Day 36: Dubois to Lander, Wyoming

In case I hadn't mentioned, the cities of Dubois and Lander reside in the aptly named Wind River Valley, where the steady Wyoming wind scores clean the desert underbrush.



I set out from Dubois with a strong tailwind that only varied as the road curved left or right, carrying me easily through miles of desert. It was forty miles in that the road diverged from the valley, climbing up out of the bowl of it to the grassy plains above, and that's when I learned to sail.



My path turned perpendicular to the wind for fifteen miles, and I was intermittently buffeted by strong sidewinds that grabbed my fairing and yanked me across the road. At first I held the wheel rigidly, struggling to tack into the wind and keep to the shoulder. I had often imagined mounting a sail on a bicycle at Burning Man; I quickly learned that my fairing was more than enough sail. Eventually I learned to relax, loosen my grip on the steering, and lean into the wind, with one foot hung down like an outrigger for stability.


What a crosswind looks like

Contemplating the wind, I wished for an organ that would let me see it, as I imagined that its currents must be beautiful and terrible. As a city boy with no experience in activities that are influenced by wind, I've never had to think much about it; never considered it as a constant, or as part of a lifestyle. But the longer I cycle, the more it impresses upon me its utter influence. It always makes its presence known, even in its absence. I understand why cultures that were dependent on it ascribed it faces of godhood, because it is so powerful, yet so capriciously arbitrary.



As the road led up out of one bowl and into the valley above, so it eventually crossed over to another bowl, there to sink below sunset colored cliffs and rejoin the wind's path.



I rode through the Shoshone reservation and was dismayed by the amount of obesity there: 3 or 4 out of 5, more among the women than the men. Bad diet and diabetes are among the enduring legacies that our nation has left the Indians, and while some tribes, such as the Kalispel, are dealing with it smartly, with PSAs and community health centers, others are not, and clearly the Shoshone are among the nots.

While I was stopped at the Shoshone reservation, a man in the passenger seat of a mini-van gestured me over to ask about my bike. After a couple of slurry questions, he asked, "Can I have it?" This is a question that's been asked of me by homeless drunken Indians in Seattle, as well as a few pubescent street punks. I frowned for a moment, wondering if this was some cultural expression that I didn't understand, something more than the simple minded question that it sounds like, before answering "No, you can't have it." He seemed unfazed, and I moved on.

It had been a long day, and I counted each of the remaining 20 miles from the reservation to Lander. I arrived in the early evening, with 75 miles behind me, and looked for the bike shop where Mary had agreed to ship my parts. I found it - closed, of course. I checked in to the Downtown Motel, which had caught my eye because its lot was bursting with flowering potted plants, which gave it a cozy look, a look that said someone cared, even if it was in all other ways unremarkable.