Day 49: 49 on the 49th

Six a.m. brought sunshine straight through the tent fabric and the promise of a decent morning, but by the time I actually crawled out at half six to find Terry cooking breakfast, a dense fog had swallowed the sun whole. I sat wrapped inside my sleeping bag at the picnic bench for the better part of an hour, waiting for the sun to burn its way back through the murk. Terry’s breakfasts have been one of the quiet joys of this trip — left to my own devices I’d almost certainly have eaten far worse on occasion.

Standard breakfast from Terry, Bagel, Oats & Tea

Once the sun finally won, the early riding was some of the best Wyoming had offered yet — that fresh, wide-open feeling most states seem to manage at least once. I rode along happily with the iPod for company, glad of a stretch of clear sky after one too many recent run-ins with storms.

Today I will mostly be listening too the Monsters of Folk album.

We stopped in Walcott for a quick snack, the day’s mileage never intended to add up to much — under fifty in the end. A convoy of vans carrying one large family on a road trip pulled over to ask where we were headed, delivered the usual disbelief, then offered food and water we’d only just restocked and had to politely turn down. Then came a stretch of riding on the interstate itself — legal or not, the maps insisted we go that way — with a decent wide shoulder and traffic running only medium-light. Wyoming, it turns out, is the least populated state in the country, which is probably exactly why we’re allowed anywhere near its interstate on a bicycle.

Sinclair came and went — essentially an oil refinery with a housing estate tacked on behind it — before we rolled into Rawlins and made straight for the bike shop, me wanting my spokes checked and both of us needing supplies. Three kids, maybe ten years old, were loitering over the BMX bikes, and the chubbiest of the three appointed himself spokesman for the group, quizzing me relentlessly about where I’d “driven” from and where I was “driving” to. They’d fixed their hearts on one three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar special edition and seemed to be seriously weighing whether the three of them could pool their funds; I told them it was a long way off from Christmas. Watching them debate it was some of the best entertainment of the day, and I told them not to be too impressed by what I was doing — if the three of them stayed friends long enough, there was no reason they couldn’t do exactly the same thing themselves one day.

I want one.

Rawlins, Wyoming

We’d split a cheap motel room, and I headed back with food while Terry kept shopping, then spent an actual evening in front of the television — something I’d barely done all trip outside the odd England match — before an early night. A double bed all to myself again. Small luxuries, taken as they come.