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

There is an art to eating a buffet of this calibre. I needed to be calm, disciplined. I needed a strategy. How many times you revisit a buffet on this scale is a private matter between you, the capacity of your stomach and your conscience, but the first rule of buffet is knowing where your enemy lies.

‘Would like some bread, sir?’

Don’t even think about it.

To gently ease my system into the impending feast, I began with a bowl of fresh Rocky mountain berries and natural yogurt, and sticking with the breakfast theme I then decided on eggs Benedict, an old favourite. I declined the offer of having it served on an English muffin and opted instead for a couple of rashers of grilled Canadian back bacon and a little wilted spinach.

My next stop was the sushi bar where a patient Itamae was practising his art. I briefly questioned whether I should be eating raw fish in the Rocky mountains, but the objection was overruled, and I returned to my table with a plate laden with beautiful nori, wrapped futomaki, uramaki made with Pacific salmon, nigiri zushi with shrimp and eel, and plenty of tender cuts of sashimi, all enjoyed with a little wasabi and pink ginger that rebooted my system perfectly for the next step.

Spoilt with cold sides of smoked Pacific salmon, sparkling gravadlax and fat prawns the size of giant’s fingers, I loaded up yet another fishy plate with poached Bow river trout with a dill and caper sauce, and enjoyed it with some fresh asparagus dripping with butter. Fish is filling and, teetering on the edge of consciousness, I was grateful that I had had the foresight to bring a good book with me. After a visit to Middlemarch I was soon raring to go again.

Ahhhhhhh!

Roast loin of pork with morels, the sculptural mushrooms I had noticed growing on damp tree stumps and logs in the woods, served with a couple of boiled Yukon Gold potatoes coated in a little butter and fresh mint, and a couple of grilled peppers on the side. My mission was almost complete.

Unfortunately the Hungry Cyclist was on a tight budget, and this luxurious food had to be washed down with jugs of iced water and the complimentary fruit juices on offer. With each new plateful the black-dressed sommelier would approach to proffer his extensive wine list; each time he would retreat with merely a twitch to the corner of his mouth to show his disappointment.

He had much more luck with neighbouring tables, whose occupants changed two or three times during the course of my long-drawn-out brunch. By now I had been eating for over two hours. My brain was signalling frantically to my stomach and waves of dizziness washed over me. I began to feel increasingly light-headed and in a state of semi-delirium I mopped up the last of the meat juices with a lonesome potato. I needed to go back to Middlemarch.

After another chapter, I enjoyed some sharp Canadian cheddar and a healthy slice of Saskatoon strudel that had been flirting with me throughout the afternoon. I had reached my elastic limit and, sipping at a small espresso, I checked my time. Three hours and twenty-two minutes. I screwed up my napkin and triumphantly threw in the towel. Staggering out of the dining room I waddled through the labyrinth of the hotel like a sedated minotaur. The beast had been tamed. Stumbling across a cosy room with an open fire and a sofa the size of a family car, I slipped off my shoes, plumped up the cushions, let out a reassuring fart and collapsed.

Waking from a series of deep, cheese-induced dreams, I reluctantly made plans to return to the washroom to get back into my cycling clothes. In the lobby, excited fresh-faced guests were returning from the mountains and checking in for the night. How I wished I could have joined them. Instead I pulled on my woolly hat and walked outside into the cold. Reluctantly, like Cinderella returning from the ball, I gave the doorman my valet token and soon a young porter was struggling to push my bike to the front door. I shook his hand, slipped him a dollar for his efforts and pedalled out into the biting late afternoon.

‘Thank you, sir. Enjoy your evening.’

As I left Banff, the sun disappeared behind the dark green spruce that covered the mountains, and the warmth of the afternoon went with it. In the sunlight this snow-capped landscape was enchanting, but when you took away the sun it became a different place all together. Cold and imposing, the long shadows of the dark cliff-faces hung over me as if I was entering a whole new menacing world. The air chilled my face and icy drops of rain began to fall and to drip from the boughs of the dark trees that hugged the roadside. Cold and alone in this suddenly intimidating environment, my thoughts returned to the comfort of the hotel. It would be dark in an hour and I had no idea where I was going to sleep that night.

‘Hey there, I’m Dave. Quite a load you have there, eh?’ A man on a bicycle pulled alongside. ‘I’m camping in the woods on the left, seven miles up the road. Come and join me. Can’t delay, this rain doesn’t look like quitting and I need to get a fire going, eh.’

Ending every sentence with the expression ‘eh’, it was clear Dave was Canadian, but other than his name and his nationality I knew nothing about him, and he and his old racing bicycle quickly disappeared over the crest of the next hill. Exactly seven miles from where Dave had raced past me, a narrow track, flanked on either side by tall trees and scattered with fallen pine needles, led into the woods. Away from the road the forest was densely packed and the thick evergreen branches almost completely blocked out what was left of the day’s light. Rain poured down and heavy beads of water fell through the needles and branches. A mile or so up the track the light blue rainsheet of a small tent stood out in the darkness and working away behind it with a small hatchet was Dave, already busy splitting logs for a small fire that was sending a billow of thick smoke into the gloomy surroundings.

‘Welcome, 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, Hungry Cyclist, why don’t you come in here and take off my wrapper?’

‘I’m rationing. Go away.’

‘Oh come on. Come and wrap your lips around my sweet chocolate and caramel centre.’

‘I’m saving you for tomorrow. Leave me alone.’

‘But I’ll taste so much better tonight.’

There is only so long you can sit in the bitter cold knowing that an uneaten chocolate bar waits for you at the bottom of a bag. After falling for the advances of Babe Ruth, I prepared to turn in and set about hanging what remained of my food in a nearby tree. Not only would this prevent me from decimating my rations in a fit of night starvation, it would also thwart the efforts of another hungry predator.

Ever since US President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, the great conservationist, saved a baby bear from being shot on a hunting trip, humans have had a close affinity with these ursine creatures. We all cherish Teddy bears. We anthropomorphise them into likable characters, Paddington, Winnie, Balloo and Yogi, and a trip to the Rockies would not be complete without catching a glimpse of one of these majestic and lovable animals in the wild.

‘Seen any bears?’

‘Black or grizzly?’

‘Any cubs?’

These are customary questions amongst visitors to the Rockies, and the traffic jams and tailbacks of eager tourists leaning from car windows and motor homes to capture a piece of moving bush on their digital cameras are testament to the important role bears play in the tourist industry of the mountains. But here lies a problem. Man and bear aren’t the best roommates.

Every autumn, bears make the very sensible decision to get into a cave and sleep for four months, and before taking this long nap they go on a feeding frenzy to fatten up. As their normal food supply is depleted by the damming of rivers and deforestation, they have to look elsewhere, and thus they have developed a taste for easily found human food. Rubbish bins, local tips and campsites provide easy and delicious pickings. This means that bear attacks in the Rockies at this time of year are by no means unheard of. All visitors are advised to carry a bear bell, a pathetic little thing more suited for decorating a Christmas tree than scaring away a 600-pound ravenous beast, and park rangers, local people and road signs are full of advice on how to best avoid becoming a Teddy bear’s picnic.

‘Assess the situation you are dealing with. Are you dealing with a black or grizzly bear?’

‘Climb a tree if available.’

‘Don’t announce your presence if a bear has not seen you.’

‘Let the bear know you are of no threat.’

‘If you come into contact with a bear, keep a close eye on its whereabouts.’

‘Never look a bear in the eyes.’

‘If attacked by a grizzly bear play dead.’

‘If attacked by a black bear fight back.’

Startled from a sound sleep, this catalogue of conflicting advice scrambled in my brain. I could hear the rushing water of the creek but there was something else outside my tent too. I listened again. Perhaps it was just the breeze flapping the tent material. No, there it was again. Something big was in the bushes next to my camp. Bolt upright, motionless and hoping it was nothing more than a hungry racoon, I continued to tune into its movements, while my heartbeat pounded in my head.

That’s some fucking racoon.

It was so close now I could hear the breath being drawn into its large hollow chest as it sniffed and scratched around the perimeter of my tent, its heavy paws pounding the ground inches from where I sat. I grabbed my bear bell, but was too scared to ring it. I sat paralysed by fear, and then remembered. My peanut butter.

Taking Dave’s advice, I had taken a pot of the stuff to bed with me for those cold lonely moments.

The bear can smell my peanut butter…

Trying to stay as still as possible, I fished the tub from the bottom of my sleeping bag and held it in front of me. There was only one thing for it: a sacrifice would have to be made. Slowly unzipping the front of my tent, I rolled the jar into the darkness. Terrified, I lay awake, not drifting back to sleep until the sun began to rise. Plucking up enough courage to get out of my tent, I saw that an immaculate white frost covered everything. My breath filled the air in front of my face, and I nervously inspected the camp. There was no trace of my peanut butter.

As I gained altitude, metre by metre, the air thinned and the temperature dropped. On hot sweaty climbs I peeled off layer after layer of windproof, waterproof clothing, only to put it all back on as the icy mountain air chilled me to the bone and stung my face on the fast, exhilarating descents through this literally breathtaking landscape. Childhood memories of queuing endlessly for a thirty-second roller-coaster ride returned to me as I spent hours trudging up steep climbs for only a few seconds of ‘white-knuckle’ decline, but as I continued my journey on the Icefields Parkway I rode with renewed energy towards the Columbia Icefields and the continental divide. A psychological milestone of the journey, it represented the highest point I would climb in North America, and the very top of the Rockies.

After a gruelling climb in driving snow, what I had been waiting for became visible through the whiteout in the valley below. Amid the snow, wind and glare the Columbia Icefields visitor centre appeared like an Antarctic base camp, surrounded by snowmobiles, radio aerials and flashing lights. At 3,569 metres above sea level, I had crossed the continental divide. For months I had imagined this moment, standing tall on top of the world, blond hair and Union flag blowing in the wind as I surveyed the broken snowcapped peaks of the mountains spread out around me. Instead, wrapped up like a polar explorer, my snot-streaming red nose the only bit of skin exposed to the biting cold, I rode towards the visitor centre unable to see beyond the short distance of black tarmac that vanished into the whiteness only metres ahead.

As I waited outside the visitor centre, the snow blowing, a couple of young cagoule-clad hikers came and joined me.

‘Come a long way?’ they asked.

‘London. You?’

‘Devon. Sandwich?’

I took a damp triangle of bread and meat from a neat tinfoil parcel.

‘Thank you.’

‘We’ve been saving them just for this.’

And so, sitting on the continental divide of North America, I munched on a roast beef and horseradish sandwich. By no means the perfect meal, but as I huddled from the cold, the snow swirling in the white air, it tasted just great.

The melt-water from the vast Athabasca glacier rushes in three directions. To Alaska, to the Atlantic and west towards the Pacific. Having struggled in the opposite direction to the rushing waters that flowed east, I was now at last going with the flow and following the rushing rivers that poured west into British Columbia and the open waters of the Pacific.

Camped at the foot of Mount Robson in an area of deforested wasteland that resembled an abandoned battlefield, I was awakened at dawn by the all-too-familiar sound of rain on my tent. Looking at my map the Mount Robson visitor centre was close by and, if the other visitor centres were anything to go by, it would be open in a few hours and there would be some free over-brewed coffee there and possibly a rest room.

With my complimentary cup of stale yet reviving coffee, I sat on the steps of the visitor centre and waited for the rain to pass. Delving into my provisions I began preparing another peanut butter and honey sandwich.

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