Bike Odyssey 2014 – Day 39 (June 24) – Welcomed by the white hawk

Good weather luck was with us today as it often has been on our odyssey – missing storms by a mile or two, or a hour or two – and we rode the Beartooth Pass (11,000 feet up) in blazing sun. As we approached the summit I heard a hawk’s quick cry above me and looked up to see what to me is a sacred sign: an albino hawk. We have one in Woodstock, the guardian of Mt. Overlook, which towers over us. I felt blest and infinitely fortunate. And protected: the Beartooth is not to be missed – unless you suffer, as I do, from vertigo. Today the panorama of the Rockies was a terror to me, seen from perilous heights (the Kalispell glacier, by contrast, I viewed in comfort from the serene flood plain beneath it, 2 days ago). For sheer scale it topped anything I’ve seen. Freezing – snowfields all around – my fingers painfully cold, trying to work the grips. Roads were twisty all right, as promised, although innocuous by the cruellest standards. I think of the damage I inflicted on the transmission and steering linkage of more than one car, on my four crossings of the Atlas Mountains via the Tizi n’Test, a dizzying test by any standards. No verges; sheer drops; but I was able to ignore them by focusing on cornering at speed, on 4 wheels. On two wheels this morning, slow and careful, the heights were all too present. Happily Joe was delighting in them, speeding down the mountain like a slalom king, and then taking off, on the flat, a bat newly released from hell. I hung in, on his tail, relieved beyond words to have descended to a mere 5500 feet, until we reached Red Lodge, a town in the grip of Western kitsch of all kinds. We resisted, but Joe did sample an elk burger (ELK! The burger!) while I wondered at the absurdity of my being content to eat beef in any form but distressed at the idea of raising an elk to be burgers. It tasted like beef, Joe reports.

We sped on to Cody, a town as dominated by and devoted to the memory of its namesake, Buffalo Bill Cody, as a town could possibly be. A miniature shower clipped us as we approached Cody and then, as soon as we were settled, a giant thunderstorm raged in and around this city so devoted to rodeo (‘The World Capital of Rodeo’!) that they hold one every single night, June through August. Your roving reporter will bear witness to this – if the thunderstorm ever lifts. (Since writing this: more storms, more sun.) Atrocious weather has been prevalent and is forecast. Happily Cody is the site of some great museums, which will steep us in Western history, deeper than an elk burger was ever fried.