Into the great wide open: Simon Parker on the road in the States (Image: Simon Parker)
A bright dawn bled through a chink in the garage door. John, my generous host who had already welcomed more than 140 touring cyclists that year, was already up and tinkering around on a laptop, but I declined the offer of coffee.
He directed me to a cycle route that would take me around the mountains, rather than directly up and over them, running the gauntlet on Interstate 90 and crossing Homestake Pass as the sun rose blindingly from the east, directly behind the mountains.
That’s not to say there wasn’t any climbing. Three weeks into my coast-to-coast ride across America, I was in the wilds of Montana, and there was lots and lots of climbing, including an ascent of about 2,000 feet. But the joy of the road was in its emptiness.
First thing Saturday morning and I had it almost entirely to myself, with barely a car for company. Verdant and aromatic, thousands of aspen trees creaked and groaned. I was lulled by the purity of the forest, its lushness cleansing my lungs and soul.
This epic, beautiful road did, however, possess danger.
After an hour, I stopped to pay my respects at a metal crucifix and a bicycle-shaped stencil, painted in a bright white emulsion. In July 2019, a 70-year-old cyclist was killed by the wing mirror of a passing motorhome.
I had barely seen a vehicle, but 650 feet from the summit a Ram pickup screeched around a corner behind me, the driver wound down the window and screamed a tirade of profanities in my direction. Until now, American drivers had been reasonably considerate – Montanan motorists especially so.
Nevertheless, there will always be the occasional d***head. Back in Britain, if someone yelled at me from a car window, my instinct was to yell back, maybe with a hand gesture or two.
But in Montana, where I had seen guns, I was keen to keep my head down. Especially at 8.30am on a Saturday, on a quiet road in the middle of the mountains. You have no idea if someone might be driving home from a late-night party in an intoxicated bad mood.
Simon’s trusty bike carried him nearly 4,400 miles across the US (Image: Simon Parker)
As I inched towards the summit, I passed stop signs that had been peppered with bullets. This was a trend in the United States, especially beside rural roads.
Were people shooting them from their moving cars?
When I stopped for a rest at the top of Pipestone Pass, the 6,453-foot pinnacle of my entire cross-country ride, I asked Google. The best response, found on a forum, read: “Dude. They don’t move very fast and they are always in season. Why wouldn’t we shoot them? Dang.”
Descending the other side of the Continental Divide was one of the greatest hours of my life. Smooth switchbacks wove through the forest.
In some places, the trees were so dense they cast thick shadows across the jet-black road, creating brooding dark patches like shivering cold spots in a swimming pool. In others, the view opened up, revealing undulating hills the colour of steamed cabbage leaves. They rambled for dozens upon dozens of miles, before being swallowed up by intense cobalt blue.
With 35 miles on the clock, I stopped for a rest in Whitehall, a small town created by the Northern Pacific and Montana Railroad companies as a train depot in the late 19th century. A redbrick downtown remains, and I spotted a bakery, a few pawn shops, a couple of thrift stores and a movie theatre.
I overshot most of the town but was intrigued by the flea market – essentially a barn clad in corrugated iron the colour of custard.
Inside, I found a handful of traders selling all manner of bric-a-brac. Everything from peacock feathers and Native American dream catchers to bird cages and fur coats.
Embarrassingly, I was the only customer – and a browser, at best – but as soon as they heard my accent, I was offered a wooden rocking chair and a polystyrene cup of coffee. Two of the traders, Bruce and Gillian, did most of the talking, while the rest of the room listened in. I told them I was curious to understand the real America. The America behind the headlines.
“I believe that America is going to come to an end,” said Bruce, a tall, bespectacled man in jeans and a bright blue T-shirt. “Civilisations, countries, places with large amounts of people, they go strong for about 200 years and then something happens – a natural disaster or a plague – and it wipes them completely out. We are just beyond 200 years old, and I believe the end is coming.”
The end, Bruce reasoned, might not be a global doomsday extinction but a significant loss of American supremacy on the world stage. This might come from a civil war or in the form of attacks from foreign powers.
“I believe that we’ve beat our chest too many times and the rest of the countries are going to go, ‘OK, we’re calling your bull**** and f*** you’. I’m waiting for nuclear war,” he told me.
Having just stumbled in from the mountains, into a random flea market on the side of the road, this was dynamite. If ever there was an example of an American citizen exercising the First Amendment – the constitutional right to free speech – then this was it.
Loiter ye not: Shady character at a rest stop (Image: Simon Parker)
“I know this is going to sound stupid, but The Simpsons have predicted nuclear war and The Simpsons have predicted so much dumb stuff. It just keeps happening,” Bruce added.
America, he told me, was still reeling from the Covid pandemic. A period that had intensified angry wounds already present in American society. For example, widening the gap between rich and poor.
“People are starving, our veterans are homeless, our economy is s***. Covid killed everything. Nobody made money during Covid, except Walmart and the superstores. I just feel that people hate people too much here.”
Our conversation then took an unexpected turn. Bruce believed that in order for America to save itself from itself, large swathes of society would need to rebel against the government, the police force and the military.
“Big group,” he said. “Millions need to march into the White House, march into the Senate and take out everybody.”
“Surely that would be anarchy?” I responded. “You can’t have an insurrection of that degree. You need an active, democratic society to live in.”
“Democratic would be perfect,” he sighed. “We have some good people, but they are few and far between. The people in office now do not care about America.”
Gillian had been listening politely but she took exception to my suggestion of anarchy and argued that the incident at the US Capitol Building in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, was not an “insurrection”. She believed the real story had been covered up by the mainstream media. Protesters hadn’t forced themselves into the Capitol, but “the CIA and FBI let them in… It was an inside job, just like 9/11 was an inside job”.
I was slightly stumped as to where the conversation went from here.
“Where do you get that information from?” I enquired, trying not to patronise or belittle.
“It’s out there, you just have to dig really deep,” said Gillian, who believed Twitter was once run by “the Deep State or the New World Order”, and that a small handful of extremely wealthy people – the so-called “one per cent” – ran the world.
“They don’t want the rest of us to know what is going on, because the rest of us would say, ‘What the heck?’”
Simon on an earlier trip (Image: Simon Parker)
She was also undecided if “America was still under the control of England” and believed that before her death, Princess Diana was “trying to expose it”.
Moreover, President John F Kennedy wasn’t killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, as the history books suggest, but “assassinated by the US government”.
“Unfortunately, the information isn’t just handed out to you,” added Bruce. “They would never do that. You have to dig for it.”
You could deride the pair as “conspiracy theorists”, “anti-establishment”, “tinfoil-hat-wearing wackos”. But to them, these words were gospel. They had grown so disaffected by “mainstream society” that they turned to the internet for answers.
They told me about social media platforms I’d never heard of and “influencers” with tens of millions of followers being “ignored” by the conventional news channels.
The three of us were on different planets entirely. But behind all that, they were kind and hospitable people. And remarkably generous with their opinions.
Especially towards a journalist who had dropped in unannounced. Nevertheless, I could tell I made them feel slightly uneasy. A conflict existed between them wanting to be nice to a weary traveller and the distrust they had for what I represented.
During my career, I had worked for most of the major British news outlets, spanning the entire political spectrum. But they were fervently suspicious of the “mainstream” channels and by their definition I was one of “them” – part of the cabal.
Just before I left, I plucked up the courage and asked: “Do you think I’m in on it too?”
“I think there are good people in all of the areas,” said Gillian diplomatically.
It was time to hit the road again.
Edited extract from A Ride Across America: A 4,000-Mile Adventure Through the Small Towns and Big Issues of the USA, by Simon Parker (September Publishing, £19.99), out now. Visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25
