Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ley whose movements can be remotely controlled by the rider in order to give his horse
something tangible to react to.
“The horse doesn't think it's a real cow,” Kimberley said, a little defensively, I
thought. I hadn't made an accusation. “He knows it's practice.”
Tim put Roofie through his paces in the darkening barn, and the horse, running,
shifting, and changing direction like an enormous point guard playing defense, worked
up a good sweat.
After cycling the Palouse, I knew how he felt. Kimberley led Roofie outside, gave him
a good soapy lathering and hosed him down. He was clearly delighted with his shower,
and I got the hint. I excused myself and took one of my own.
This morning, fortified by an enormous ranch breakfast—fabulous bacon!—I got started
before eight, in the beautiful bronze light of the early sun over the wheat fields. It wasn't
hot yet, but you could tell it was going to be. Between Dusty and Cheney were more
than sixty miles, and as Kimberley had described the ride to me it wasn't going to be
easy—hills and heat, hills and heat, precisely the sort of day I'd just realized I should
avoid. She'd unnerved me a bit and I'm sure she saw that in my face; she gave me her
card and made me promise I'd call if I ran out of steam. It would be no problem to come
and get me, she said.
“There isn't much between here and there,” she said. “You'd be in trouble if you got
stuck.”
She didn't know me from Adam. I was genuinely touched.
The ride was as she described. There were two towns on the way, both with a few
grain elevators, a café or two, a saloon, and a gas station: Endicott, about twenty miles
north of the ranch, and then, another fifteen miles along, Saint John, where I stopped
for lunch and a gallon of lemonade, and passed an hour of rest time reading in a local
newsletter about the unassailable virtues of Jesus and guns.
From there I began the last thirty miles or so to Cheney in the heat of early afternoon,
a bit of a dangerous ride, with long, looping hills that sapped my strength. By the time
the road passed through the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, just south of here, and I
began to remember what trees look like (though where the wildlife was I don't know), I
felt assaulted by the sun. My feet were burning and the flesh over my sit bones—my ass,
in other words—was aggravatingly tender. When I got to the Holiday Inn here, a couple
of miles through town on a long shopping strip, I was really, really tired.
However, I'd learned something from the near-disastrous bonk. I rested frequently,
paid more heed than I usually do to hydration (I'd strapped a good amount of water and
