The Hungry Cyclist: Pedalling The Americas In Search Of The Perfect Meal

‘Need to get my barley in before it gets too cold.’

‘Could be an early frost this year, judging by the clouds.’

Farming in North Dakota is no easy task. Operating on such a grand scale means that changing crop prices, varied weather patterns, a wrong decision or simply some bad luck can make it hard to survive. These modest men had to be mechanics, meteorologists, botanists, gamblers, drivers and chemists, who worked tirelessly to feed America. Watching the harvests of wheat, flax and barley come in as I rode through their factory floor, I could only admire them.

Although the Midwest of America may host some of the most fertile land on the planet, after a week crossing the bread basket of America I began to wish that her farmers would grow some vegetables. Diner after diner in these small prairie towns pushed out endless carb-packed breakfasts, hefty daily specials and meaty evening meals, but the closest I got to any greenery was, in most cases, depicted in the pattern on my plate. Thus I became a skilled user of any all-you-can-eat salad bar I was lucky enough to come across. Not all diners offered such a luxury, and even if they did it was often hard to find anything genuinely nutritious among the mayo-dressed starchy offerings that prevailed. But if there was any vegetation, I would pounce, playing a precarious game of Crudités Jenga and making the most of the little ceramic real estate I was given on my one visit to the bar.

Feeling lighter and faster, I pushed deeper into North Dakota and the now-familiar crops of flax, wheat and barley began to be replaced by ranches dotted with cattle. I was getting to cowboy country.

This is looking good. This is looking really good.

I glanced down at my watch.

Could be a personal best.

A second time-check confirmed my excitement. Thirty-three minutes and seventeen seconds. I had sucked the same sour cherry drop for over half an hour, smashing any previous records, and I celebrated my proud achievement by popping another sweet in my mouth and continued pushing into a fierce headwind. Sapping every ounce of my strength, it howled in my ears and meant I had been crawling forward at no more than five miles an hour all day. My dry lips were peeling in large flakes, my knees complained with every turn of the pedals and the road sign for Stanton could not have come soon enough.

Stanton, North Dakota was another small one-street town that called itself a city. Three or four miles off Highway 200, it sat on the banks of the Knife river. Its dusty main street of flat-fronted rundown buildings was no different from all the other small towns I had passed through. The liquor store, the general store, the gun store and the diner. The place was deserted.

A guttural growl followed by a loud sound of spitting broke the silence of the afternoon. In a beaten-up blue Lincoln a man, apparently with nothing better to do, was busy topping up a puddle of brown tobacco-infused phlegm in the street. I cycled over to where he was parked.

A bald round-faced individual was slouched in the driver’s seat. His dome-shaped belly swelled under a dirty shirt and a pair of braces while Willie Nelson sang about a ‘Whiskey River’ from a radio set hidden among the dusty papers and coffee cups on the dashboard.

‘Good afternoon, sir. You don’t know anywhere a guy can camp in Stanton, do you?’

‘Heeeeeeech papuut! City Park, down by the river. Gonna get mighty busy though.’

‘Yeah, why’s that?’

‘Stanton Rodeo.’

‘Sounds fun.’

‘If you’re into that kinda thing. Heeeeeech papuuut!’

Another projectile flew from deep inside the man and landed perfectly in his puddle of spit. I thanked him for his information, steered wide of his phlegmy pond and rolled down the empty main street towards the river.

I unpacked and pitched camp in the shade of some large cottonwood trees with the muddy banks of the slow-moving Knife river only a few yards away. I slipped out of my sweat-stained T-shirt and my stand-alone padded Lycra, and waded into the river. The cool water washed away a week on the road and, after washing my clothes and hanging them up to dry, I put on clean jeans and a shirt and walked along the riverbank. The sun was setting in the west, painting the white bluffs of the distant Missouri river a soft orange. The silver leaves of the willow and cottonwood trees that lined its banks rolled gently in the wind. The town park provided basic brick grills, and once I had cleaned out the cigarette ends and incinerated beer cans from one, I set about collecting enough dry wood to see me through the night. With a small fire reduced to glowing embers, I unwrapped a large steak I had picked up in the general store and poured a tin of beans into my pan. I opened a can of Budweiser and lay back next to my fire to enjoy a peaceful North Dakotan Friday night.

The following morning I was woken from a deep sleep by the grumble of engines and the whining of generators. Peering from my tent I saw that the park was fast filling up with bulky pick-up trucks, trailers and oversized motor homes. Deckchairs were being spread out in designated camping spots and the park was abuzz with weekending Americans doing something weekending Americans do very well. Camp.

In the United Kingdom we don’t know how to camp. Our idea of a weekend’s camping involves hiking to a cold, wet and desolate corner of the country, cooking an inedible meal from a ration pack, then spending a sleepless night cramped inside a smelly nylon shell designed for a hobbit. Americans, being Americans, do it very differently.

Motor homes the size of central London flats are plugged and plumbed into specialist bays. Reclining deckchairs with beer holders and sun visors are unfolded. Cold boxes the size of industrial freezers are unloaded. Smokers and multi-grill BBQs are constructed while sun shelters and gazebos are erected. The vast array of specialist camping gear available on the market allows Americans to recreate the ambience and comfort of their living room anywhere on the continent. Here in Stanton with my tiny tent and lightweight equipment I felt completely out-gunned, but I was only too happy to enjoy the hospitality of my new neighbours. Music played, beers burst open and another Midwestern weekend got under way. I was hanging out with the rodeo crowd, a faithful group of nomads who spend their summers following, and competing in, the various rodeos that take place across the States.

Rodeos are an important part of American culture. In the early eighteenth century, when the Wild West opened up, its grassy plains provided perfect cattle-grazing country. To feed the soaring population of the cities of the eastern United States, huge herds of cattle needed to be moved from west to east. For the cattle barons to get their commodity across country, long cattle drives were organised, and the skills of roping, branding, herding, horse-breaking and bronco-riding were vital to the cowboys who made these remarkable journeys.

The expansion of the railways and the introduction of barbed wire in the late nineteenth century meant that these roaming cross-country cattle drives were no longer possible or economically viable, creating a dip in demand for the specialist skills cowboys provided. Entrepreneurial ex-cattle hands, such as the famous Buffalo Bill Cody, began to organise Wild West shows that did their best to glorify and preserve the traditions of the fast-disappearing American frontier culture, and many cowboys found work in these shows that toured the country in what became an entertainment phenomenon. Part theatre, part circus, part competition, they recreated famous battles of the American Civil War and victories over Indians, as well as providing opportunities for cowboys to compete against each other for cash. Today Wild West shows still exist and the rodeo circuit is still strong, commanding large crowds, big prize money and a wide television audience. Stanton Rodeo, my first, was a low-key team-roping event. I leaned on the rusty metal fence of the enclosure as it got under way.

Two young cowboys on horseback waited behind a gate on either side of a terrified-looking young bull. At the sound of a klaxon the bull was released, nudged forward with a kindly jab from an electric prodder. Running in blind panic, the bull was pursued into a dusty arena by the two cowboys, who worked in a team swirling lassos above their heads.

One cowboy, the header, aimed his lasso for the young bull’s head. His partner, known as the heeler, had to aim his lasso at the hind legs. Once head and legs were secured and the bull was immobilised, the clock would stop. Grown men on horseback chasing cows with long bits of rope may not sound like compelling viewing, but the whistling of rope lassos, the clatter of hooves kicking up dust and the hoarse cries of the men were enthralling. This team sport, which originated in the need to bring down cattle for branding, totally gripped the thirty or forty onlookers.

Team after team raced out of the gates. Heads were missed, cows escaped and horses bucked their riders as these highly skilled horsemen went to work. Involving amazing coordination and precise horse control, these immaculately dressed men in checked pop shirts and faded jeans charged across the arena, effortlessly manoeuvring their steeds into sharp turns and sudden skids. No helmets, no gum guards, no kneepads, no health and safety. Stetsons, a pair of boots, a Lone Star belt buckle, leather chaps and plenty of bottle were all that were needed here. These guys were real cowboys.

Surrounded by the smell of hot leather and hide, Marlborough men slept under large hats in the shade of trailers; others patched up bloody injuries and got on with the job. As these men strode between trailers, borrowing horses and testing lassos, I had no choice but to join the gaggle of giggling female rodeo groupies, local girls who had come to catch a glimpse of these rock stars of the rodeo circuit, men who were mad, bad and dangerous to know.

The contest came to an end and prizes were awarded. A few hundred dollars went to winners but most of the young men here didn’t practise this dangerous sport for financial gain. Sure if you made the big competitions there was big money to be made, but the majority of the men I spoke to didn’t have the funding. Most of them didn’t even own a horse and had to borrow a ride from other competitors. Medical insurance was a laughing matter.

‘Smashed four ribs, a pelvis and popped three shoulders. Still, no one wants to insure me.’

‘Been concussed since I was fifteen—wouldn’t have it any other way.’

‘Drove three days flat to be here, and I ain’t got plans to go to bed yet.’

Surfers follow waves around the world in a never-ending search for that next adrenalin-exploding ride. Rodeo junkies spend their summers driving from small town to small town in search of their next fix, covering huge distances to ride horses, local girls and live the dream. Sure a few hundred dollars might help pay a few bills and a bar tab or two, but these guys were here because they couldn’t be anywhere else, they were addicted to this crazy way of life. And their energy was infectious. I wanted the hat and the confident swagger. I wanted the dirty old pick-up and a horse to ride. I wanted to chase women in smoky pool halls and ride out of town the next morning. I wanted to spend my days rumbling down prairie roads in a truck, kicking up a trail of dust and listening to Johnny Cash with a six-shooter under my seat. I wanted to wear the fitted checked shirts and the tight blue Wranglers with a huge buckle, I wanted a pair of lived-in cowboy boots, and I wanted to sit on my porch in a brim hat watching the sun set on the peaceful world around me. Cycling was suddenly very uncool. I wanted to be a cowboy.

Stanton’s only bar was as unimpressive as the town itself and from the outside it seemed to be no more than an industrial-sized shed. A small neon light, advertising America’s leading tasteless beer, blinked in the window of its only doorway but, excitedly, I followed my new cowboy buddies inside. The scene that greeted me was bathed in cigarette smoke and the faintly illicit red glow of neon advertising signs, while lively Country and Western music jumped out of a jukebox. A bar stretched the length of a room jam-packed with burly men in the usual faded jeans, cowboy hats and pop shirts. A busy gang of busty barmaids hurried from fridge to fridge, answering the demands of their rowdy customers.

I made my way to the bar and squeezed into a space between some Stetson-wearing ranchers. Behind the bar, surrounding the dusty bottles of Scotch and flavoured brandy, was a display of North Dakota memorabilia. A stuffed bear smoking a cigarette, sets of antlers, stuffed rodents, lost hubcaps, state flags, licence plates, worn-out saddles and prized Walleye fish. The rest of the room was decorated with the Stars and Stripes, posters of girls in hot pants draped over sports cars and flashing beer signs. Stern-faced men played cards at small round tables, players lent on cue sticks by a pool table, flashing video poker machines blinked erratically and a dated jukebox filled the space underneath a large screen showing men doing their best to hang on to crazy horses in a televised rodeo.

‘What’ll it be, sweetheart?’ cooed a barmaid.

‘I’ll get a beer please.’

An ice-covered glass tankard was pulled from a chest freezer and filled with pale fizzy beer. I swigged and took stock of where I was. The whole bar joined in with the chorus of the popular Country and Western classic that was being spun in the jukebox.

‘Save a horse. Ride a cowboy.’

I sat at a table with my rodeo friends, who drank in the same way they rode their horses. Fast, and with total disregard for human safety. Tall story followed tall story, beer followed beer and busty girls in tight jeans and T-shirts tied at their midriff were passed from lap to lap. Perhaps I needed a hat or my jeans weren’t tight enough but I kept getting missed out. It was clear that a cyclist, however far he had come, didn’t cut the mustard.

The evening wore on in a continuing blur. As each drink arrived my determination to quit cycling and ride out on a horse became stronger, and by the time the bottles of blackberry brandy were being shot back I had as good as sold my bike. The problem was that apart from a few salty handfuls of popcorn salvaged from the bar, I had eaten nothing since breakfast. The cowboys were drinking faster and faster and if I was going to make it through the night and become one of them, I needed some ballast. I staggered outside, where my first lungful of fresh air was pure luxury.

As with all good drinking dens, a savvy local had set up a small stand within falling distance of the bar. Under a red umbrella a deep-fat fryer was sending a cloud of steam into the night and a home-made cardboard sign read:

FLEISCHKUECHLE $2

I rubbed my eyes, trying to make sense of the unreadable word.

‘One flyschukehill, please.’

‘Flesh licker. It’s pronounced flesh licker.’

‘One flesh licker, please.’

On a bicycle, moving slowly across the country, I was able to see and taste first hand the culinary effects that migration from Europe had on this country. In the same way that the USA’s fast food favourite, the hamburger, began as the Hamburg sandwich, knocked together by a couple of wily Germans living in New York, here in the less glamorous surroundings of Stanton, North Dakota, I was enjoying a fleischkuechle, a relic left behind by the Black Sea Germans, who after fleeing oppression in Russia in the late nineteenth century began to look to the Americas, where some had already found freedom and land in the 1870s. Continuing through the 1890s and the early 1900s, the Black Sea Germans began to arrive in large numbers in the Dakotas, bringing their wheat-farming skills and culinary traditions to this fertile new land.

‘Fleisch’ meaning meat and ‘kuechle’ meaning little cake, this simple hearty snack was by no means a culinary masterpiece, but it did just the job after an evening of heavy drinking with cowboys, and it no doubt did the same after a hard day farming the fields in the bread basket of America. It turned out to be a folded pastry envelope the size of a pair of Y-fronts, filled with a well-seasoned beef patty. Deep-fried for four or five minutes in a large vat of oil until golden brown, they were left to cool just a little before being handed in a paper napkin to hungry customers. After two fleischkuechles, and suffering from first-degree burns to my mouth, I began to master the art of eating these napalm-filled pockets. One: carefully nibble away the top corner. Two: avoid the jet of hot steam that is blasted into your face. Three: gently squeeze your fleischkuechle a few times, drawing in some cool evening air. Four: nibble a little more from the corner. Five: insert a healthy squirt of tomato ketchup and a few scoops of sliced pickles. Six: devour. I don’t know how many I ate, but for the rest of the night I seemed to commute between the bar and the stand outside. With a little food inside me I was able to keep up with my new fast-living comrades in a frenzy of dancing and drinking until a very large girl bought me a ‘real cowboy’ drink called a rusty nail.

Peeling my face from the dried puddle of drool that had accumulated on the plastic groundsheet of my tent, I enjoyed those fleeting blissful moments of memory loss before the previous night’s excess came rushing home in a crashing headache and a violent wave of nausea. Still fully clothed, I had only made it halfway into my tent and pulling myself to my feet was embarrassed to find a damp patch around my groin. At the age of twenty-seven, I had wet my tent and now I knew I could never be a cowboy. With no other choice, I packed up my bicycle and rode out of town.

The party are in excellent health and spirits, zealously attached to the enterprise, and anxious to proceed.

Capt Meriwether Lewis, Fort Mandan, 7 April 1805

In August 1803, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, under the orders of the President, Thomas Jefferson, set out on an expedition to explore the Missouri river and try to establish a river route across the continent. Leaving Pittsburgh, Lewis and Clark led a corps of thirty-three men across America, and by Christmas 1804 were camped in for the long winter at Fort Mandan, a few kilometres outside Stanton. Having to endure skirmishes with natives, starvation, harsh winters and disease Lewis and Clark pushed deeper into what was then Louisiana. At last, finding the navigable waters of the Missouri river, they constructed a fleet of small boats and with the help of local natives followed the Missouri upstream into the ominously named Badlands of North Dakota.

With a terrible hangover, and my spirits low, I left Stanton following in the famous footsteps of Lewis and Clark.

Until now the changes in the landscape of the Midwest had been subtle but, as I entered the dramatic surrounds of the Badlands of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the changes became more dramatic.

‘I grow very fond of this place, and it certainly has a desolate, grim beauty of its own, that has a curious fascination for me,’ said President Theodore Roosevelt in 1883 and I could see why. For thousands of years the gentle flow of the Missouri river has carved out vast multicoloured canyons in the otherwise flat surroundings. Peculiar towering structures rise out of the ground as the sun highlights bright layers of sedimentary rocks built up over millions of years. I spent a wet and stormy night here, camped amongst the bison that roamed freely through the parkland. Staring up at the night sky, it was hard to imagine that these few hardy beasts once roamed the prairies in herds so big they would have been visible from space.

At the peak of their existence it is estimated that over sixty million bison, or buffalo as they are more commonly known, roamed the land between Mexico and Canada. As the great herds of buffalo migrated with the seasons, so too did the Native American tribes, such as the Lakota, the Sioux and the Cheyenne.

Considering their dependence on buffalo, it is not surprising that the Native Americans held the animal in the highest regard. Not only did the buffalo provide meat but almost every part of its body could be put to some use. Its hide for clothing and shelter. Its bones for tools and weapons. Its tough stomach as a vessel for carrying water. But the well-balanced relationship between the Native Americans and the buffalo would soon be lost for ever, changed by the introduction of white settlers. After Lewis and Clark, more and more white fortune-hunters began to head west in search of riches and glory. With horses and guns, buffalo were an easy target, and buffalo-hunting soon became directly associated with the adventures of life in the Wild West. Buffalo hides were used for leather while their tongues became an expensive delicacy, and white hunters left rotting carcasses strewn across the prairies.

The introduction of the railroads only added to the plight of the American buffalo. As railroads stretched into the western territories, buffalo provided meat for the hungry workforce, and once the railroads were complete the destruction became worse. Hunters could now take the train into the west on specific buffalo-hunting excursions, and locomotives would slow down so that passengers could take pot shots from the windows. The wholesale massacre of this proud animal only added to the demise of the Native American tribes who relied on the migration of the buffalo, and by the time the government prohibited hunting, the population in North America had dwindled from sixty million to eight hundred buffalo. The Midwest had been turned into a buffalo graveyard. Reports tell of piles of sun-bleached skeletons stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction, to be cleared up by ’bone pickers’, who found a value in the bones as fertiliser.

Leaving the Badlands and North Dakota in August, I took Highway 2 and cycled west into Montana, Big Sky Country. More than three months on the road without much of a break meant that riding had become a Herculean effort, mentally and physically. My legs were empty and constant glances at the speedometer only revealed bad news. I was going nowhere slowly. The air was muggy and infested with mosquitoes that showed no mercy. If I didn’t keep moving above a certain speed their sharp stings drew blood, forcing me to pedal faster as if stuck on some infernal exercise machine. Unable to shake off the permanent exhaustion that hung over me and with nowhere to stop and rest properly, my mood darkened.

I was also stuck in a culinary groundhog day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, day after day, I was eating alone at the same table in the same diner. The same waitress was taking the same order from the same clipart-decorated menu with the same false smile and around me the same old farmers were having the same conversation about the same crops. Arriving in the small town of Williston on the border with Montana, I threw up my tent in the town park and, just about mustering the effort to get undressed, I climbed inside and collapsed, exhausted.

Waking from a deep sleep and not quite knowing where you are or what’s going on can be a wonderful feeling. Waking like this to find a hard object growing into your back through the floor of your tent is a little confusing, and when this unknown growing object begins to gush water, you panic. Dazed and half asleep I scrambled about, trying to work out what was going on. Was it an animal, a giant insect, some alien being? After releasing a long, profane outburst, I began to piece together what was going on. This scene, a nasty cross between Alien and Titanic, had resulted from me pitching my tent on the town park’s sprinkler system.

Wet and despondent, I packed up my damaged tent and waited for the small diner to open its doors. Sitting with a jug of coffee I picked at a stack of pancakes as the sun came up on another day on the road. After breakfast I queued up with grey-haired farmers’ wives to use the dusty and slow computer in the town’s library. An email from home lifted my spirits momentarily but I left feeling homesick once my half-hour limit was up. I got back on the road. If I was going to get over the Rocky mountains before winter set in, I had no choice but to keep moving.