebody pulls the communication cord and the train stops. Whispers abound and we soon find out that it appears that she has left her thirteen year old son “Jack” behind on Denver Station.

Sweet l’ol Jack is eventually found safe and well on the platform and is swiftly reunited with the train by the staff.  Hopefully the mother will tie the little bastard down and we can get on with our journey. She must have read my thoughts because we see her coming back down the aisle with sweet Jack held firmly by the wrist. We begin our departure again.

It is starting to get warmer and I am glad of the “Wet Ones” and the bottled water purchased at the station kiosk before we left. We are now starting to get into how things work on AMTRAK. The brash Americans have been located in the limited seating available in the Observation Car all hoping to get the best view of the Rocky Mountains. Jack’s mother has taken up residence in the smoking room with a bottle of gin and a whisky drinking born again biker Vietnam Vet. The train seems to be full of tits and bums for us to stare at and we can’t help but look – this is at the seedier end of people watching but it certainly rates as a worthwhile and enjoyable pastime.

We pull out of the suburbs of Denver past the trailer parks and still more rusting old scrap cars in back yards. Within a few miles the scenery starts to change and we start a steep climb up into the Rockies.

The journey onwards and upwards is mind numbingly slow with constant stops to allow freight to pass (most US railroads are owned by the freight companies and that takes precedence over passenger trains). Between moving and stopping for freight we also grind to a halt on more than one occasion for “track work”. In one instance they were literally laying the track in front of the train so that it could continue. Nearly three hours passed and with only around sixty miles under our belt we reached our first stop of Fraser also known as Winter Park – obviously a good ski resort but not at the end of June. The platform sign tells us that we have reached an elevation of 8,574 ft above sea level which has been borne out by the fact that we had passed through some nice scenery to get this far. We check the timetable which tells us that we should have reached Fraser at 11am but because of our late departure this is amended to around 2pm. A quick check of the watch shows us that it is actually 3.20pm and by the time we pull out of the Winter Park station we are running over four hours late – quite an achievement for a sixty mile journey and more reminiscent of the M25 on a Friday night than the great Colorado outdoors.

The Vietnam Vet surfaces from the smoking room on several occasions on his journey to the bar for a refill sporting his Harley Davidson T-shirt the back of which lets all and sundry know that Mr Hard Nut was in the 86^th Airborne. L’ol Jack’s mum pops out on a much less frequent basis to go to her cabin to make sure that l’ol Jack and his younger brother are still on board. This continues for a couple more hours until the railcar attendant notices that both are reaching the point of alcoholic paralysis and reminds them that smoking rooms are for smoking only – no alcohol. Mr Hard Nut is given the option of either going back to his cabin and having a sleep or being turfed off at the next stop. I thought that this was the time when Mr. 86^th airborne might have tried to be macho and squash the railcar attendant in his iron fist but, no, he was as quiet as a puppy and decided instead to head back to his cabin for some shut eye.

It is slow going. The lack of speed is tedious and this sets the trend for the whole journey. We stop and start several times to allow freight to be moved ahead of us and we have reached the point where we are now 6 hours behind the schedule set out on the timetable. It doesn’t help matters that the PA system in our railcar has now decided to either work in a whisper, work intermittently or not at all and we spend some of our journey straining our ears to pick up snippets of information about stations, dining cars, buffet cars etc. This invariably leads to problems when we fancy a coffee and discover that one of the missed announcements was to let us know that the buffet car was now closed. We decided that we could kill some time by having a meal in the dining car and Mark takes a stroll down to restaurant and comes back with a firm booking – we are eating at 7.45pm.

We carry on people watching and admire the scenery along the Canyon that we are passing through. The Roaring Fork River races alongside us on its journey to meet the great Colorado river.We look up and see the highway cut into the rock and also clock the fact that the lorry struggling to pull its load up the mountainside is still moving a greater pace than us. We pull into Glenwood Springs (Doc Holliday is buried here) which is the stopping point for those wanting Aspen and the train loses a few passengers. We look along the luggage racks and see just where each person is getting off (the railcar attendant writes down a three letter code  on a baggage like ticket and wedges it into the luggage rail above your head so that he knows when its your turn to escape) – quite few more are destined for Salt Lake City so by the time we get to Reno we will be running fairly light.

The train starts to pull out of Glenwood Springs and a quick check of Mark’s watch and a rumble in our well travelled bellies tells us that it is time for us to dine. We reach the entrance to the dining car and see a few empty tables so we grab the nearest and seat ourselves. By this time the Maitre D’ sees us and makes his way over to us. He is a tall black guy in his forties who reminds me somewhat of John Shaft from the great seventies movie. He greets us by saying “You holler when you in my house, you waits to be invited to be seated”. At first I thought that he was joking but a second look at his unsmiling face tells us that he is actually quite serious. Time for a good British retort we think and I fight back by reminding him that we are visitors to his Country and, apart from the fact that there was no-one at the door to greet us, we are not mind readers and we used our own initiative to seat ourselves. Honour is satisfied, the Maitre D’ brushes off his earlier comment with a smile and gets us the menu. As we didn’t hear the original dining car announcement we are amongst the last diners to book so, understandably, not all the menu choices are available. We both go for the chef’s special of pork chops and apple which with a good glass of wine turned out to be a surprisingly good meal. Suitably impressed and feeling well fed and watered we head back to our seats.

The dusk is giving in to the night sky as we cross the state line into Utah and the thinning out of passengers at previous stops now means that Mark and I can take up a row of seats each and spread out. I read a little more of my book but the gentle sway of the slow moving railcar soon begins to hang heavy on my eyelids and I decide to give in and I turn off my overhead light and soon fall asleep. We each awake occasionally either as someone brushes by on their way for a midnight pee or as we stop a some remote station but the gentle clackity clack soon soothes us back into peaceful rest. Sometimes I look out of the window at some of the station stops and I see Mark’s identical twin on the platform having a cigarette. Standing with him are several other refugees who walk around in circles puffing away at their tobacco trying eagerly to top up their nicotine levels. I spot him talking to l’ol Jack’s mother on more than one occasion but he assures me later that it was just idle chat and not the sort of conversation that could have lead on to a dive into her knickers.

Chapter Seven

Friday 22nd June 2001

We begin to wake up with the dawn and realise that this is the last day of our train journey (hooray !). Mark volunteers (again) to get the coffees and we begin the task of getting our brains into gear. Mark does this by opting for a smoke in the smoking room downstairs whilst I go for a quick wash and brush up in the miniscule ‘bathing area’ adjacent to the toilets. On the way down the stairs to perform my abloutions I take heart in that our luggage is still there and hasn’t been spirited away by some midnight train departee.

Arrival at Salt Lake City heralds a long stop as the train is serviced and new supplies and a change of staff are dealt with. This allows the refugees to take part in much smoking, walking around and making small talk. I am relieved that, yet again, Mark fails to hook l’ol Jack’s mum with his smooth talk. The train edged out of the Station and it wasn’t long before the morning sun began to appear pushing the night back into its wrapper. The start of the Great Salt Lake was soon upon us and we marvelled at just how big this thing was. We had flown over the Great Salt Lake the previous year and it seemed pretty big then but now, at ground level, it was immense. We seemed to skirt its shores for some considerable time. As we advanced the moving train disturbed birds resting on the lake shoreline and waves of them took flight. 

I had always assumed the lake to be all salt but we skirt 15 miles or so of water (albeit very salty water) and it isn’t until much later on that the density changes and the surface becomes a solid carpet of white salt and we reach the infamous Bonneville salt flats. The view is spectacular and is made better by the rising sun which gives the whole scene an almost surreal feeling.

It is soon apparent that today will be a hot one and, leaving the Salt Lake behind us, we move on to a more desolate and parched landscape. The UtahState line means that we slip slowly into Nevada and the desolation continues. Our excitement is given a boost by our arrival in Nevada because it means that we are on the home straight – it also means that we have left mountain time and gained an hour by moving on to pacific time (a bit like going from Calais to Dover).  The heat is rising outside and the PA system whispers to us that the train will have to slow down for safety reasons because the heat will interfere with the rails. We are totally bored now, the Nevada journey just keeps going on and on. The scenery is unchanging and we begin to despair. The train has emptied somewhat and we are like peas rattling in a pod as we trundle across he desert floor.

We are beginning to give up hope but then we spot a sign on the road running adjacent to the train which tells us that Reno is just seventy miles away. We know that at our current speed that still means another two hours but at least we can prepare ourselves for ‘landing’.

We begin to near our final destination of Sparks and the train’s PA system crackles to tell us that because of the forest fires swamping some areas of Reno the train will terminating at Reno and a bus will take the unfortunate remaining passengers to Sacramento and San Fransisco by bus. Are we glad that Sparks is our stop !

We get ever closer and finally arrive in Sparks at about 3pm. The railcar attendant bustles past us shouting “We Sparks, We Sparks, Detrain”. We gladly detrain and the desert heat hits us like a wall of fire. There is no platform at Sparks and we haul our cases onto the rail side and look for a way out of the railyard. There is no apparent direct route out of the station other than across the stony, metal littered  railyard so we begin to drag our cases through the dust towards the nearby road. When we eventually get our luggage wheels across this first obstacle course we reach the second hurdle – a 6 lane freeway again with no direct route across. The heat has now got to me and I am beginning to melt. We can see our hotel a few hundred yards away but cannot get to it. We decide not to brave a run across the highway and opt to follow a slip road down to some traffic lights which, with some navigation over traffic islands, manages to get us over to the right side of the road. Our pace quickens as we see the entrance to the hotel. We recognise the Silver Club Hotel from the previous year and it is almost as if we hadn’t been away. A push on the door and we are transported into the hotel lobby which is fully air conditioned – Oh what bliss !

 We check in and have the long awaited, well deserved shit, shower and shave. We both fell refreshed and in much better spirits. We mutually agree that we are glad the second rail trip is not now taking place and openly admit that we will not be using Amtrak again in a hurry. The lure of a golden journey aboard the California Zephyr was no more than an empty promise but was, nonetheless, an experience. I rummage through my travel bag and pull out Matt Ernst’s business card. I ring him and he is eager to come over and pick us up and take us for a drink. He says that he will be over in an hour but we persuade him to make it an hour and a half to allow us time to get ourselves together.

Matt arrived on time in the suburban and we head for Downtown Reno where a pop concert was in full swing on the grassy riverbank – much more a locals event than a tourist event. Every other guy or girl was welcoming Matt and he seemed to soak up being centre of attention. We grabbed a beer and got to meet a few of his friends. We also got talking to Matt’s neighbour, Karen Lawson, who lives in the apartment above him and who looks after his office administration and answers his e-mails when he is out on the trails. She is neither attractive nor unattractive but the eyes are naturally drawn to her ample bosom which gently bobs and sways as she walks. She lets out that, secretly she adores her ‘Matty’ but, as he told us quite categorically later on the trip, the feeling is not mutual – but she still keeps soldiering on in hope.

The concert finishes and we make our way back to Sparks and Matt drops us off at our hotel where we hope to find Dave who has travelled out on his own for the off road riding that Matt will be guiding us through over the next six days. Matt tells us that he is going to pick up the American group (the cheddarheads from Wisconsin) who will be riding with us and tells us to meet him at the Great Basin Brewing Company Restaurant in Victorian Avenue where we will all meet for dinner.

We check with the hotel receptionist and Dave has landed safely. We get hold of his room number and pay him a visit. He has had a good flight and seems to be in remarkably good shape for someone who had been on a plane for the past fifteen hours or so.

He is raring to go so we walk out into the evening heat and make our way round to the restaurant - we know where it is having been there already the previous year. We swap stories with Dave along the way and we are soon at the doors of the Great Basin. Matt and the Cheddarheads have already arrived, not only have they arrived but the greedy bastards haven’t even waited for us and have food on the table and drinks in their glasses. To say that we are not impressed is an understatement – we decide to catch up by foregoing the starters and order our main courses to co-incide with the others. We try pints of Nevada Gold and we soon realise that at the rate we are downing the drink we will be forever going up to the bar so we opt instead to but beer in jugs to keep us topped up.

The restaurant was very busy and extremely lively. The Cheddarheads seemed OK but very reserved. I would say that their ages ranged from early fifties into very late sixties. We introduce ourselves and tuck into the main course. Tag, who is the oldest of the group sits to my left and Sam to my right. Just in general conversation it is apparent that these guys live very comfortably in a very nice area of Wisconsin. We share with them our little knowledge of American humour and the fact that colloquially we understand the term cheddarhead, cheesehead etc. They take all this ribbing in good spirit and even offer some more derogatory terms for folk from them thar parts of the US. I make a mental note of these for future use should the occasion arise. Our seating plan was :

                                                          Tag                       George               John                   Dave

                               Martin  Matt Ernst

                                                             Sam                   Capt. Tim              Mark             Steve

The meal almost passed without incident until Tag cleared his throat in a “gather as much phlegm as I can”  kind of way. I pass a glance at Mark who has heard the gutteral clearance and he is glancing sideways at me. More glances reveal that everyone is glancing somewhere, everyone that is except Tag who is blissfully unaware of his affectation. Tag does this a couple more times – it is bad enough standing next to somebody in a public toilet who does this but at the meal table, ugh. One more time Tag clears his throat. This is too much for Mark who shouts across the table at him an tells him just what he thinks about his disgusting habit. Tag is apologetic but his Cheddarhead pals are stunned into absolute silence – they had probably all suffered this annoying habit for some years and not one of them had had the balls to stand up and tell him what for. Tag was OK, we had no other problems. We are comfortable with them and they appear to be the same with us although we did notice some consternation on the faces of the Cheddarheads when the bill came. Despite being a drink and starters down on the whole deal we decide, as we usually do, just to split the bill ten ways but mutterings amongst the Cheddarheads should have pre warned us about the shape of things to come. They, in common with most Americans, decided that they should only pay for exactly what they had put away – this is a bit tricky when there are ten of you and half of those, ie us, hadn’t been invited to the starters but had outconsumed the Wisconsin guys in the drinks stakes.

Discussion over how much Tag’s steak was and the fact that George had only had one drink, unfinished at that, led to a serious debate on just how to carve up the debt. Huge algebraic sums were being drawn on the mental blackboards of the Cheeseheads, each one hoping to crack the formula and win the Nobel prize for restaurant bill allocation. Mark led the cavalry in the shape of “Why don’t we all just shut the fuck up and split the bill nine ways” (obviously then all of us would contribute to Matt’s supper). The yanks were immediately lost for words, their little minds raced as they tried to calculate whether they were up or down on this deal. Stupid Limeys will end up paying a fraction more was their final calculation and they accepted. What they failed to understand, and never will, is that the Limeys really couldn’t care less. Equal amounts of money passed hands – the Brits paid the tip because that would have just added another complication to the proceedings – and, at last, the meal was declared over.

We step out into the muggy heat and agree with Matt that, the following morning, he will pick us up first and then go on to the Golden Nugget where the Cheddarheads are staying after which we are to go on to his unit and prepare for the first day’s riding. Having sided with his homeland buddies Matt declared that the vehicle was only big enough to take the dairy boys back to their hotel and would we mind using shanks’s pony to get back to our digs. We ambled back to our hotel and take a short cut through the casino where Mark and I stop for a minute whilst Dave heads straight back to his room to hit the sack. Against our better judgement we spend $20 on the slots and win a handsome $107.50. We are happy !

Chapter Eight

Saturday 23rd June 2001

After the usual battles at breakfast over whether we should have rye or normal with our over easy eggs (or should we have scrambled) we devour our large breakfast in the casino’s Town Square restaurant and head out to the reception to wait for our taxi. It was tempting at first to wait on the bench outside the front door but at 9am it was already in the 80’s and the comfort of the hotel’s air conditioning was far more welcoming and we opt to sit inside instead.

The large yellow taxi pulled up outside and the driver scooted into the reception to exchange a few words with Dave the concierge in “how are you buddy” type of way. We all pile into the oversized car and discover that our taxi driver can talk the hind legs off a donkey – insisting that when we are in town we must ring him and get connected to some “nice piece of ass”. As I am in the front seat I take the brunt of this conversation nodding politely and saying “yes” in the right places in the hope that the journey doesn’t last too long. Thankfully it doesn’t and we are soon at Matt’s motorcycle unit at North Edison Drive.

Damn ! the Cheddarheads have already arrived and are looking around the unit. We pay off the taxi driver with an added $10 tip and head straight for the equipment so that we could put our names on the best bits of kit. We met with Lance (Matt’s mechanic) and made small talk with the guys and discover that only two of their six had any off road riding experience with one of them (Tag) having only been on a motorcyle for the first time ever some five weeks earlier and then only for a 500 yard drive up and down the road. Unbelievable ! Tag was also overheard asking Matt if the red button on the handlebars was the cruise control. Oh ! if only this guy had been joking – but he wasn’t  - he was actually serious (for those not into biking the red button on motorcycle handlebars is a safety device known as the kill switch and will stop the engine when pressed).

We noticed that the cheddarheads had totally ignored the equipment – all the more for us we thought, our selections had been made and we were ready for the off. Dave was one step ahead in that he had bought his own trail style helmet with him. The only thing stopping us was the fact that the tour didn’t start until tomorrow. After watching the futile efforts of the yanks to get accustomed to their machines we decide not to show off and head back to our hotel on foot. Matt gives us directions that will also take us past a specialist off road motorcycle shop. It is warm and we make our way slowly along the dusty sidewalks. After a couple of false turns we eventually find the shop and we browse a while. I search the XXL rails whilst the normal guys found what they wanted. Mark and I grabbed a couple of T-shirts but Dave kitted himself out with the full works – head to toe Fox blue with snazzy stripes. He admired himself in the full length mirror for an obscene amount of time almost bordering on vanity before he made his purchase.

The trudge continued from the shop to the hotel crossing through the Reno backstreets and into the lives of the locals. The scene was not dissimilar from Saturday morning scenes in the UK except that it was now stiflingly hot. We pass a small family of kids who are sat on the sidewalk behind a large hand painted sign which announces that they are holding a garage sale. We haven’t seen many people milling around so we guess that the garage may well remain stocked with unwanted goods too good to throw away but no longer wanted by the family.

We get back to the hotel around midday and, after an afternoon siesta, we get spruced up because tonight Matt has laid on a Western treat – the final of the Reno rodeo. He has already told us that the Reno rode is one of the richest in the West and will attract all the big names on the circuit, not that we will know any of them. Matt picks us up in the suburban and we head off to the Golden Nuggets to pick up the Cheddarheads. Somehow, we manage to squeeze all ten of us into the mighty Chevvy and make our way through the traffic to the Rodeo just outside town.

We arrive amidst the hustle and bustle of the crowds and make our way through the obligatory fairground attractions where matt buys himself a new Stetson – a big thing out here apparently. We find the way to our stone bench like seats within the showground and Matt displays his new headware with pride taking it on and off several times to explain various things about the Stetson such as the normal price of these babies, the method of making them or the process required to stretch the headband correctly so as to match the size of the head. All too technical for me and not any information there that I would find useful again in sun drenched Alcester in the heart of England.

We soon suspect that the Stetson has also been purchased to add some extra macho to Matt’s image as we discover him looking fervently around the arena. His eyes fix upon two girls walking along the stone steps of the stadium and, in the typical American no self awareness way, he flails his arms wildly and shouts to them. They eventually track down the source of the calling and make a bee line towards our group. He introduces us to Mickey (his current girlfriend) and her friend whose name I didn’t catch.

Looking around the stadium, which was now filling up fast, it was reminiscent of a Spanish bullring. Squeezed along the benches like sardines what was about to follow was nothing like a Spanish bullfight but the night was, unexpectedly, good fun.

After the opening  of the event by the flag girl walking around arena it was time for the arrival of two clowns who kept the audience amused in between the riders – almost to the point of distraction. On more than one occasion I got embroiled in the clown’s show and missed the fact that the next cowboy was being tossed from his mount on the other side of the ring. It is common knowledge that men cannot multi task so the double show must have been laid on especially for the womenfolk who, it is said, can.

The events passed by with bareback riding where a cowboy has to pit himself against a bucking bronco and stay on for more than 8 seconds using only one hand and clenched buttocks no doubt. These shows were followed up by steer wrestling where a steer is cast into the ring and is then chased by two riders who have to lasso and tie up the frightened animal as quickly as possible. This takes on a  slightly different slant later on in the programme when it becomes a team event. Even more bizarre than that was the call for young bucks to come into the ring and have a go – not with bulls but with sheep. Horsemanship, something akin to a wild west showjumping event with riders completing a course against the clock.

In a “clowns only” section of the night’s entertainment totally devoid of multi tasking bucking broncos one of the painted heroes did some quite amazing stuff with a trails bike. The only comparison that I can make is Les Dawson professionally not playing the piano well even though he was an accomplished musician. This guy was a top rate rider who managed to make himself look like a novice – clinging onto the side of the bike as he careered across dusty ground. During the tremendous display I found myself hoping that I would not recreate any of the clown’s antics whilst I was out on the trail tomorrow.

The real madman stuff came in the form of the bull riding event. We could see the first cowboy bobbing up and down on some unseen animal in the chute. A bell went, the chute door burst open and the fiery beast and rider were released into the spotlight where the cowboy hung on for his life in the hope of sitting out the ride for more than 8 seconds. The furious bull kicked and lurched around the ring and finally unseated his unwanted rider. The clowns jumped in for the rescue and took the bull’s attention away from the cowboy and, in a well rehearsed routine, they coaxed the angry animal into an adjacent holding pen away from the spectators’ gaze where it could start to calm itself down.

The finale of the cowgirls on horseback rounded off the show well – all very American, all very showy and patriotic – but, nonetheless, thoroughly enjoyable. All of this was too much for the cheeseheads who wanted an early night. We made our way back through the funfair – now in full swing, say goodbye to Mickey’s girlfriend  – and hurl ourselves again into the suburban. This time we are one extra as Mickey has taken a place next to Matt in the front. Mercifully, the overpacked vehicle doesn’t have far to go before dropping off the Cheddarheads and we all carry on to the Great Basin Brewing Co. where I settle upon a Caesar salad to keep things light before the next day’s riding. We have a chance to talk to Matt’s new girlfriend, Mickey, and  she proves to be good company. It doesn’t take long before we all call it a day and walk a low walk back to the hotel through the muggy night air. Mark and I flop into bed and sleep like logs.

Chapter Nine

Sunday 24th June 2001

Well ! The day has finally arrived and I am quiet and apprehensive as we make our way to the Golden Nugget saloon to pick up the cheddarheads. I had been here a year before. That trip ended in disaster when I broke my wrist after only one hour’s riding but, Hey !, that’s the luck of the draw – my piss poor riding skills had nothing to do with it. That is why I am apprehensive – I do not want to spend the next six days in baking heat watching the guys go off in the morning and come back in the afternoon full of daredevil tales and heroics. No, I want to last the course and I am prepared to ride like a pussy to get through. We had already been to Matt’s unit to pick up our gear which Lance had neatly stowed in the suburban. Strangely though we had not picked up anything for the yanks. 

We arrive under the canopy cover of the Golden Nugget Hotel entrance where we spot the Wisconsin guys waiting for us outside the main doors……. They were all wearing the right gear and I began to feel even more apprehensive. What if these guys were hustling and could all ride really well? I had visions of them all having had motocross bikes since the age of two and being ace off roaders.

We exchange the usual guarded hellos and made our way out of Sparks towards Virginia City along the mountain road. Matt was in full swing about the influx of the Californians into the area trying to change things to suit their West Coast way of life. The Cheddarheads listened eagerly whilst the Brits switched off and admired the spectacular views – we had, after all, heard the same spiel last year.

A half hour journey saw us arrive at the same spot where we had started last year – the bikes were unloaded from the trailer by Lance and we all picked a machine and started to practice. To my hidden delight it was very, very soon apparent that none of the fuckers could ride except George who we later found out had previous experience. Tag fell off after riding only ten yards, a feat which he replicated many times earning him the award for the most bruised body. Pretty soon they were all dropping like flies around us. We could see Matt and he was visibly embarrassed by the display of his fellow countrymen but he overcame his shame by sniffing the greenbacks that he was earning from this trip. Dave, Mark and myself got pretty bored very quickly watching the carnage and told Matt that we were going off for a little spin of our own. We hit the bumpy dusty trail and passed the spot where my riding had abruptly finished the year before. We had fun for an hour or so and headed back to base camp where we found that things had not improved and it was obvious to us that Matt had made a serious error of judgement putting non riders with riders like us.

Matt took the initiative and decided that experience would only be gained by forging ahead so we all set off along the dusty trails to do some more basic trails riding. Tag fell off even more and eventually decided that it was his bike’s brakes seizing all the time which had caused the problem. Looking at the the disc we could tell by its blue tinge that he had been riding with the brakes on. My theory was that when he changed gear, a rare occurrence, he was pulling in both levers – clutch and front brake – which had the effect of catapulting him over the bars. There was only one thing for it. I volunteered to ride the ‘rogue’ bike back to Lance so that he could give it the once over. Tag accepted mine in the knowledge that it worked and Matt gave me a sideways relieved look. I rode carefully at first but soon realised that there was nothing wrong with the machine at all. Lance concluded that Tag had indeed been riding with both brakes on – just as well he didn’t press the ‘cruise control’ button as well.

After a light lunch and water bottle refills George ducked out because of an upset stomach whilst the rest of us practised doing some simple hill climbs – quite difficult as we not only had to avoid the rocks but also the bodies of the Cheddarheads who were still falling off with appalling regularity. The morning session had already shown us that George was a competent rider and Tim and Sam would probably get by but the Achilles heel in the US team were Tag and John who suffered from inability to ride and serious vertigo respectively.

Not being used to regular exercise I was pleased when the first day was over, especially as I had survived without a single fall. My pride was still intact.  Virginia City was only a mile or so further up the road and we were soon at the Sugar Loaf Motel where changed out of our trail dusty clothes and had a good shower before heading into town for some beers. We hit the Comstock Lodge where we let the Cheddarheads take the customary tour of the gold mine at the back of the saloon. We crossed the road and watched the sunset from the panoramic view of the Bucket of Blood saloon and finished up at the Chinese restaurant on one of Virginia City’s back streets. We ate a good meal and Lance proved to be good company unlike the Cheddarheads who reverted back to their perennial problem of splitting the bill at the end of the meal. They seemed to have an aversion to simply splitting the bill equally – God only knows why ! We parted with our cash eventually and made our way slowly back to the motel. It was warm, we were full and, worse still, it was uphill. Having no Powers Irish Whiskey we resorted to a shot of Jamesons each for a nightcap and then hit the pillow.

Monday 25th June 2001

Before breakfast the next morning Matt had told us in a hushed voice that the original plan was to head towards Garnerville or Minden for Monday night’s stop over but, having seen how badly the Yanks had ridden he decided that we should stay put for another day in Virginia City and do some more practising. He was going to split the riders into two groups – one would stay with Lance and get used to riding bikes whilst the others would have a ride out with Matt.

 We all left the Motel together and offloaded the bikes at the roadside and, having got our allocated machines. Tag stayed behind with Lance and Tim offered to stay and keep him company whilst the rest of us set off along an old washboard road called SixMileCanyon which later became the Fort Churchill Road. At various intervals along the way Matt stopped and pointed out some wildlife, Eagles flying or bear paw prints. We also took various forays into the undergrowth at the side of the road to experience different riding conditions. These occasional detours were good fun but they remained unbridled disasters for the Wisconsin guys who continued to fall off or get stuck in the deep sand but we all survive the ride which takes us, believe it or not, to FortChurchill.

The actual fort was in ruins but was an historic site. We had a look around the stone built single storey visitor centre and avoided buying souvenirs. We were lucky as we there was a school party visiting and we managed to stand close enough to hear the ranger telling the kids about the fort’s history. He told the story well and was able to demonstrate the use of an old rifle by actually loading it with gunpowder and shooting it. We overheard him enthral the kids by telling them that he was going to set off the cannon next to him as a finale. We were enthralled as well so we lurked for a while. The old white haired ranger explained that he was going to use only a very small amount of gunpowder, much less than was used when the weapon had been used in battle. Nevertheless, the lighted taper set off a boom loud enough to make us jump – the kids, obviously used to gunfire, didn’t flinch.

We retraced our tyre tracks along the washboard road past the vehicle testing centre, all very secret and hush hush – the area 51 of vehicle testing obviously. We eventually reached a rendezvous point with Lance which was a dry salt lake bed where Lance, The Chevvy, Tag Tim and now George were preparing lunch and waiting for our arrival. George announced that he was feeling much better and was looking forward to riding with us.

Suitably refreshed, we took to our bikes. We spent some time riding back & forth over the flat lake bed and soon got bored, it was also apparent that Dave was pretty wound up about something. We had a chat and all agreed that it was unfair for us to have paid so much money to have our riding curtailed while the Yanks learned how to ride their machines – we all understood that riding bikes was a prerequisite for this tour. We confronted Matt who shifted sheepishly from smile to half smile. He feigned concern and agreed with our point of view and said that he would have a chat with the Cheddarheads tonight but, in the meantime, he would arrange a good ride out for the capable riders this afternoon.

Matt explained to the group that the afternoon ride was hard and suggested less able riders stay on the lake bed for more practice- six of us set out for the afternoon session, Matt, Mark, Dave, Me, Sam and, dosed with Immodium, George. We tore off over the lake bed and soon were riding over the very hard rocky terrain. This was tough. My breathing laboured not so much with the physical strain but more from the mental strain of trying to pick out the best route through the debris and avoid falling off. The lava bed seemed to go on for ever and I was feeling the strain by the time we reached a dirt track. Was I ever pleased to get back to something approaching terra firma. We rode up and down various tracks testing our riding skills. Matt told us that we were going to try and head back to the motel using some overland routes but every attempt to get on course was met by fenced off land. The land apparently belonged to some rich lawyer in Oklahoma who had recently purchased the 27 square miles of land that lay directly between us and the motel. He had decided to fence it all off and after several abortive attempts to find a way through we gave up and, much to my consternation, headed back to the lake bed via the lava bed.

I survived the return trip – it was easier than going as it was downhill. We found Lance and the others on the lake bed  packing up for the day. That was good timing and we were soon loading up the trailer and getting out of our gear. The return to the motel in Virginia City was slow but I was basking in the joy of surviving day two without falling off despite odds to the contrary. Mark had taken a fall and so had Dave but we were all in one piece. We showered and agreed that Carson City might be a good place to eat that evening – either matt or Lance had suggested going to the hot springs and then on to ‘Reds’ steak bar.

The hot springs, as it turned out, were a bit of a non-entity really – I was expecting old wooden tubs filled with sulphurous smelling spa waters but the reality was a swimming pool with a hot spring feed directly into it. We paid our $5 and Dave asked for bathing costume hire but the attendant said that this service had now been stopped. Lance & John carried on through but we decided to support Dave and didn’t go in foregoing our $15 in the meantime. The adjacent bar was open so Mark and I went there instead and set up a tab and invited our fellow travellers to take a drink with us. At this point I should really rephrase this because I don’t think that I ever gave Mark my half of the tab so it should read, “Mark set up a tab….”

Having downed a couple of beers (and won $9.25 for a $5 bet using the obligatory slot machines found set into the actual bar counter) we all regrouped and left the bar. In the car park there was the most amazing vehicle – some old Volvo that had been “customised”. I use the word “customised” guardedly because the finished article was nothing like a motor vehicle but actually looked like a mobile jumble sale. Having inspected the beast close up and taken a couple of pictures we piled into the Chevvy and head into Carson City. Squeezed up in the back Tim Tyre tells us that he is a military physciatrist and that one of his patients had a problem which meant that he could only achieve an orgasm if he had a finger in his ear. We waited for the punchline but there wasn’t one, he was serious but, annoyingly, Tim never subsequently divulged whether or not he had cured the guy. So if you see a man showing more than a passing interest to the fact that he has his finger in his ear just check out what his other hand is doing.

We soon reached Reds which turned out to be an outrageously popular restaurant – a bit like a theme pub back home but far more over the top and American. We wait for almost an hour for a table but this only adds to our drinking time. By the time our table is called the alcohol has given us a serious bout of the munchies and we are ravenous. Dave ordered a large portion of ribs and I opt for the smaller rack whilst Mark, predictably, aims himself towards a big “fuck off” Cowboy steak. The meals arrive and Dave’s rack is immense but Mark’s steak is hanging off the end of his plate. With the meal heading toward a close the Cheddarheads  form a tight circle and start the process of individual billing mainly because            a) We drank more than they did and b) Our meals were more expensive and c) Matt brought his girlfriend, Mickey, with him and whilst they were happy to pay for Matt’s meal freeloaders could get their own. What sad bastards we concluded – it was so much easier just splitting the bill.

It is now dusk in Carson City and Lance heads back along the road to Virginia City. Along the way he cannot resist the temptation of taking us the road to the bunny ranches. We reach a large cul-de-sac whee there are several fenced single storey buildings all lit up with neon lights. We drive slowly past each one but there is nothing to see as all the curtains are closed. The cars in the parking lots outside each building tell us there are quite a few punters indulging in the carnal pleasures on offer but there is little movement and no moans of ecstacy fill the air. We drive back along the trail toward the road passing a solitary figure walking alongside the dusty. He is oblivious to us as he has a finger in one ear.

We arrive back at the SugarTableMountain motel, which does actually overlook Virginia City’s very own SugarTableMountain, and  discover that Matt has cunningly averted our plan to ruin his shagfest with Mickey by moving his room to a secret location. We wondered whether our faces peering in through the window whilst he was in flagrento delecto would put him off his stroke whilst we maintained ours. Matt remained tightlipped about his new room number as he said his goodnights to us. Tag was sat on the bench outside his room using huge bagfuls of ice to nurse the huge bruise on his leg. Matt did take us to one side though and tell us that he had decided not to let Tag ride the next day as it was going to get much tougher. Apprehension crept back into my thoughts as I closed my eyes that night.

Tuesday 26th June 2001

We had breakfast at the Miner Diner just up the road from the Motel – or I should say that some of us had breakfast – mine didn’t arrive. I paid the $2 for my orange juice to the stunned waitress as I walked out of the door into the sunny morning air. I was unfed but it was no big deal really as I wasn’t particularly hungry in any case. We left the hotel car park at around 9am and drove towards Minden where we should have stayed the previous night. We headed out of town until we met the lights and turned left onto Pine Nut Road – I remembered this from the previous year. About a mile down the road we stopped, unloaded the bikes and, apart from Tag, we kitted ourselves out for the day’s ride.

We went up into the hills amidst some truly spectacular scenery and did lots of hard riding but we were constantly held back by the back markers, especially Steve who became rigid whenever the trail took us along a sheer drop. His total fear of heights meant that he would stop his machine and ‘paddle’ his bike along the trail until it felt safe for him to ride more than 10 mph. Given that one particular stretch was over ten miles long he soon became a good hour or so behind us. We could tell that the cheddarheads were having a rough time of it all and they were still managing to fall off at regular intervals. We eventually met Tag and lance waiting for us on the old Leviathan mine Road – it was now very hot and we were tired. We waited at the end of the trail for well over an hour after lunch and Steve, who was being chaperoned by Tim, had still not appeared. It wasn’t until another good half hour later that we saw the pair riding back towards us at the meeting point.   

Huddled discussion amongst the Wisconsin guys led to the decision that three of the Cheeseheads had decided to throw in the towel which left us with George and Sam for the afternoon ride which, because of the lower numbers, was a much more upbeat and faster paced affair. This final session of the day began as a long ride along the mountain edge with fantastic views of the highway some 2500-3000 ft below us and further on the wonderful LakeTopaz set like a sapphire in the grey snow capped mountains. Wow, that lake is so blue !

The day is hot and the deep blue cloudless sky with the mountain backdrop looks like a picture postcard. We can see the dusty trail that we are about to take winding down the side of the mountain and it is a pleasurable ride to the valley basin. When we arrive back at the truck we grab a beer and kick off our dusty kit and go over the finer points of the day’s ride with our fellow riders. It is just a short ride to the Topaz Lodge where we have a nice room overlooking the lake.

After a wash and brush up we partake of a wee dram of Jameson’s with ice before making our way to the hotel restaurant where, after a reasonable meal, we play the ‘settling the bill’ game once more. We are tired of this and quite body weary from the day’s exertions so we give up and ask them to tell us what we owe before we make our way, heavy eyed, to our beds where an early night reaches out and sucks us both into the land of nod.

Wednesday 27th June 2001

We miss the ‘settling the bill’ reinactment at breakfast by sneaking in early and avoiding any arguments about who had what. We couldn’t get hold of Dave as he was now room sharing with Tim Tyre (Tag was now on his own – even his own countrymen had grown weary of his snoring and coughing).

We all gather together in the car park at the appointed hour and Matt tells us that the Cheddarheads have decided not to ride today. We make our way over to our next motel in Bridport where Matt manages to persuade the motel owner to release a room early so that we can store our baggage. This leaves the Chevvy free from clutter and the yanks all pile in for a day trip to YosemiteNational Park. As they leave the motel parking lot Matt confides in us that he is going to take the three of us on some ‘good stuff’ today. I am now very apprehensive again as we climb into the suburban and head out along the Masonic Road.

We unload and spend the morning climbing 10,600 ft up the mountainside through dry rocky river beds and pine forests. Concentration is intense as I fight to keep my bike from kicking me off. On several occasions inside my helmet I can hear my breathing, it is the sound of a frightened man but I keep going and the feeling of relief when we stop for a break is only topped by the feel of cold water on my dry throat.

We survey the panoramic view before us. The Cheeseheads have certainly missed the best bit. We sat for a half hour or so on top of a crag which had a sheer drop of about 500ft beneath it to the valley below. We looked across the five miles or so of the valley floor to the mountain range opposite. There was no visible movement, no roads, no people it was a very peaceful moment. We played around in the snow – it was absolutely fantastic – not many get to see these sights because they are well away from the tourist routes.

I had a great sense of achievement that morning. Getting there was not easy and I had done it ! We meandered a bit further and upward along the mountain trails until Matt found an ideal place for us to stop for lunch. We sat on a small rise and admired the view before us. The sky was a deep blue and the high mountain air was crisp on our lungs. There were no other people within a twenty miles radius of us and we all savoured the moment as we munched on our sandwiches – this was one of life’s rare moments that become a lifelong memory.

As our midday break came to a close my mind was drawn to just how really hard it had been to get this high up the mountain and now we were going to have to do the same in reverse. A mild panic set in and I began experiencing the anxiety that I had felt in the morning before we set out. I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince myself that going down would be easier. My collywobbles were interrupted by Matt who tells us that when he takes out such small groups he likes to experiment with alternative trails to see if he find new routes for his tours. We set off on what was to become the start of several abortive attempts to find the elusive route down. On every try we travel for some miles and then have to back track because the trail becomes too dangerous for us to continue. Dangerous in this context is a sheer drop. We take in some spectacular views on a dusty five foot wide trail with some quite nasty drops off to the side. After a dozen or so impossible trails I am  not a happy chappy any more – tired, exhausted and very edgy about the hard riding and my lack of ability – I just wanted to get back down to base camp. I didn’t want to explore, I didn’t want to play with the big boys any more……. but we carried on.

Eventually, Matt gave up his futile search for a new way home and we made our way back to base. I cannot say sea level as most of the flat lands of the area are in fact already 4000 to 5000 ft above already. Our clocks showed us that we had travelled over seventy miles that day. Not much you may think but given the terrain that these seventy miles had taken us over it was a miracle that none of us had come back injured.

I spot Lance and the jeep at the parked just off the main highway at entrance of the dusty trail that led to the mountains behind us. It dawned on us then that, of course, Lance didn’t have the trailer because the Cheeseheads had taken the Chevvy on their day trip. Matt pondered for a moment and we made up a story that we could use if we got stopped by the highway patrol, something about the Chevvy breaking down. So our journey home was made up of brief spurts along the tarmac peppered with longer rides along the deep sand a few yards to the side of the highway. Lance shadowed us in the jeep until we made it back into Bridport. We regrouped for a quick briefing. Matt tells us that the idea is to get our bikes to the Bridport Inn without the sheriff spotting us. Matt led us up and down the back streets of the town, criss- crossing larger roads as we went all the time trying to get to our goal.

The plan didn’t work though. As we were approaching the final leg of our detour we passed what we later discovered was the sheriff’s house and the man in the garden mowing his lawn on a sit on mower was the sheriff.  We put our heads down and reached the main highway – Matt filled us in as to who we had just merrily ridden past and so it was bollocks to trying to sneak in – we just drove up the main drag and into the motel car park. The sheriff didn’t appear so Matt took it that we had got away with it. Here I was, back at the motel after three days of riding and I still had not fallen off. The day had been hard but superb and one that I’m glad I didn’t miss out on, quite simply a once in a lifetime experience. I was hot and sweaty but lance found the ideal solution – a bag of ice on the head and a cold beer, what bliss.

I am just finishing my first beer when the Yanks pull into the car park. We all swapped stories of the day. They had all enjoyed the day at Yosemite, all except Steve that is, who apparently spent the trip in abject terror of the vehicle travelling so close to the edge of the road. This was a fear that I had suffered in Yosemite myself the year earlier when Mikey took the wheel and drove a wheel screeching down the twisty mountainside roads. The shower and brush up was welcome and I emerged from our chalet ready for the night’s get together which was to take place in Rhino’s just across the street from the motel.

Now Rhino’s is not a classy joint. It is a typical western American bar which, although in California, has more of a Nevadan edge about it. The clientele is typical western American bar as well and it is not long before Lance is propositioned for a fuck which he politely refuses and Matt is chatting up some blond bint at the bar who buys him a drink.

The Cheeseheads arrive together and we are taken aback to see them all dressed in the same black air force style jump suits which have the words “Adventurers Club” embroidered on in gold thread italic embroidery. This must be a joke we think. These Wisconsin guys are about as adventurous as a Sunday outing of the Darby & Joan Club. Whatever turns them on.

A couple of beers makes us hungry and we leave Matt and Lance in the bar still chatting to the blonde bimbo and head back over the road to the Sportsman where the service and food is excellent. The meal comes to an end and the Cheddarheads go into a huddle. They decide to try it our way and split the bill. They have obviously calculated that meals and drinks have been distributed fairly on this occasion. Sam appoints himself as treasurer of the collect the dinner money fund and the $78 bill is equally divided. We fuck them up totally by putting an additional anonymous $20 bill into the pot as we leave. We hang around by the bar and watch the turmoil unfold as they discover that Sam has collected $92 for a $78 bill. Sam is frantically trying to give some cash back but the Yanks are all adamant that they put the right amount in. “There’s been a mistake, I’ve too much money” he drawls. “Keep it” we say. This only adds to his troubles. He is now lost and disorientated, a fish out of water. We slip quietly out of the Sportsman and make our way back to the Bridgeport Inn where we sit outside on the veranda on stools overlooking the quiet highway in front of us.

We get chatting to a nearby girl who turns out to be the owner’s wife. I thought that she was Australian and asked her what part of Oz she comes from. She tells me that another Brit, who is also staying at the Inn tonight, also asked her the same question but she reveals that she doesn’t have an Australian accent as her home town is in fact Eastbourne.

Dave is room sharing with me and Mark tonight and we round off the evening with a shot of Jameson’s before we begin Dave’s nightmare night of putting up with the snoring.

Thursday 28th June 2001

Breakfast has been convened at the Sportsman. We make our way over without the Cheddarheads and Lance, who is already there, fills us in on the excitement that we had missed the previous night. Apparently, things nearly got to the point of guns. We were riveted. After we left the bar to get some food Matt and the Blonde bimbo carried on drinking for a while and making flirtatious small talk. It transpired, however, that the huge guy sat on the stool next to her was her pimp and because things were not moving in towards a closed deal situation for his ‘client’ he demanded $100 from Matt for the pleasure of allowing her to talk to him for so long. We liked this – she wasn’t after him for his goods looks, just his wallet. Matt was incensed by this and stormed back to his chalet quickly followed by Lance who spent some considerable time trying to convince Matt that it was not a good idea to get the AK47 and blast this guy’s head off. Well!

Breakfast and the service is as good as our visit the night before. Heading back to the motel we meet the Adventure Club members on their way to breakfast. Brief “good mornings” are exchanged as we perform our fly pasts. We pack our travel bags yet again, life on the move is a constant pack and unpack, and place them outside the chalet door where Lance hauls them onto the Chevvy. We mill around the car park and see another large group of people packing up to leave. One of them overhears us talking and introduces himself as a fellow Brit. We surmise that he must be the one that the English motel owner was talking about last night. He tells us that the group he is with, his employers, are an LA production company who are shooting a Honda commercial. He hadn’t been home to Blighty for at least ten years and was thoroughly enjoying his life in LA. He added for good measure that he also did some commercial diving. We told him that we did too but the muff market was currently in decline so we hadn’t had a dive recently.

We watched them pull out of the car park and we relaxed in the cool morning sun and fresh air whilst the Cheeseheads gathered themselves together.

All kitted up we set off. Our mission today was Bodie, an old deserted mining town way up on the Californian side of the Sierra Nevada. There was a lot a tough riding needed to get there and it was going to be a warm day as well – hopefully we would cool as we went higher up the slopes.

Tough riding was an understatement. Some really hard energetic stuff in the morning coupled with some high up stuff for Steve saw all but two of the American contingent drop out at lunchtime. Oh ! How I wanted to join them but some inner pride pulled its way to the forefront of my battered phsyche and I found myself agreeing to mount up for the afternoon assault on my senses. I am glad I did as the trail to Bodie was much quicker and easier than the morning rise. Adrenaline was needed on the odd occasion to do some steep uphill climbs. George been building up a gradual element of competition between him and Mark & Dave. This surfaced even more so this afternoon and intense rivalry led to George taking just a few chances too many and his second tumble was pretty spectacular, but he survived. I lost my unblemished record on probably the most easy terrain of the whole week’s riding. We were traversing a flat lush green meadow but its calf length grass hid deep ruts from our view. My front wheel just caught a wrong trench and I was tossed from my mount. I remember a moment of panic as I was thrust towards the floor – “Oh God ! Don’t let me break my wrist again” I thought as I adopted the spreadeagle and skimmed across the grass. Apart from being winded the only other sign of a fall was the huge grassy green skid mark that had become part of my trousers. With a great sense of relief I mounted my trusty steed and opened the throttle so that I could close the now widening gap between me and the other riders.

We eventually reach Bodie which is at a height above sea level that can give you altitude sickness if you overdo things. I have a slight headache and am exhausted – I am not built for this kind of exertion and, having seen Bodie the year before, we opt to head back towards the Jeep whilst Tim and George do the tourist thing and take in the sights of the eerie ghost town.  Just before we leave Matt gets news from Lance that he is bringing the rest of the Cheddarheads up to Bodie so we sit and wait, recover our breath and look across the mountain road below for signs of the dust trail that the Chevvy would inevitably kick up. On the way back down Matt uses the opportunity to release his rifle and a gleeful Mark takes a couple of pot shots at Californian road signs.

Back at the Bridport Inn we are all tired and a hot shower helps to ease all the aches and pains. We make our way back to Rhinos and, later, another meal at the Sportsman. Feeling very tired we are in no mood to have a party so sweet Californian dreams beckon us and we hit the sack.

Friday 29th June 2001

Well, here it is ! Our last riding day. We are all wake in our room and Dave makes a passing comment to Mark about my snoring. Mark plays him up with my help by telling him that far from my snoring being loud his was absolutely horrendous and that, in actual fact, his was much, much louder than mine. Dave finds this hard to swallow but we insist that he was a very loud sleeper. Dave’s dented pride prevents him from mentioning my snoring again.

Breakfast at the Sportsman reveals a $16 surplus from a previous meal being levied by Sam against our morning steak and eggs – at last he has found absolution. The poor guy’s mind must have been filled with devils over these past few hours. Another revelation is the fact that all riders (including Tag) are saddling up for the last ride.

We head out along another dusty washboard road until we reach the beginning of a trail where we wait for the party to regroup. Three of the riders, tag included, have only to carry along the washboard road and rendezvous with us a bit later on whilst the rest of our party are heading a further 3000 ft up a steep climb to a repeater station atop one of the nearby craggy mountains. We reach our goal and after a brief break we make our way back down the trail. I put myself at the back of the group but Sam, Tim and John are making hard work of the downhill run and are definitely slowing me up. Matt directs Dave, Mark & George off along another track to play. I decline as I am now just a little tired – it has been a long week – and I want the easy route home. I didn’t have any ambition to repeat Mark Jenkins’ feat of the previous year by screwing things up on the very last day.

We start off again but the pace is far too slow and I piss past Sam, Tim and John and make my own way at my own speed along the mountainside track for a good fifteen miles. I am totally on my own and enjoy every minute of this solitude riding at a comfortable, leisurely speed. The road weaves its way down the along the mountain edge with its steep drop offs into the wooded valley below.

I reach the end of the trail where I dismount, switch off my engine and take a few swigs from my now warm water bottle which is half filled with the glucose rich drink of all trail riders, Gatorade. Ten minutes and a few more swigs go by and I begin thinking that surely these guys cannot be that far behind me. At fifteen minutes I take my last swig of Gatorade – the temperature is really getting up now and the sun’s heat is beating down on me. Beads of sweat run down my skin as I begin to melt and I begin to think that I have taken the wrong turn. At twenty minutes I have convinced myself that I had missed a fork in the trail and I am miles away from the rendezvous. At twenty five minutes I’m panicking. I am in the middle of nowhere and have no map, no compass, no phone and, most disconcertingly, no water. I have no idea where the roads lead to and my spell on the winding mountain trails has left me disorientated. I go back over Matt’s instructions in my mind. I am positive that I heard him right when he said turn right and just keep going. I am equally convinced that I haven’t gone past a fork in the trail but it’s just not possible that the four yanks are over half an hour behind me. I turn and scan the road leading back and I can still see no movement. I try to stay calm but, in the knowledge that it will be dark in another two or three hours, I sink deeper into despair.  My hopes are raised a few moments later when I see a dust cloud rising in the distance on the same road that I had just travelled down. I squint against the fierce light of the setting sun and see that the dust is travelling a quite a speed, far too fast for the Cheddarheads – my heart sinks again.

The dust storm grew closer and it wasn’t long before I could make out that the form of two bike riders. I begin to take heart that I am on the right road and the emerging cavalry turn out to be Dave and Mark – a sight for sore eyes if ever there was one ! We wait for another five or ten minutes swapping the afternoon’s stories and then Matt appears along the same dusty road and tells us, in his own words, that “the truck is yonder round that mountain”. I was wondering just how far yonder is. Was yonder measured in feet and inches or yards and miles. This was rather like knowing that four blocks equals one mall, a piece of US measurement we had picked up in Chicago at the beginning of the trip.

We set out along the main road and “yonder” turns out to be about six miles and we eventually see the welcome sight of the white Chevvy and trailer. We pulled up and Lance threw us each a cold beer. This was downed in one and we rested peacefully in the shade taking time with our second. We waited an absolute age for the others to reach the truck. Steve had, again, held up their progress by paddling down the mountain tracks when his vertigo stopped his throttle hand from making his bike go faster than ten miles an hour.

Steve arrived a good half hour after everyone else which was somewhat fatal as we sank probably more beers than we should have. After lunch Matt asked who was taking in the afternoon ride. Mark and I looked at each other and decided that, too much beer and the probability that our injury free luck might run out, it was time to take the easy option and throw in the towel. Dave was the only rider willing to go back out and felt bad about it. We convinced him to stick to his guns, he had paid a lot of money for the trip and he should really make the most of it – especially as he was in the States for one week only for this tour. George took up the mantle for the yanks and we stood and waved Matt and the intrepid two off on their merry way into the distance.

It was now over for Mark and me and a great sense of both relief but, more so, achievement swept over me. I was actually quite proud of myself and secretly gave myself a pat on the back. We drove back slowly to Topaz Lodge where we had a quick swill in the restrooms and then into the bar for yet some more beer.

Midway through the proceedings Lance received a call from Matt and he popped out for a while to pick up the intrepid three. A few more dinks saw us in high spirits as we all piled into the Chevvy and made our way back along highway 395. We passed through the familiar sights from the previous year of Gardnerville, Minden and Carson City until we finally rode into the bright lights of Reno. A mile or so later we are in Sparks and we drop off the Cheddarheads at the Golden Nugget where we all agree to meet up later in the bar for a farewell drink. On the way back to the Silver Club we badger Matt to let his assistant Karen come along. He leaves us saying that he’d try his best.

Back at the Silver Club we zonked out on the beds – room 219 overlooked a different car park to our previous stay. We kicked ourselves into action, had a shower and made ourselves presentable. Dave, now safely at home in a room of his own, joined us and we waited for Matt’s call telling us what the plan was for the evening ahead. We had almost given up on him when the phone rang and he told us that we would meet at the bar after which a table had been booked in the Rotisserie restaurant. .......... More to follow