“Hallelujah I’m a bum. Hallelujah bum again.” – U. Utah Phillips
I often long for times long past. The times that are far enough off that we can romanticize about the hardships without actually knowing them. A time when people knew what traveling 50 miles meant. When the journey had to be planned and even then you just took it as it came. If you broke down you found your way to the closest town and there would be someone there that could fix it.
A time when people knew what it meant to be hungry because they had felt the pangs in their guts or seen the faces of those who had nothing to eat. It’s much easier to be empathetic to those in need when you come in contact with those people on a daily basis, or even better, have personally felt that need.
Pedal, just one more turn, pedal dammit!
“Hallelujah I’m a bum.”
We started our journey with a less than lofty goal, reach Jackson Hole on Monday and to do the whole thing via bicycle. It was Slotoja and it was on. The sub-goal of eating at every greasy spoon possible was just a bonus.
We rolled into Logan at about 8:30 and made our way to Mr. KC “There is nothing erotic about corporate fascism” Anderson’s house. He was out fighting corporate fascism but returned at exactly the time that we arrived. How fortuitous? Those of us who came from farther south had not yet consumed breakfast and the hunger could be seen on our faces. And yes, I mean hunger that Americans experience, not real hunger.
Naturally, we made our way to Angie’s. You know cause it’s where the locals eat. (Editor’s note: the entire time I lived in Logan I never ate here.) We were treated to the local culture of eating greasy nastiness in the morning. We were thrilled having found such an unknown local treasure and quickly bellied up to the bar and devoured the eggs and potatoes placed in front of us.
As an added bonus, our waitress performed what has to be the most amazing coffee pour I have ever witnessed. She fully extended her arm, leaned over the giant table of the booth where we were seated. And then, without flinching nailed a 12″ high pour into the coffee cup sitting in front of Mr. Anderson. I watched in horror expecting the coffee to come to rest in KC’s lap, but no, she nailed it filling his cup to the rim without spilling even a drop. If you are in Logan, this is your greasy spoon…
After filling the tanks with that good ole style food, we headed back to the Anderson’s to ready our carriages and feed our horses.
After fabricating several BOB skewers, we were off in the flash of our top speed of about 9 mph. We know how to put the slow in Slotoja.
We headed north because that seemed like a good idea as part of our effort to make it to Jackson Hole. The weather was anything but poor and we cruised along with our hairs in the wind and our trailers bouncing along behind us.
We rolled into La Tienda at about 11:30. High fives were had and there was rejoicing by the locals that the Mooseknucklers had rolled into town. And by rejoicing, I mean strange looks of distrust and wonder. Seeing that we hadn’t eaten in almost two hours, we popped into the station and purchased supplies, beer, Funyons, Mountain Dew, Coke (the beverage kind) and trail mix. Then we sat outside and refueled.
By about 12:30, we were packed up and heading back up the road.
At 1ish, there was a screech heard from the back of the group and we smartly noticed that Dan was no longer moving forward. We turned around, no small feat when you have a trailer attached to your rear wheel and found that Dan’s trailer had broken. We were stranded.
KC had lived in Clifton for some time and remembered there being a welding shop just down the street. He dropped his trailer and headed off to find someone to re shackle our horses. A blacksmith, yes a blacksmith was found who was open and willing to take a look at our disaster. We limped the two blocks to Shorty’s shop and waited for the diagnosis. He could fix it but it was going to cost us more than we wanted to pay. He welded it up and gave us the bill, $10.
High fives were had. And off we went hoping that the drop outs would hold all the way to Jackson.
We rolled out of Preston at about 2:30 and headed toward Strawberry Pass. We expected to make it into Montpelier by dark meaning we had to make it over the pass and then the 15 or so miles into town. About a half hour outside of town I thought, we may have wanted to grab some food just in case we didn’t make it. Onward we pedaled.
Up to this point, we had made fairly good time. Other than the mishap with Double D’s trailer, we had cruised along. This all changed once we started to head uphill. Our pace turned into a crawl. The weather had been nice all day despite the poor forecast. As we headed up the pass, we made the mistake of looking back. The clouds were rolling and they were dark. We attempted to stay ahead of them but they were moving too fast for our slow pace.
Mr. Anderson had begun this trip with a disclaimer that he had caught black lung and didn’t expect to make it very far. We laughed it off and headed out any way. Up until the time we turned uphill, his death seemed to linger in the distant future. Now, ever time he would roll up to the group, we were worried he would take his last breath. His breathing was heavy and his coughing had increased to that of a dying diesel truck.
Around 6:30, and many miles from Montpelier, the clouds opened. It started with a few drops, some thunder and then worsened to what could be considered a downpour. After pushing our way through the rain for 20 minutes, it seemed that the rain would continue all night. We found a small pull out and dropped our trailers to set up tents as best we could in the pouring rain.
Of course, once we had the tents set up, the rain stopped but the sky did not clear. We were all pretty much finished for the day. The memory of that fat old guy who has constantly failed me on all my journeys this summer, remembered that it wasn’t much farther to Strawberry Spring and then it was a very short jaunt to the summit. Once at the summit we had a half hour or so into Montpelier. We could be there by breakfast.
We hunkered down and surveyed our choices. At this point there was no way we were going to make it to food by nightfall and little chance of finding much of a better camp site. All of our gear was more or less wet, but we had tents set up and were now changed into dry clothes. We had a half a bag of Funyons, 3 beers, 3 cliff bars, 2/3 a bottle of Tequila and some peanut butter crackers. Time to hobo it.
We slowly made ourselves an impromptu fire ring and desperately searched for some dry wood. It quickly became obvious that no dry wood was to be found and that our fire ring might be a big waste of time.