Rolling across the wide open spaces of Wyoming, I resurrected my little FM radio and tuned in to the voices of the local culture of America's least populated state.  I found I had lots of choice: three religious stations and four country and western stations.   I chose one of the country and western stations and almost immediately underwent a country music epiphany.  Now, I've said a lot of negative things about C & W in the past - even retailed the old joke - "What do you get when you play a country and western record backwards?  You get you girlfriend back, you get your car back, you get your dog back ...."  But now I'm a convert.  (Rashida Khan, are you hearing this?)  The astounding intellectual and creative content of what I heard right here in Wyoming has turned me around.

The first song to impress me was rich in literary reference and allusion.

"I've followed you to Timbuctoo.

Like Scarlett followed Rhett;

But this here lonesome Romeo

Ain't got no Juliet."

I've read Gone with the Wind, and seen the film, but I don't remember the Timbuctoo sequence.   But you can't argue with the Shakespeare, now can you?

The next one was a revelation.

" Rain makes corn,

Corn makes whiskey;

Whiskey makes my baby

Feel a little frisky.

 Rain is a good thing."

The  syllogistic, Aristotelian purity of that logic sends shivers down my spine.

Number three was a gritty and perceptive comment on the social reality of women's lives in modern (rural) America.

"No more lovin' like crazy;

No more chicken and gravy;

I ain't gonna have your baby,

Till you take me down to the little white church."

And if the songs bore you, you can always play "Count the guitar cliches."  All hail C & W.

Ghost town

Everyone we met said, "Don't stay in Jeffrey City".  So we decided to do just that.  JC used to be a uranium mining centre with upwards of 7,000 people, but since the mine closed, it's become a field full of crumbling buildings and a cafe / bar full of crumbling people.  The locals in the bar were all playing online gambling games on their laptops, and no-one was interested in talking to a couple of fascinating Transam cyclists, so we had a couple of beers and talked to each other.  It turned out that one of the barmaids was, in fact, an intelligent life form, and she told us we could camp in the derelict building across the road, which we did.  It was a bit smelly but gave good shelter from the howling wind, and we had a reasonable night.

Wyoming is just as spectacular as Colorado, but more barren and forbidding.  Most of the riding was flat or gently undulating, but the mountains - many with remnant patches of snow -  always framed the horizon.  The "badlands" areas were positively spooky, with weird, heavily weathered landforms and stark, red rocks.

For two days, from Lander to Dubois (pronounced, in the innimitable American way, Dooboyz), and beyond, we battled the worst headwinds either of us had ever experienced.  It was physically and psychologically punishing, and the relief when the gale finally abated was profound. We were, after all, riding through the Wind River Indian Reservation, along the Wind River itself, past Windy Mountain and over Windy bridge. 

And then, we climbed over a pass and there they were: the Grand Tetons.

For the next two days, it was impossible not to keep photographing these fantastic, ethereal peaks, jutting up out of the plain and dominating the landscape.

And then there were three, then, momentarily, six - then five.

One of the great things about riding the Transam is the way groups of riders team up, disperse and re-form.  I've been riding with Ryan Anderson since Damascus, Virginia, and for a while we were a team of four with Cooper Hanning and Joe Meyer.  Cooper left us in Carbondale, Illinois, to fly home to Minnesota for a cousin's wedding.  He's back on the trail, but about a week behind us, and I hope to catch him in San Francisco before I leave the country.  Joe left the Transam after Pueblo, Colorado, to ride the Western Express route through the deserts of Utah and Nevada.  We're following his adventures on his blog and by email.  (When we accused Joe of deserting the team, he said, "I am the team: you guys are the ones deserting".  Healthy ego Joe has.) 

As Ryan and I headed into Northern Wyoming, we fell in with Eli, a 20 year-old free spirit from Upper New York State, and rode with him for a few days.  Then we joined another team of three - Wim and Stefaan from Belgium, and Jessica - a 27 year-old teacher / graduate student from Florida.  She started the tour with a partner, but he gave up and she continued. The six of us had only one night together, in Dubois, before Eli detoured to Jackson, south of Yellowstone, to visit friends.  We plan to meet again in Oregon.

Yes; it's true: I've committed another crime.

My criminal career continues to blossom.  Eli, being 20, is old enough to vote, sign a contract, be tried in an adult court and sentenced to an adult prison, and to fight and die for his country in Afghanistan, but not, in America, old enough to buy a beer.  After a gruelling day battling the headwind from Hell, we struggled into Dubois at 10 pm.  The only place open to get food was a bar, and they wouldn't allow Eli inside, even if he wasn't drinking alcohol.  We bought pizza and beer to take away and checked into a motel, where I supplied liquor to an underage person - an offence punishable by a prison sentence in Wyoming. 

Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone deserve a blog post of their own., so I'll finish this one with a few images of the spectacular approaches to this amazing corner of the amazing state of Wyoming.  In about two weeks, I'll be on the Pacific coast in Oregon, after 4,500 miles of riding across this vast and diverse continent.  Then I plan to ride down the coast to San Francisco - another 600 miles.  It seems impossible that this journey is actually going to end in a few weeks.