Day 30: Leaving Yellowstone, Parte Deux

Lewis River

I woke at the Lewis Lake campground just as cranky and achy as I'd been the day before. I set my sights on Colter Bay Village for a day off, only 28 miles more. Beyond that was a huge bastard of a pass, Togwotee Pass, elevation 9,658 feet, a 2,700 foot climb. I would make a concerted effort to reach Colter Bay early in the day, to maximize my rest time.



In my experience, there's a point in every long trip when something inside says, "I'm done." I contemplated this, considered past trips, and wondered if I had reached that point. Then, at six and a half miles, my chain snapped.

I'm not a bad mechanic due to lack of aptitude. I'm a bad mechanic due to my complete lack of interest in how things work until I need to understand how to fix them. I'd never touched a broken chain before, and this was something I'd been afraid of. I carry a multi-tool, and a second, complete set of tools. I hauled my bike off the road, dug out the heavy toolset, and got to work.

The broken link had been stretched open. The pin was still attached. I needed to reseat the male part of the link and tighten it, but I couldn't get the halves aligned with the pin in place. I needed to replace the pin with a guided pin. I had no spare pins. Or did I? I discovered that the pro chain tool had a pin stashed away inside it. The pin was a millimeter too long, but I thought it was my only option. I had one chance to get it right. I guided in the spare pin and closed the chain.

A recumbent bike uses six feet of chain, or two and a half times the length of a standard bike chain, which crosses over itself on a spindle with twin grooves. I'd threaded the chain in backwards. I had to reopen it. I had a notion of what a master link was for, and found it on my chain, but misunderstanding it, I broke it getting it open. I rethreaded the chain correctly, but now I was back at square one.

I spent two or three hours wrestling with this as traffic whizzed by behind me. At times I thought about hitching a ride, but I wasn't yet ready to submit. I thought that I should be able to open another link, carefully, leaving the pin partially placed, so that I could remove a link and stitch the two ends together. And this actually worked. I got back on the road. The concentrated mental effort had cheered me by giving me something specific to focus on, and I left in a better mood than I'd started in that morning.

Most of the next six miles was downhill, and I soon rolled past the gates of Yellowstone and into Grand Teton National Park. I began to climb a rise just beyond the gates. My chain snapped again.



I had no idea which broke: the millimeter-too-long spare pin, or the half-assed patch job. All I could do was another half-assed patch job, and I lacked the confidence to attempt it again. I decided to walk back to the ranger station I'd just passed, and beg for a ride to the next bike shop. I turned around and began walking back toward the gates of Yellowstone.

Minutes later, a cyclist caught up with me from behind. She slowed to a stop, asked if things were all right. Her name was Audra, and she was traveling with two other riders on recumbents. She was sure they must have parts for me. We waited for her companions to catch up. They appeared with a third rider. Audra told me I was in luck, because the third rider was a mechanic, whom she had thought was already ahead.

In short order I was introduced to Keith the mechanic, and two middle aged men on recumbents, whose names eluded me. While I was happy for the help, in my depressed state they seemed like a threatening hive of samaritan energy. In a moment, Keith laid down his own bike, donned a pair of stretched rubber gloves, dug in his tool kit, and came out with an assortment of chain parts. He didn't have a match, but he thought he could patch the chain - the same way I had. I was dubious after my own failure, but I trusted his greater experience. He made essentially the same repair I had made, if using a slightly different technique.



After the ad hoc repair, the quartet surrounded me and peppered me with advice for places to visit or avoid. I found the four of them overwhelming and struggled to return in kind. By the time they went on their way, I was as beaten as ever I had been. I got on my bike and discovered that somehow, in the melee of good samaritanism, my front derailleur had been mispositioned so that I no longer had access to my 2nd and 3rd gears. At that moment, I had no resources to deal with it. Using only low gears, I pedalled back up the hill, away from Yellowstone.

The chain held through the afternoon, though I was still beaten. I knew exactly how Mary felt, the day she said "enough", and I wished that there were someone to stop me, to tell me it was ok to turn back, but there was no one to stop me, no one who could stop me, not only because I was alone, but because there is no one I would listen to, because I am driven, and stopping is not an option.

I cycled past a parked car, where a couple stood on a mound of rocks, he with his cell phone held high as if trying to find a signal. I realized that they must be stuck, and almost thought to stop and offer help, which made me laugh when it occurred to me that I was the least capable person for them at that moment.

Soon after, I came to a modest resort area in the Snake River area, where I stopped at a restaurant for lunch and to feel human. By now it was late afternoon, and I hadn't eaten since 8am. I used the restroom, and disliked what I saw in the mirror. My hair was matted and disshevelled. My face was haggard, sunburned an unhealthy purple, and smeared with fingerprints of bicycle grease. I looked like an angry beet.

If conflict is the obstacle between protagonist and desire, and character is how the protagonist surmounts those obstacles, then I'd reached a primal question: "Who am I?" Would I roll over and appeal to the gods? I'm passed by 50 4-wheeled dei ex machinis per minute. Or will I stand up on hind legs and shout, "I go on!" My veggie burger and fries had no answers for me. I sipped coffee and read from a battered copy of "A Wrinkle in Time" while the restaurant staff vacuumed around me.

On the way out I stopped for snacks at a convenience store attached to the restaurant. The small store was busy with people: staff maneuvering around, children playing, adults queued at the register. The bustle was too much for me, and I imagined the raging thing inside me swirling up like a maelstrom to engulf them all, and sweep away this entire corner of the building. Instead, I contained my rage with an ice cream cone.

Beyond the snake river waited one more climb before I reached Colter Village. Just a modest 500 footer, hardly anything. I kept a slow and steady pace - all I had were low gears anyway - and progressed, revolution by revolution, to the top. Beyond the rise lay Jackson Lake, to my eyes, another inland sea, stretching far into the distance. I cried as I descended the rim of the lake toward Colter Bay Village, and the cold wind stung me with my own tears.