Several days ago, just before pulling into the motel at Togwotee Pass, I saw two female cyclists leaving the parking lot. They were too far ahead to say hello to, and the clerk there said they just stopped for water.
The next morning, I stopped to chat with a couple of cyclists coming the opposite direction, and the lady cyclist told me that they'd camped with her the night before.
Since then, I keep expecting to catch up with them, and in many lonely hours of pedalling have constructed a happy fantasy life for the three of us whose complexity rivals any TV soap opera. One favorite scene has us camped on the open prarie, snuggled beneath a mound of dirty sleeping bags and discarded boxes of macaroni and cheese, whispering tales of adventure to each other under a wide sky full of twinkling stars.
Anyway, today as I rode towards Rawlins, a black and frightening thunderstorm followed ominously behind me all day, getting gradually larger and closer. I hoped to be indoors before it caught me, but soon it was only a couple of miles away, dropping lightning bolts and filling the air with the smell of wet sage, the whole Wyoming sky going dark.
Then, far in the distance ahead, almost at the horizon, I saw two brightly colored dots. The German girls? I immediately speed up, hoping both to outrun the storm and to realize my dreams of European free love.
That I am spending the evening typing this story should inform you as to its outcome. The two girls were just an orange road sign, and the storm dumped it's full bucket of wet upon me.
Tonight, in real life I'll sleep in a trailer behind a gas station, but I'll also be camped out on the prarie, under a sky full of twinkling stars.
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