The Hungry Cyclist: Pedalling The Americas In Search Of The Perfect Meal. Tom Davies Kevill
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welcome,’ he cried. ‘Try and find a dry spot for your tent, eh.’
Fat drops of rain splashed from the high branches but the forest floor, a mix of old spruce needles and small twigs, was surprisingly soft and dry. I pitched my tent, prepared my sleeping bag and, still wrapped from head to toe in my claustrophobic waterproof carapace, joined Dave by the fire.
‘Feather sticks,’ he said, holding up a piece of split wood. ‘Only way to get a fire going when the heavens open, eh.’ He went back to working at the piece of kindling with his long hunting knife. ‘You wanna try?’ He offered me a piece of wood.
In a blue bobble hat that came down over his ears to the top of his well-kept beard, and wearing an old jumper and well-worn yellow waterproof jacket that would have been more suitable on a fishing boat, Dave was skinny and probably in his fifties, but the deep lines of his weathered features surrounded a pair of keen eyes that sparkled with the boundless energy of a teenager.
‘So where are you cycling to?’ I asked.
‘Oh I’m jus’ here on a little holiday.’
‘And where’s home?’
‘Calgary right now, eh. But I’m kind of homeless at the moment.’
‘But what do you do during the winter?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t get too cold any more. Perhaps minus thirty when there’s a snap, and as long as I have my peanut butter and my marg, I do just fine.’ Pulling a plastic tub from his bag, Dave proudly directed a heaped spoon of white margarine into his mouth.
‘You want some?’ he offered through a mouthful of margarine.
‘Not for me, thanks.’
‘Keeps out the cold, eh.’
I watched in disgust as the lump of margarine moved down his throat before Dave went on to repeat the process with his peanut butter. What little appetite I had after my gourmet lunch almost disappeared after witnessing this gastronomic monstrosity, but expecting a cold night ahead I offered to cook some supper and returned from my tent with my cooking staples—two ripe tomatoes, half an onion, a head of garlic, two bruised courgettes, a roll-up chopping board, a collection of herbs and spices stored in 35mm film cases, some chicken stock cubes, some brown rice, a little olive oil, two apples, a small bag of raisins and a plastic bear half full of honey, plus a couple of pans. The kindness of strangers and plenty of cheap Midwest diners meant I hadn’t used them for a while. Producing my supplies, Dave’s eyes almost fell out of his head.
‘You cycle with all that gear on your bike, eh?’
‘I like to eat.’
Placing a couple of flat and steady rocks around the fire, I sweated off some chopped onion with a little oil in one pan before adding chopped garlic and a couple of pinches of dried cumin. I added one cup of brown rice, which sizzled and cracked, and after a few minutes added two cups of water and a crumbled stock cube. Leaving the rice bubbling, I added the remains of the chopped onion and the rest of the garlic to the other pan and put in the courgettes, the rain hissing as it hit the bottom of the pan. The courgette began to colour and I added the tomatoes and some seasoning. The rice was ready. Dishing up a healthy portion on a plate, I added a little of what could almost be called Rocky mountain ratatouille and served it to Dave.
‘Voila.’
‘You sure like your food, eh.’ Dave began attacking his supper.
‘Oh, nothing special,’ I said, ashamed to admit that only a few hours before I had been stuffing myself in one of the world’s smartest hotels. For pudding I cored the two apples and filled the centres with a mixture of three damp digestive biscuits I found in a pocket, some honey, raisins and a pinch of cinnamon. I stewed them in a few inches of water and after a long wait while chatting over a strong cup of coffee they were ready, the piping-hot apples sticky and spicy-sweet.
We stayed up and talked a little about our respective lives on the road. A year before, Dave’s mother had had to go into a nursing home and in order to cover the costs Dave had been forced to sell their apartment. Without a job he had no alternative but to camp for the ensuing year in a park in Calgary, from where he was able to visit his mother every day. This trip to the Rockies was his holiday. Before long the bitter cold sent us into the relative warmth of our tents. I stretched my balaclava over my head, pulled on my woolly socks and gloves and wriggled about for a few minutes to generate a little heat. It was no five-star hotel, but after my evening with Dave I was beginning to understand that comfort and discomfort were no more than a state of mind.
The following morning I emerged wearily from my tent cursing the cold, frantically blowing into my hands and stamping my feet in an attempt to reboot my circulation. Dave was already up and about, chopping wood and successfully resurrecting the previous night’s fire. My water bottles had frozen solid and after filling a pan in a nearby stream we brewed coffee and cooked oats. Then we said our goodbyes, and I was on my way to Lake Louise and the Icefields Parkway.
Fabled to be one of the world’s most beautiful roads and tracing the spine of the North American continental divide, the Icefields Parkway runs some 250 kilometres from the surreal turquoise waters of Lake Louise to Jasper National Park. Built by unemployed men as part of the ‘make work’ project during the Great Depression, it passes within viewing distance of seven upland glaciers. Dreamlike lakes the colour of scarab beetles sit peacefully below these vast fields of ice that cling precariously to the mountains, slowly dripping into the rivers that fill the air with the sound of rushing water and tumbling boulders. Cycling this road, where large trucks are thankfully prohibited, might be hard work but I have no doubt it is the best way to appreciate the outstanding natural beauty hidden in the heart of the Rocky mountains. Huge slabs of what was once the earth’s crust have been smashed and thrust in all directions by violent seismic upheavals, creating the vast sharp-edged limestone mountains and splintered cliff-faces that surround you. Millions of years of slow-moving ice and rushing melt-water have done their best to tidy up this violent mess, carving out smooth valley basins.
Two days later, as I sweated inside my restrictive waterproof shell on a morning of slow uphill cycling in indecisive rain, the sun eventually broke through the thick clouds and the dramatic beauty of the valley I was cycling through became visible. Finding a peaceful clearing some way from the road I stopped for lunch beside the ominously named Mosquito Creek. I had not passed a shop since Lake Louise and my meagre rations dictated another lacklustre banquet of peanut butter and honey sandwiches, two bruised apples and a chocolate bar. Unsatisfied with lunch I lay out my damp clothes on a series of large boulders to dry in the afternoon sun and, doing the same to myself, began drifting asleep to the peaceful tune of the icy waters rushing in the creek. The warmth of the afternoon vanished as the sun hid behind the mountains and it was replaced by a sharp coolness that quickly reminded me where I was. It seemed a perfect place to camp, and deciding to stay put for the night I spent the next hour crashing around in the bushes collecting the driest wood I could find.
Organising my findings into three tidy piles, small, medium and large, I split some of the smaller branches into ‘feather sticks’ (of which Dave would have been proud), cut a strip of rubber from an old inner tube, covered it with smaller twigs and struck a match. On all fours, I moved around my fire. A directed blast of breath here. Another well-positioned breath there. Just move this stick a little to let some more air in…
After ten minutes of concentrated tweaking, blowing and tinkering I was rewarded with the first comforting crackles and hisses of fire. I tenderly placed a few bigger sticks on the climbing flames and, swelling with primitive pride, I got to my feet and took in my surroundings. The wide creek ran away across the valley floor which was littered with sun-bleached tree trunks and heavy boulders, a reminder of its powerful potential. The broken peaks of the cold mountains rose hundreds of feet above the pointed tops of the densely packed trees that carpeted their slopes, and above it all the first star burst through the cloudless sky. It promised to be a bitterly cold night. In the gathering darkness my world was soon reduced to all that was illuminated by the dancing flames of my fire.
‘Hey,