LITMIR.BIZ

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on my plate.

      “Yeah. Well, I just thought I’d stop by and say hello. My bike’s downstairs. Went for a hike this afternoon. That was nice. But you know, the free campground doesn’t have any showers—which is too bad, ’cause I sure could use a shower. Yeah. Well, anyway, this sure is a nice place you’ve got here. And it looks like you’ve cooked quite an extravaganza.”

      Chris looked sideways at us and grinned.

      “Is everything all right with you?” I asked.

      “Oh sure. Everything’s fine. Like I said, I just thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

      Say hello and see if maybe we’d invite you in for a hot shower and a free meal, I bellowed to myself. Larry sensed that I was just about to say something really nasty to Chris, so he spoke before I got the chance.

      “You know, Chris, there are some hot showers downstairs by the pool. Why don’t you help yourself. And here, I’ll wrap up some of this steak and stuff and you can eat it back at the camp. Sorry to rush you out like this, but Barb and I would like to be by ourselves right now. You can understand that, can’t you?”

      “Hot showers downstairs? Great!” Chris beamed, while Larry scraped off part of our meal into a couple of plastic bags. “Hey, maybe I’ll catch you two later this week, when I head south.”

      As it turned out, we never ran into Chris or another cycler like him again, although we did meet a number of bicyclers who had their own encounters with what they referred to as “real pain-in-the-butt sponges.”

      Larry and I left Jasper the next morning and pedaled south on Route 93, through the heart of the Rockies, to the Columbia ice field. Less than halfway to the ice field, it started to pour. Since we didn’t have our rain jackets on, we pedaled for the nearest shelter, the outhouse in a roadside rest stop. We leaned our bikes against the wooden cubicle, pulled out our jackets, some bread, peanut butter, and oranges, and dove inside. I propped the door open to let the fresh air in and the bad air out, and we huddled together on the toilet seat and ate our lunch. Occasionally, a motorist with an urgent need to relieve himself turned into the rest stop, leapt out of his car, and made a frantic dash for the toilet. But once he came to within ten yards of the outhouse and spotted two bikes and two figures inside chewing on sandwiches, every one of them ran back to his car and blazed off for the next nearest site of relief.

      When we started cycling again, the air temperature had fallen and the rain felt like chips of ice. After a quarter of an hour I realized that, even though I had been working hard climbing the grades, my body couldn’t warm up. I shouted to Larry that I was going to pull off the road and put on my sweat shirt and the wool mittens I’d bought in Jasper. Larry was cold too, but he was in no mood to stop. He hated stopping in the rain. No matter how cold or wet he got, he never wanted to stop and change his clothes, as I always did. We still had another forty miles to pedal before we would reach the ice field, and the prospect of spending the rest of the afternoon bicycling in the cold rain started us arguing.

      “Why didn’t you put on your mittens and sweat shirt before we left the outhouse?” Larry yelled at me.

      “Because I didn’t think I’d need ’em. I didn’t know it was this cold out here.”

      “You’ll only get colder and wetter if you stop,” Larry yelled. “All your other clothes’ll get wet when you open up your packs to fish out your sweat shirt. Keep pedaling. You’ll warm up.”

      “No I won’t!” I protested. “I’m getting colder, not warmer!”

      “So let’s pedal faster. That’ll warm you up.”

      “Pedal faster? I can’t pedal any faster! I’m freezing!”

      And so went the argument until Larry gave in. But by then I was raging mad, and I wasn’t stopping, no matter what. I’ll just keep right on pedaling, I shouted to myself. I’ll keep right on pedaling without those mittens or sweater, and pretty soon I’ll freeze to death and that’ll show him!

      “I’m not stopping!” I yelled out loud. “I’m gonna prove I can be tough, too.”

      “Forget it, Barb. I don’t want you complaining; so pull over and put on whatever you want.”

       “I am not complaining and I am not stopping!”

      I was shaking now from anger and the cold. My hands and feet stung, and the water was already coming through my jacket. Then suddenly, just when I was about to holler something else at Larry, a stream of blood splashed onto my handlebar bag. I stared at the bag a few seconds, trying to comprehend what I was seeing; I watched in horror as more blood poured down the front of my jacket and over my legs and the front of my bike. It seemed that the blood was coming from me. I touched my face. My mouth and chin were covered with the warm, red liquid. I must have let out a shout when I felt the blood, because just after I brought my hand away from my face, Larry pulled up alongside me. Panic shot into his eyes.

      “Quick! Pull off the road!” he screamed, as he started to do so himself.

      “No! I don’t care if I bleed to death! I am not stopping!” I fired back automatically. But the blood scared me, and after a few yards I turned into the mud at the side of the road.

      A vein had burst inside my nose, and a steady flow of blood was gushing out of my right nostril. I sat down in the puddles, tilted my head back, and pressed my fingers against the side of my nose. The passing cars and campers sprayed me with mud and water. While I waited for the pressure to stop the bleeding, Larry pulled my sweat shirt and mittens out of my packs and helped me into them. Then he put his arms around me to shield me from the rain.

      “How come when it rains I always forget how much I love you?” he whispered. “Do you think we’ll ever learn to control our emotions when the weather turns lousy? You know, it seems like the minute I feel a raindrop, I start to get upset. I know you’re going to want to stop and put on warmer clothes, and you know I’m going to want to start pedaling faster, and right away we’re at each other. It’s so hard to stay calm in the rain, but we’ve got to keep trying. Maybe someday we’ll get the hang of it.”

      After my nose quit bleeding, we pedaled for another three hours in the downpour before we hit the 6,676-foot Sunwapta Pass, only three miles north of the ice field. From the foot of the pass, the road looked nearly vertical; it shot straight up from the flat Sunwapta riverbed and disappeared into the clouds. Traffic crept up the climb at a snail’s pace, and motorists coming down shouted to us that the road was too steep to bicycle. We felt defeated even before we started; our muscles were already sore, and we were shaking from the cold. We stood at the edge of the road and polished off a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, shifted into our lowest gears, took a good hard grip on our handlebars for extra leverage, and started grinding the pedals.

      As the road turned skyward, every muscle and all the weight and energy in my body went into each slow, deliberate stroke of my legs. One—two, one—two. First one leg crushed down, then the next bore down, just as solidly. One—two, one—two. We moved up into the clouds, and even though there were glaciers next to us and the icy rain continued to pelt down, perspiration spewed out of me. I peeled off my jacket and sweat shirt and struggled on in only a T-shirt, shorts, and wool socks. For what seemed like an eternity, we inched upward at a rate that felt slower than a walk. I needed all my strength and concentration to maintain my rhythm and keep from teetering to a standstill.

      When I reached the top of the pass, a feeling of triumph and relief washed over me. It had been a long seventy miles. We pitched our tent next to the ice field, which was almost totally obscured by the low-lying clouds. Camping beside a flow of glaciers is a lot like camping in a freezer. I climbed in the tent, yanked off my wet clothes, and pulled all my dry clothes—two T-shirts, down jacket, sweat pants, two pairs of socks, and a stocking cap—over my sweaty, muddy body. Then I slid into my down sleeping bag, zipped it around me, and stayed that way for the rest of the night.

      By morning the rain had diminished to a drizzle—a Canadian spit, as the locals called it—and

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