Bike Odyssey 2014 – Day 40 (June 25) – Forty Days & Forty Nights (in the American wilderness)

Besieged by thunderstorms. But needing to move on tomorrow, in the teeth of the rain, up the Bighorn Mountains (I never want to see another peak or another twisty road – well, I do want to but my legs and arms don’t). Good day in Cody to visit its great 5-musuem Center of the West. Good day in several senses: it’s the anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where General Yellowhair’s troopers were massacred to the last man. The Cody museums are superbly assembled and stress the continuum of American Indian art, still fresh and still inspired, even if the continuation of rituals feel a little like a museum itself. Like the rodeo indeed – which was lustily applauded despite having to be performed in a muddy orange bog with, intermittently, still more rain. Cowboy culture is certainly not going to back down. I was reminded of my first visit to a bullfight, in Tijuana (Mexican bullfights and Spanish bullfights are by no means the same thing, and Mexican corridas can be brutal and inelegant). About the same number of aficionados turned up (same quantity as Cody’s rodeo audience), although in Mexico the 15-year-old senoritas, accompanied by their duennas, were as impossible to ignore as a giant rhododendron blossom suddenly flowering in front of you, with a terrible sense of the fragility of its extraordinary beauty, as if this might be the day, the sole and supreme day, of their blossoming. The cowgirls and young female rodeo fans were not quite so exotic. But the cowgirls roping cows were a fine tough breed, earning their applause.

The best show in town, contrary to what a tourist might expect (I was tipped to it by Bobby, who used to perform there, and whose ancestor is – of course – monumentalized there) is the Old Trail Town, a reconstruction of a 19th century Western town which owes nothing to the charming fakery of a Hollywood set. All the buildings are real, brought to Cody from many different places (including a pair of cabins used by the Hole in the Wall gang – you can walk through the very door that Sundance used to enter) and rebuilt with an archaeologist’s love and care. The town, barely 100 yards long, is on the edge of Cody, with mountainous backdrops, birds singing, and rabbits chasing through the tumbleweeds. I’ve seen some reconstructions in my life, and no matter how well done, they smelt wrong. This one is the real thing, as Bobby promised me it would be. I shan’t forget it. Oh and Joe tracked me down in the Buffalo Bill Gambling Den (see photo – what else is there to do in Cody when it’s raining?).