The Hungry Cyclist: Pedalling The Americas In Search Of The Perfect Meal. Tom Davies Kevill
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beach and it was obvious the contestants had spent their winter evenings scanning home-shopping channels and catalogues in order to acquire the most alluring Californian beach swimsuits. Sashaying forward, each competitor attempted a pin-up pose, lowering their heads to smirk suggestively at the judges before turning with a final swing of their assets to leave the stage.
Each potential champion then re-emerged in a shiny evening dress made by their grandmothers for the battle of the ball gowns. More sauntering, more simpering, more posing, more cleavage, and more purposeful scribbling from the judges.
Last but not least the judges asked each of the contestants a series of taxing questions.
‘What are your hobbies?’
‘What do you think makes Frazee such a special place?’
‘What are your plans for the future?’
Each girl did her best to remember her scripted answers, telling us how much she enjoyed working with children and animals and wanted to save the world. The final question, ‘What are your views on America’s involvement in Iraq?’ was responded to in every case with patriotic fervour and roars of approval from the audience.
While the panel of judges discussed their decision in whispers, last year’s Miss Frazee, as pink and plump as one of the town’s prized turkeys, stood up. Predictably she burst into floods of tears, while trying to tell us through an onslaught of sniffling and blubbering how being a beauty queen had changed her life. She was followed by the sophisticated visiting Miss Minnesota, who drew astonished gasps from the crowd who had apparently never seen anything so beautiful.
Teasingly she peeled open the gold envelope holding the results while the five contestants and the whole of Frazee held their breath. In a slow Midwestern drawl, she announced:
‘This year’s Miss Frazee is…Anna Hanson.’
The stage erupted in a tumult of shrieks and tearful hugging. The crowd rose to its feet in applause. At last the ordeal was over.
Or so I thought. Sadly, this was not the case. My buttocks, anaesthetised by three hours on a hard plastic seat, and my hands, weary from perpetual applause, would have to endure another forty-five minutes of crying, crowning and acceptance speeches before I could escape. At long last it came to an end and, mentally exhausted, I staggered from the hall. I had survived the roller-coaster ride of my first small-town beauty pageant, and Frazee had a new Queen.
Paul’s family wouldn’t let me leave. After all, how could I possibly say goodbye to Frazee without enjoying the turkey luncheon and the Turkey Dayz parade? The previous night’s dinner had pushed my annual turkey intake dangerously close to maximum and the thought of Christmas almost brought on a panic attack, but in the name of gastronomic research I promised to push on.
Held in the sterile surroundings of the Frazee event centre, the annual turkey luncheon was another excessive, no-holds-barred celebration of the town’s bird. It took place shortly after the announcement of Frazee’s mystery gobbler, in which the public had to identify a local dignitary from his warbling imitation of a turkey played out over the tannoy. The doors were opened and the townspeople shunted forward in an orderly line. A hard-working team of blue-rinsed female elders bustled around industrial-sized ovens, from which abnormally sized golden turkeys were produced. Other teams of busy Frazee doyennes set about tearing birds to pieces with alarming enthusiasm, piling the steaming meat on to large metal serving trays. Turkeys were being cooked, carved and served on an epic scale. Waiting in line with my flimsy paper plate, I inched closer towards the panel of old ladies serving up this gargantuan meal. Two heavy dollops of potato salad. An eight-inch gherkin. A turkey leg the size of a small child’s arm. A ladle of gloopy gravy and a packet of crisps. My plate buckled under the weight of its load, my stomach gurgled in frightful anticipation of the suffering it was about to endure, and I tried to forget the rancid smell of the turkey sheds I had passed as I pedalled into town. I found a seat and did my best to dissect my genetically modified turkey leg with a plastic knife and fork.
The turkey luncheon was clearly a gathering of the Great and the Good of Frazee. On my table I was sharing conversation with none other than the deputy fire chief, the town sheriff and the local undertaker.
‘And you must be Taaarm.’
Feeling a hand on my shoulder, I turned round to be greeted by a friendly-faced man with a large gold chain around his neck.
‘I’m Mayor Daggett and people here tell me you’re riding your bicycle to Brazil.’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘Well, that’s just wonderful,’ he drawled. ‘The people of Frazee would be honoured if you would ride your bicycle in the Turkey Dayz parade.’
Filled with a mixture of pride, nervous anticipation and turkey nausea, I accepted. With my turkey luncheon slowly working its inexorable way through my system, I fetched my bicycle and hurried to where I was told the parade would begin. A clipboard-wielding woman in a blue tracksuit gave me my orders.
‘Taaarm, today you’re riding in position eight. You have candy?’
‘No.’
Rushing to the general store I grabbed two bags of synthetic lollipops and returned just in time. The Frazee marching band rolled their drums and crashed their cymbals, and the large trucks pulling the floats started their engines. At position eight in the parade I was riding behind none other than Miss Frazee, who was perched like a cake decoration atop a giant sequinned re-creation of a red stiletto-heeled shoe, being pulled by a tractor. In the position behind me was the Frazee Retirement Home float, a low-loader lorry with a few dazed octogenarians still in their beds, complete with swinging drips and catheter bags.
Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!
An immaculately polished fire engine let out a controlled blast on its siren and the parade began to inch forward through the backstreets of Frazee before turning on to the main street. Frazee may only have had a population of 1,500 but her main street was lined with cheering residents and visitors. I rode with no hands and cycled in circles like a circus performer, rang my bell and waved to the crowds. The streets were lined with families and children who swooped like seagulls to pick up the sweets I tossed to them from my handlebar bag, like all the characters on the other floats were doing.
It was a surreal experience. Police cars and fire engines let off their sirens. The marching band played perfectly, while silver batons were tossed high into the air. Scantily-clad cheerleaders with turkey-fattened thighs ducked and dived, shaking day-glo tinsel pompoms. Clowns on stilts mingled with dancing turkeys, a group of fez-wearing old men in go-karts swerved crazily. Cowboys and cowgirls trotted on horses, their harnesses jingling. Vintage cars beeped their horns, children rode on the back of plump pigs, and the Hungry Cyclist rang his bell and cycled amidst this hallucinatory procession. I had no doubt that I would see some weird and wonderful things on my way to Brazil, but my weekend in Frazee would take some beating.
In the last two days all my Christmases had come at once and, never wanting to see a turkey again, I left Frazee and moved west towards North Dakota and Fargo, a large Midwestern town made famous by the Cohen Brothers’ 1996 film of the same name. By all accounts the townspeople of Fargo could not have been more excited at having a feature film made about their beloved city, only to find that it portrayed them as group of backward, inbreeding maniacs who liked feeding people into industrial shredders. I didn’t find any maniacs in Fargo, just car dealerships, endless strip malls and organised traffic patterns that cleverly led you to the doors of Burger King or Starbucks.
Less than happy with my stay, I turned northward for Grand Forks and got my first taste of the scale and emptiness of this rarely documented heart of America. Gone were the winding roads and the meandering highways that connected the small towns of Michigan and Minnesota. Here in North Dakota getting from A to B was much more functional and the straight roads on my map now looked like the national grid, a system perhaps left behind by the German farmers who settled here in the nineteenth century. Riding Highway 200, I was now on a straight road that would be my