I’ve been a bike mechanic my whole life. Professionally I started at 17 years old but the reality is that it began at a much younger age bolting paperboy racks to my Schwinn Frontier to head out and deliver the news. Living in Michigan the bike shop became the perfect seasonal work while I was in school. Then I grew up, worked my way through college, and realized I was still a bike mechanic. It’s a good time! Drinking beer on the job, cracking jokes with the boys, rolling up a fatty as soon as the shop closes and heading out for a ride in the city. Summers flew by and then the winter would hit, and the silence would get to me and I’d go stir crazy and leave. Three winters in a row I tried to get away and didn’t land anywhere, rolling back into the bike shop for the next summer.
The last winter running away was the hardest. I chose to work building mountain bike trails on frozen dirt in December. What sounded like a good time in nature felt more like a construction site. As we gave all our energy to the labor, me and a friend sat there at the end of the days and dreamed of using our youthful energy for something better than making a buck.
I quit the trail building job and headed back to work at the bike shop in 2019 with a dream. Figure out how to ride the tour divide. My friends and I had engaged in a variety of shenanigans on loaded bikes, camping around Michigan. I had only dreamed of anything of the magnitude of the divide. Canada to Mexico, countless mountain passes, multiple desert crossings. No small feat on the bicycle, it was going to be the ride of a lifetime. I was willing to do it alone, but I wanted a friend to join and I started to put out the word in January that I wanted to ride it in late summer. I bought the hard copy of the maps from the adventure cycling association and started showing them to everyone who’d listen.
Tyler worked the repair stand next to me at the bike shop and was one of the first to hear my idea. He didn’t say much about it for a few days. After about a week he came in one day and told me while the boss wasn’t listening that he’d talked to his old lady and that he wanted to go too. He’d only been riding bikes a couple years but Tyler isn’t one to half ass anything and he immediately started making a plan to ride the trip singlespeed.
Benson and I had been riding together for years and the divide was something we had talked about before, but never with the intention of actually pulling it off. We were fixie boys, used to cutting traffic at high speed and sprinting against cars. Risking our lives for a <$100 pot at an alley cat, or making deliveries in the day. Our bikes weighed less than a bag of groceries and he certainly wasn’t set up to tour. I knew he wanted to go but he was broke and partying harder than ever. It was gonna be a piece of work to get him out there.
It was May, and Tyler and I were committing to a late July depart. Benson realizes it’s now or never and he quits partying and comes in to the bike shop with a rusty Surly Long Haul Trucker he bought off a friend and tells me he wants to do the big ride. He’s still broke so Tyler and I start raiding the collective parts bin of the shop to get him ready to go. We petitioned our friends at Velocity USA for a set of rims for him and they pulled through with some eyeleted touring rims that Tyler laced up to his XT hubs. We jammed the biggest front tire possible in there and I set him up with my Surly Moloko bars, a crazy but perfect choice to turn the road touring bike into something ready to crest a mountain pass. The rest of us had fancier setups, but Benson’s had so much character and the love of a whole community of hand me down bike parts that were used well and still ready to go the distance. Rim brakes and 9 speed can get you anywhere. New technology be damned.
Jack had only been back from his tour across New Zealand for a few months. He was damn near out of money and just getting back in the swing of his excavation job. Benson was committing though, and he called Jack and Jack said “Not a big deal” and agreed to get ready to go just one month before we were set to leave. He already had a bike and a tent anyways, who can stop him now?
Two weeks before our departure we four were all committed. We sat down on Jacks porch and bought Amtrak tickets for us and the bikes from Grand Rapids to East Glacier. Everything seemed to be in order. The bikes were good to go and a plan to ride up to Banff by way of Calgary to prep ourselves for all the off-road riding back south to Mexico. We had all been riding in our own ways but the four of us had yet to do an overnight together, so some pavement miles were going to be welcome at the start.
But Tyler and I had one more trick up our sleeve that evening.
Santiago and I had done more long rides together than any of the rest. He had wanted to go on the ride from the beginning of me pitching the idea but his immigration status in the USA depended on his job and he was afraid that there was no way he was going to be allowed to go. His famously authoritarian boss would never allow such a thing.
But Tyler and I were lighting the fire anyways. We lit him a joint at his kitchen table and asked “have you asked?”
It was two weeks before departure. The boss was out for medical reasons and the big trade show was freshly wrapped up. Santo asked, and the company graciously allowed him two months leave, unpaid. Keeping his immigration status meant the trip was possible, but now he had two weeks to get ready and he didn’t even own a tent.
To top it off, the sturdiest bike he had ready for the trip was a fat bike! A surly ice cream truck at that, probably one of the heaviest bikes anyone has attempted this route on. He got to packing and bought a flight to Calgary. Meeting us after our first three days of riding up from Glacier.
Those road miles as a foursome went well and we rolled into Calgary just in time to find out bike polo was happening. We went down to the courts, parked our loaded bikes on the walls and started making friends. We managed to play a few games, drink a few beers, and get offered a yard to put our tents up for the night. Bike polo remains one of the best crowds for making friends for the love of a game.
We had two days straight into the worst headwind of my life to get to Banff. We hike-a-biked up a closed road to camp at a place called Bear Hill our first night and landed in Banff the next day wide eyed and ready to take on the trip of a lifetime. Somehow all five of us were doing it together and we were determined to do it right. And by right I mean with smiles on our faces.
When people read these stories and watch the documentaries and see the photo reels they think of bike touring as something glamourous. The highlighted moments of the beauty of the self powered journey hold a romantic appeal that draws many people to the idea of taking on a bike tour.
The reality is often quite the opposite. Grinding up climbs day after day. Carrying everything you need with you, knowing every ounce slows you down. Living in dirt, never having a chair to sit on. Ending every day tired and hungry just to eat another Ramen with another pack of Sunkist Tuna. Waking up and doing it again, and again, and again. The views are captivating. The memories are legendary, but in my experience that’s largely based in the contrast of how hard you work to get there.
It’s a physical journey, but it’s also a mental journey. The difficulty starts with the deciding to go and cutting the ties with the parts of yourself that want to stay home and take it easy and do things how you always did. Then it continues in the choosing to persist in the chasing the dream, even when it gets difficult. Doing the ride with friends changes everything, and as we each went on our individual journeys of frustration and transformation, we had each other’s support keeping spirits up and the attitude light. Jack turned to us all on day one and said something to the effect of “well boys we’re leaving the comfort at home” and he was right.
It’s hard to talk about the ride without writing a whole chapter book, and maybe I’ll get there someday. Up and down and up and down and up and down. Each pass a new day and each day a new mountain pass. Canada was a good week. We got stronger, we got tougher, we got more saddle sores and more beautiful pictures on our cameras. Jack said “Not a big deal” about a bunch more things, one of the most notable was his expensive camera lens smashing on the ground in front of him. He also smashed his rim so hard the bead was folded flat into the rim. I had to pound it out with some of the same rocks that smashed it. No more tubeless after that, but that wheel made it the whole way. Not a big deal.
Side note, Tyler and I built all the wheels that the five of us rode, nobody broke a spoke the whole way. We’re real bike mechanics.
We were a motley looking bunch. Long hair, tattoos, bright colored bikes and clothes. Benson was wearing a swimsuit most days by week 3 and we all had a tan that bordered on a burn except Tyler, who was applying sunscreen dilligently to protect his ginger skin. He was also powering through on his single speed Karate monkey, getting in more miles walking but also somehow moving the fastest of all of us on a daily basis. He had the most minimal setup of all of us. After Santo realized he had too many shirts he gave one to Tyler and Tyler wore it every single day after that. He did the trip in one shirt and on one gear and in bedrock sandals. Benson was our other fastest guy and remember he’s doing it on a ten year old bike with rim brakes. Both were powered by sour patch kids and cheese. Bikes are a great equalizer, your gear is only as fast as you are.
I could bore you with a day by day breakdown of activities, I could give you a list of prime destinations, but what I think our ride offers is not a “how to” for other people to do gear or maps or planning. Other people are far better at that and a few youtube tutorials will give you a better plan than listening to our gear setups. My advice about all that would be don’t bring too much stuff and make sure it’s attached to your bike securely. Make sure to have space for extra snacks.
What I do believe we can bring you is a glimpse into the best side of bike touring - conquering distance with the homies. Everything about this ride felt so impossible, each individual step so massive, so many opportunities to give up and pack it all home. But at every turn between Banff and Albuquerque I had four friends looking at me and encouraging me and suffering alongside me and celebrating every high point and that made every day worth it. Every curse word muttered at a broken bike was balanced by a joke and a laugh and a half eaten snickers bar and a half smoked joint being passed over by a smiling friend. Sometimes the sun and the terrain do their best to break a man, but together we made the worst times into the best ones.
The ride went mostly like you’d expect, lots of time in the saddle. Most days looked a lot alike (wake up, pedal south). I’ll name just a handful that stood out
Pretty early on we started bathing in creeks and rivers. I think the very first time we all did together was pretty far out in the Canadian Rockies. It had rained overnight and some of our stuff needed to dry, so we parked by the stream and started getting ourselves cleaned up. We hadn’t seen anyone for hours but sure enough as soon as we were all ass naked standing in a creek a group of people on motorcycles pulled up and started asking us for directions. Santo and Tyler obliged and they went on their way. This sort of thing became a pattern on the trip, Santo even. Skinny dippped right upstream from a construction crew making a bridge one day.
We had crossed a few hundred miles of Canadian Rockies since Banff and made it past whitefish Montana where we scored an ounce of weed off a helpful waitress. There had been plenty of climbing and plenty of rocky descents at this point, we felt pretty prepared for anything that might come our way. But then came along one mountain that seemed near impassable, not on the way up but the way down! A couple of the guys were on gravel bikes and wearing clipless pedals down a “road” that hits a 38% grade in one part. We all made it down, jack with the most “roadie” setup came down last kinda pissed off and Tyler just looks at him and holds up a moon pie and starts ripping his clothes off and yells at jack that whoever makes it to a tree a quarter of the way back up the hill gets the moon pie. Jack just strips down to his underwear and starts chasing after Tyler yelling. I forget who got to the tree first but they came back laughing and smiling and shared the moon pie.
On the other end of Montana there’s a lil bar called the Peat. We rolled in hungry and tired from a long day of pedaling and ordered ourselves some food and drink. The owner of the joint was there and we shortly found out it was his birthday and we ended up with some shots on the house and start partying with them. They showed us the building out back that was a crumbling abandoned brothel from a hundred yeas ago and Santo gave us a rendition of his famous “Condom times, good times” talk while Tyler and I climbed in the attic. They got us real drunk and gifted us one of their little hotel rooms that they usually rent out and we all got cleaned up the next morning while we were hungover.
Wyoming went pretty smooth. There hadn’t been a whole lot of other riders who had departed Banff around when we did, but there was this guy named Schwinn (I’m spelling that wrong but this is a bike ride story) we kept seeing and passing back and forth. We ran into him for the last time in the Tetons and he shined us all in the eyes with his headlamp when he said bye, so after that shining someone in the eyes with a headlamp has been called “schwinning.”
The only other riders of note right now were the group of old guys, one of whom was on a recumbent. What the fuck. They all apparently made it down to near the border and then one of them(not recumbent guy) got hit by a car on one of the last days and died. I’ve told people that and they say oh no so sad, but I don’t really think that way. This guy retired and he was doing what he loved when he went down. He got saved from years sitting on a couch reliving exactly what he was currently living. Died with his boots on. Hell yeah.
The big feature of this route in Wyoming is not the Tetons, it’s the great divide basin. 130 miles through the desert with no water or supplies. If it’s muddy it can take a long time, and there’s no protection from the sun or the wind. There’s a tiny little town on the north edge of it called Atlantic City. We were all disjointed rolling in but we made a plan to eat lunch at the bar there before we rode out into the desert. Santo and I were the last ones into the bar and Tyler (who’s a vegetarian), points at an unidentified fried object and tells me to eat it. I bit in and it was chewy and salty and exactly what i figured it was, a Rocky Mountain oyster !
As we were rolling out of town we met a Danish guy named Martin who was riding the divide twice (both directions) that summer and we made friends. We went down to the river on the edge of the desert then and filtered water. Tyler took a very small shit off the side of the bridge. A turd so small he named it Toby. As we were leaving the river we saw an old man walking off into the open desert. As we rode in the same direction he was nowhere to be seen, and then two young hikers seemed to appear from nowhere. Was it a shapeshifter?
When we woke up by the last water on the edge of the desert the next morning Martin was rolling through and Benson took off with him going pretty fast. The rest of us were following but we stuck with the map when they disappeared off the front and we never saw them. We fought headwinds the next few hours and saw more wild horses and antelope than clouds or trees. We got to a turn where the wind was on our side with about 45 miles left to go. Right about then we got a text from benson saying he was at McDonald’s in town on the other side of the desert. He said he got a little lost when he split from Martin but he never ran into a headwind. I’m still convinced he went through a warp in the space time continuum. 45 miles ahead of us!
As you cross the border into Colorado there’s a lovely little lodge called brush mountain and we took our first full day off there. Tyler didn’t want to get too comfortable and he’d seen this “ride bikes naked” sticker on the fridge so he takes off naked up the mountain pass. Little did he know that by doing that it started a chain reaction that ended up with the guy who made this sticker getting his friend who was present to share his acid water with us. The owner of the lodge knew we were taking a day off and she gave us directions to a waterfall that was up the way. As we were getting ready to head to the waterfall and drink the LSD a dude who was riding his bike from Alaska rolled in carrying a full size guitar on his rear rack and a half gallon of peanut butter in his panniers. He came to the waterfall with us and had some of the acid and we were friends immediately. It was a serene day, but with replacement Tyler.
We caught up with Tyler the next day in Steamboat. We had met this older couple named Bill and Debbie somewhere up the road and Bill was a cyclist and had offered us his garage in Steamboat to crash in that night if we needed. We had high hopes of going much further and turned him down. After going to the bike shop and the grocery store in town the sun was getting low and we were starting to regret that choice. We ate some dinner and started making plans to ride 20 miles to the closest dispersed camping when Jack looked up and said “isn’t that Bill and Debbie’s Car?” Sure enough they were just finishing dinner across the street and the first words out of Debbie’s mouth were “do you need a place to stay?”
We took them up on their offer and they brought us to their garage which had three beds and bill’s collection of titanium and carbon fiber bikes. Bill shared some beers with us and we got Debbie to hit the weed after which she got real funny and really into Tyler’s tattoos. She even took me upstairs to show me her jewelry making stuff and on the walk back downstairs she told me “sometimes I think I’m not from here.” Debbie was from Iowa she wasn’t talking about Steamboat, she was talking about earth. Alien Fam.
I was trying to make it down to Breckinridge quickly to meet up with my friend Matt, who was camping north of there. We had already had a big day out of steamboat and I wanted to make it a bunch more miles. Most of the guys were tired but santo agreed to join me in some night riding. We took off next to the colorado river and rode for hours, at one point we hit this downhill that was just a straight line as far as our lights could shine. It just sped up faster and faster with no end in sight, we were screaming laughing into the void speeding up an up and up. We missed some awesome views I guess but that was one of the most surreal experiences of the whole ride. We rode til 4 AM or so and woke up and got to Breck to eat Matt’s car camping dinner which was awesome compared to our bike dinners.
The very last day we all rode together we were making our own route in from Cuba New Mexico into Albuquerque. We didn’t want to ride the highway so we chose a route through the desert that looked like it would work on a map. We camped by a rock that looks like a boob with a nipple and started our last day off into the sand.
The goat heads hit hard and early. Flats were happening left and right and I was the only one who still had sealant in my tires. The tone of frustration was getting higher and rougher and then the fences in the road started showing up. We hopped a couple and then I rolled up on all four guys looking at a 20 foot tall fence with barbed wire at the top and the desert was driving them all mad and they wanted to find a way through it. We found a way around that and made it to a road but at this point Tyler has patched his tube like 12 times and he keeps getting more flats. Jack got another and after we get inside the city a little they tell us to go ahead to the single hotel room we have reserved for the five of us. We oblige and get all checked in and cleaned up before we hear anything from Jack and Tyler. We finally five them a call and it turns out they’re right around the corner sloppy drunk off peppermint schnapps sitting on a curb in the Denny’s parking lot. Both tires on both their bikes still flat, they had walked across Albuquerque getting wasted! We all ate at dennys and then went back to the hotel where Jack shaved a racing stripe down his chest. We spent the next day bombing around Albuquerque ignoring traffic laws and we all said goodbye at the train station the following morning.
They were all headed home by various means and I had a plan to finish the ride to mexico, though not by the official tour divide route. It was all desert and pavement now so I made the call to do long rides in the night to avoid the sun and the traffic. I stopped with some friends in Ruidoso and then took off on the last stretch into El Paso. Somewhere outside Alamogordo as the sun was going down I put a handful of mushrooms in my mouth and rode off into the desert. I pedaled all night long, at some point in my headlight an African Oryx popped up in front of me and I thought I was losing it! Turns out there’s a bunch of them out there. I continued, tripping, until I took a nap between the highway and the railroad tracks and then made it into El Paso for a breakfast burrito as the sun was rising. The Amtrak carried me off later that afternoon and that was that. (Sort of)
The ride contained so many more moments than these, bonding experiences both good and bad, rough days and great ones. Mountain Vistas and beautiful rocks and streams and trees, and Saddle sores and sore hands and sore legs and sore everything else. Afterwards we all made big life changes towards what we truly wanted out of life whether it was professional or romantic, or anything else important. When you have the time to think, it counts.
Is the divide for everybody? No. Was it for us? Yes. Can you smoke a joint at the top of every mountain pass? I’m not sure, but I did my best to and it worked. Bikepacking is only as fun as you make it. Get out there and enjoy yourself.