We made the rendez-vous in Durango. I had been on the road for almost four months on a solo bike tour from D.C. to the Cycle Messenger World Championships in San Francisco, braving snow, rain, mountains, cattle fumes, and the occasional tornado, and it was good to have old friends at my side again. The journey had been a lonely one so far, and when I learned through some phone calls back home that some of the D.C. crew were heading my way I decided to wait for them so we could finish the journey together. Beaver and Craig took the train to Albuquerque and crossed the Nacimento mountains, dragging their trailers up into the thin air of southern Colorado, and then they finally rolled into town on the afternoon of July 18th. Glenda the Red and I had just spent the afternoon hunkered down in Players watching Bjarne Riis squelch Indurain's final hopes of tour victory on the epic stage into Pamplona, and we were just unlocking our bikes out on the sidewalk when a mighty cry of "FUSO!", (my courier tag back home and a word I had not heart uttered in a long time), nearly jumped me out of my skin. My fine feathered freak friends had arrived in true style, flags flying and feet spinning, and not failing to turn a few heads on the main street of this tourist town.

We spent the next few days camped out in the Junction Creek area a few miles up the valley on the north end of Durango, in the San Juan National Forest. Our spot was cool under the shade of whispering fir trees, their fallen needles forming a soft mattress under our tents, and the creek, not more than a minute's walk down the rolling hillside, ran clear and pure from the snows still melting above. The resident population of hummingbirds would become more active as the sun warmed the mountainside until the air was almost continually abuzz come afternoon, and the ravens croaked and gurgled at us from the canopy above, waiting for the opportunity to snatch some tasty item from our table. Breakfast was always a big production, (this fairly typical when you're cycling every day), and we stuffed ourselves to capacity each morning, Beaver and Craig proving to be gourmets of camp cuisine.

The surrounding mountains were criss-crossed with numerous mountain bike trails, so we switched to our knobby tires early one morning and set off in search of some sweet single track. The long slog up the gravel strewn, washboard ridden fire road had Beaver cursing and grumbling, but I promised my friends that the ride back down to camp would be worth the effort, having reconnoitered the area a few days earlier. Several empty water bottles later, at an altitude of nearly 12,000 feet, the blue trailhead marker finally appeared and we left the dirt road, plunging down the mountainside through a blur of aspens and wildflowers. After a few hairy miles of bone rattling loose shale and precipitous descending through alpine meadows, (Beaver at this point questioning aloud the sanity of all off-road enthusiasts), we leveled off in the fern forests below and swooped from berm to bend in a state of cycling satori. By the end of the ride, the reluctant Beaver had been fully converted, and on his insistence we ended up staying an extra day, exploring the network of trails around our campsite.

We left Durango the morning of July 23rd, heading west towards the Utah border. The day's ride was about 45 miles to the entrance of Mesa Verde National Park, and we sweated up some long climbs in the summer sun, pulling over occasionally in the rare shady spot to guzzle water and regroup. Camp was made that evening in the A&A R.V. park, a rare bit of splurging for us. We were trying to avoid more expensive commercial campgrounds, but the luxury of a swimming pool combined with the prospect of having to climb another thousand feet to the state run campground in the park made the few extra dollars seem worth it. We sipped grog by the pool side that night and watched the vast glittering Dome of stars wheel slowly over the mesa tops.

Leaving our gear behind the next morning, we rode into the park and spent the day clambering around and through the ancient Anasasi cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde. Tucked up underneath the overhangs of natural caverns, these extensive pueblos served their occupants well, until some natural catastrophe, (no one is really sure what happened, though drought in the most likely answer), drove the inhabitants to abandon the sites and vanish into the surrounding desert. Even with busloads of puffy, sunburnt tourists struggling with the steep passageways of dwellings not designed with the westerner's bulk in mind, the effect of the ruins was powerful. We rode out of the park as the sun was setting and flew down the last few miles of steep access road, passing Winnebagos full of vacationing families on the switch backs. As Beaver and I rolled into camp we realized that Craig was missing, and fearing that he flatted, or worse yet missed a corner and had gone hurtling down into a ravine, I doubled back to look for the body. After an hour of shining my headlight down steep chasms, and looking for tell-tale skid marks, I returned ready to call the rangers, only to find both my companions sitting by the fire, cold beers in hand. It was suggested that from then on we would inform each other when going on a supply run, thus avoiding embarrassment and unnecessary helicopter searches.

We hitched up our trailers and moved on the next day, veering northward past Cortez onto route 666. The high mountains began slowly receding behind us as we neared the Utah canyon lands, and after many dusty miles we rolled into Dove Creek, the last town before the state border. As we pulled into the local market to stock up for dinner, a lone figure came pedaling out of the south on a fully loaded touring bike. There is a kind of instant camaraderie when cycle tourists meet out in the middle of nowhere, eager to have someone of like ilk to talk to after miles and miles of isolation, and we soon were planning a communal dinner with our new friend. He called himself Swill, and was out touring the southwest for a few weeks before reporting to his new job at an observatory in New Mexico. Twenty-something and possessing a shockingly sick sense of humor, he fit right in with our merry band, and we all agreed to join forces for the night, plunging on into the fading sunset in search of a suitable campsite.

With all the wide open spaces of the American west it can be remarkably difficult to find a spot of dirt to set your tent on for the night. Even the most desolate stretches of arid scrub lands are fenced in and posted with big "keep out" signs, and free camping is frowned upon, making it very difficult for a cyclist to find rest out in the long distances between towns. With daylight fading, and legs aching, we began scanning the roadsides for a hidden but hospitable spot where we could "guerrilla camp" out of the view of passing motorists. I spied a gully on the left that seemed discreet enough and we dragged our bikes through the brush, emerging in a miniature box canyon, the sandstone outcroppings still giving off a radiant heat from the long departed sun.
We set up and cooked a well deserved dinner, feeling like old west pioneers roughing it in the wilderness. Coyotes yipped eerily in the blackness beyond, and as I drifted off I had the sensation of rising slowly up through the vast starfield above, my companions' low murmuring conversations fading into the night.

Up at dawn and soon on the road, we made good time to Monticello where we bid good-bye to Swill, his plans taking him west into the Glen Canyon area while we turned north towards Moab. The landscape became more alien as we traveled on through the red sand desert, passing cathedrals of sandstone and great needle-like spires. The heat wasn't so bad that day, a slight breeze cutting the baking effect of the sun, and despite the developing cold in my head I rode well on into the afternoon. With Beaver and Craig a few miles behind I had time to climb up into the crook at Wilson's Arch, a natural bridge formed by eons of wind working against the soft rock of the canyon wall. I spent a perfect hour there, gazing out over the land and sipping a cold soda bought from the Navaho family selling jewelry in the parking lot below. Eventually my compatriots crawled antlike into view on the distant highway, and we continued on towards the next rest stop and the promise of some lunch in the shade.

It's funny how the driest places in the world have a landscape suggestive of great bodies of flowing water. As the day wore on our little caravan struggled through the ever stranger surroundings, like bicycling Bedouins humping our heavy loads over the dry bed of some long departed sea. We passed from the sprawl of the open desert into a place older than dreams, an insane tumble of liquid sandstone walls rising steeply on either side, casting otherworldly silhouettes and shadows. It was as though we had slipped through some crack in the past, emerging in a vast sand castle constructed by demons, the colors deepening as the sun abandoned it's fiery reign of the day. We all felt the silent music of this ancient country, though in our fatigued states the reactions were far from eloquent. I think the conversation at that point dwindled to the occasional helpless expletive and "What the hell?", repeated mantra-like over the next several hours.

The last ten miles into Moab that day were all downhill, and we formed a pace line, combining our efforts and charging ahead at a fine clip until we found the hostel entrance on the highway's edge and turned off, looking forward to washing off the dust and sweat we had accumulated during the day's seventy miles of hard riding. The constant rhythm of riding had kept my mind off the worsening cold in my head, but as soon as the pedals stopped spinning I felt wretched, and a hot shower only turned tired muscles into rubber. As the boys prepared the evening's usual post-ride feast, I feebly slunk off to bed, forgoing a much needed feed in favor of the rough comfort of my bedroll, and spent the night in the fitful, sweaty sleep of a fever. The gray dawn brought no relief, as I woke to a head made of wood, and the temperature already climbing into the 90's.

There's something very surreal about a raging head cold in 120 degree heat. The desert takes on a hallucinatory quality, and the brain, already disabled by blocked nasal passages and bleary eyes, starts to embellish the already bizarre surroundings with a syrupy glistening sheen. The striated ochers and beiges of the canyon walls penetrate straight through glassy retinas into the optic nerve and jangle the synapses. Bulbous projections of sandstone become menacing bogeys dancing in the shimmer-heat, outlines warping and reeling in and out of focus as the heat of a July afternoon in Moab turns the air itself into a palpable force of oppression.

We had moved down to the riverbank after breakfast in search of some relief from the heat and a free camping spot. The Colorado's muddy sluice on the northern edge of town sustains the only vegetation for miles, it's banks lined with reed beds and occasional shade trees, and we found ourselves holed up in a two story bird blind, secluded at the end of a boardwalk nature path by the river's edge. I spent the day in a mewling, whining heap of self pity, crouched in a corner of our makeshift bungalow, while Craig played the angel of mercy, riding back into town at regular intervals to fetch cold drinks and fruit from the market. He and Beaver had considered setting out in search of the famous slick-rock trail early that morning, but the shocking heat had squelched any enthusiasm they might have had for exploring. Through the miasma of the day's dead air the only sounds that reached my burning ears were the occasional spare song of some hardy desert bird and the sporadic snores of my mates. Determined to get on the road by five the next morning and put some miles in while it was still cool, we slept the afternoon away, rising in a groggy haze sometime near dawn.

The miles seemed easier that day as the way northward led us out of the entrancing Martian surroundings of Moab. Even with hundreds of unknown miles yet to go, the worst seemed over. The heat had broken and our wheels sang along the asphalt, a steady cadence the rhythm of slow but sure progress. The road stretched ever onward, but we had walked through the valley of the sun's anvil, struggling with the elements and each other's weaknesses, and emerged stronger and closer than before. Strange twists of fate would separate us in the coming days, and I would end up finishing the journey alone, but the days our merry band spent together would stay with me to the end.