Many years ago my beloved late stepfather was admonished for doing a U-turn by a Zurich traffic cop, in words that he delighted in and which became family lore (apologies to my readers, since I stole this for my new novel): ‘Dis not de prairie!’ Well, dis – photo left – is de prairie. I love it. Huge skies, and in this photo alas you can barely seee the foreground (at this size), a long line of ancient rusted-up tractors, way past use. The Wyoming/South Dakota/northern Nebraska prairie smells gloriously at this season of a kind of apricot honey, thanks to a yellow-blooming plant that covers the prairie and lines the verges of the highway, bunching up as if yearning to cross. You’d barely know this aroma if you drove these long straight roads; but on two wheels the perfume is magnificent. As are the skies. We kept just ahead of the promised thunderstorms, shedding huge dark grey curtains of rain behind us, filling the rear-view mirrors.

We went through Upton, population 1100, the hugely self-proclaimed ‘Best town on earth.’ Locals laugh hollowly at this. Hard to figure what might have led anyone to claim it; Upton has 3 bars, two of them thriving cowboy/biker bars, plus ‘Remy’s’, and the Weston Inn (the final ‘n’ has come loose and is falling into the previous one), a motel featuring a board which I thought would say ‘Wifi, Cable,’ or at least ‘Hot and Cold Running Water.’ It said ‘Only Through Christ Jesus.’ This might of course be their wifi password.

Stopping in Newcastle, a fine old town, or once a fine old town, we sampled some of the most noxious sandwiches ever made, plus some chocolate-covered mini-bagels (Joe spat his out), and enquired about nearby Sturgis, World Capital of Riders and site of the world’s most celebrated biker rally – in August, so we were in no danger of being roped in – which produces a yearly newspaper. Excerpts are on left. Several pages were devoted to new admissions to the Biker Hall of Fame. Regarding the Ohio man buried sitting up on his Harley, enclosed in transparent fiber-glass or some such, I know how he feels (as it were). (In reality he was 82 and had been suffering from Alzheimers for some years, so he probably lost all sense of his impending fame.) After 5 hours of riding I’m ready for the fiberglass. More or less unable to de-bike without help. Wonder if Harley makes an Electra Glide with an ejector seat. Our destination, Chadron State Park, boasts magnificent camp sites. Under blue skies! Just what the doctor ordered.

6 weeks completed and we’re stalled for the first time. ‘Severe thunderstorms and tornados’ all around. Last night we were in fact lucky with the violent electrical storm: it didn’t happen when we were riding. Today Joe set off before me to get his brake pads changed in Gillette, WY (where I met up with him later); we’d agreed to take Rte 16, a 2-lane road, rather than the tedious Interstate. Joe wisely changed his mind. I rode 50 miles on Rte 16 only to come to a town drowned in mud (I later met a rider who came to the same town on Rte 16 from the other direction and, like me, had to turn back and ride 50 miles back again, only to meet the same cloudburst thunderstorm I did.) I’d spent the early morning drying out my leather jacket. By the time I reached Gillette I was soaked to the skin again, frozen, and felt like I was wearing a small dead moose. It was as much as I could take today, in freezing downpour and with more storms rolling in. I was happy to stop because the forecast said, better tomorrow. Now it doesn’t any more. Tornados, lightning storms. Now the next day, Sunday, supposedly promises better. At some point we’re just going to have to ride through it (it’s not just about being wet & cold, the problem is being unable to see through the helmet visor in a downpour). I think we’ll give it 24 hours, and pray. This is biking, after all. Latest: highway closed because of weather.

Set out towards the Bighorn Mountains, on our last ascent/descent stage of the Rockies (sad to think our trip is so nearly over) full of fears that it would repeat the rigors of the infamous Beartooth Pass, which took such a toll on legs and arms with hour after hour of braking, plus the vertiginous drops. The kind of biking my bike was designed to steer clear of. A pair of bikers we met in Cody rode the Beartooth the day after us and rode it in driving snow; again we’d been extremely lucky to ride it in sunshine. According to locals it’s been the worst weather in these parts for 30 years. Happily the Bighorn’s Granite Pass is a pass that could have been designed for Road King riders – even at 9000 feet there are straightaways you can ride at 70, and much of the climb is swooping curves instead of the needle-tight bends of the Beartooth. And the landscape is superb. Joe rated it our best riding day so far. I’d chosen well, it turned out: farther south there’s a much more strenuous crossing of the Bighorn on Route 16. Our route 14 was drilled through rock as ancient as can be, Pre-Cambrian on the way up (signs told us), Devonian on the way down, plus Pennsylvanian (a mere 250 million years old), Triassic and Permian. It was magnificent. After the descent (twisty enough!), a cafe in Dayton, Wyoming, offered us ‘hand-fried’ eggs (as opposed to…?) and we could scarcely resist.

But the weather had the last laugh. The rain came, we retreated to our tents on the very pleasant Buffalo, Wyoming campsite, and then the loudest electrical storm I’ve ever known (some Mediterranean storms of my childhood are the closest) zeroed in on us. I didn’t know it, but Joe sensibly took to the campsite buildings and watched TV. My tent, which had stood firm under the Blue Ridge Mountains downpour, couldn’t manage the four inches of rain (filled our bowls left on the nearby table) dumped on us within minutes, and when I reached for my leather jacket as warmth for the night I found it (and the contents of its pockets) completely soaked through and had to expel it from the tent (4 foot wide – nowhere to put it). Luckily the night was warm and my one unsoaked garment, a shirt, sufficed. Inside the tent it sounded like all hell had been let loose directly at us like Jove’s thunderbolts (‘more sight-outrunning were not,’ says Ariel of his tempest) and the wind lifted my tent and moved it around, toying with it. Inside my floating sleeping bag was the one dry place inside the tent and I did the traditional thing and turned over and went to sleep. At some point Joe’s voice broke through my dreams, from outside my tent, to ask if I was all right. I’ve never known a kindlier or more solicitous friend.

The morning has broken not exactly bright but with that calm that is Nature’s wordless nearest-thing-to-an apology for an unbridled fit of rage. The air is clear, and Joe says there’s a drier in the campsite buildings. Meanwhile the blessed fellow is cooking up bacon and eggs. It feels good to have survived last night – several holidaymakers in giant RVs have paused to enquire, as they rumbled past, as to how we managed in the storm. We are of course one of the the only two sets of campers on the site; there are never more than two. ‘Camping’ is all RVs today, in America. My right leg not good, but it’ll soon get a rest from biking. Shame this ever has to end! Joe has just taken my rainsoaked clothes to the campsite drier. Now on, via Gillette, where Harley Davidson have reserved their last set of front brake pads for Joe’s bike, to South Dakota.

This sweet and clever hommage to the Douanier – which Joe found in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to give it its full title – places the correct prowling desert beast in place of Rousseau’s lion, a sleeping Indian in place of the Egyptian traveler and, most importantly, in place of the infinite stillness of the original landscape, here we have one crammed with noise unheard: the traffic in the background, the gambling world implied in the cards and the dice at the sleeping brave’s side, along with a bare-breasted Indian maiden on the cover of an Indian ‘Playboy.’ So much to keep at bay. No wonder he sleeps with one hand on his knife. (Gentles, once more forgive my persistent use of the word deemed inappropriate, ‘Indian’; it’s what the most defiant ones insist on calling themselves. The condescending revisionism – no matter how well meant – of the new, politically correct term strikes them as a form of unintended appropriation; they want nothing of such ‘kindness’. You wanted Indians? You got ’em!)

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?).