Wednesday, July 15, 2009

BHS teacher makes 2nd run at Great Divide

Health issues again cut Kerby's ride short in nearly 3,000-mile-long race

Jason W. Brooks News-Bulletin Sports Editor; jbrooks@news-bulletin.com

Two years ago, Jeff Kerby tried to make a go of the Tour Divide. Recently, Kerby tried to finish the 2009 version of the race, but just like in 2007, Kerby became ill along the course and had to drop out.

It's not as if Kerby was one of few riders to drop out of the race. In fact, the idea that he completed nearly 3,000 combined miles in his two race attempts is an accomplishment, and the high dropout rate shows how tough the event is.

The Tour Divide is a 2,745-mile race that uses mountain-terrain bicycles and follows the Continental Divide from Alberta, Canada, to Antelope Wells, N.M., south of Animas and near the Mexican border. The grueling race claims most of its participants, and only a few like Matthew Lee of Chapel Hill, N.C., manage to even finish.

Lee won the 2009 race in a time of 17 days, 23 hours, 37 minutes, missing out on breaking his own race record by about two hours.

"It's such a tough ordeal," said Kerby. "Even Matthew, who was doing the race for the ninth time and has been down the divide more times than that, was over 30 days the first time he raced."

The race travels through two Canadian provinces, Alberta and British Columbia, along with five U.S. states — Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.

The riders enter New Mexico in Rio Arriba County. They pass through Abiquiu, Cuba, Grants, Pie Town and Silver City before the reach Antelope Wells in New Mexico's boot heel.

Kerby, 39, made it all the way to northern New Mexico in the 2007 race before he became ill and had to drop out, and even had to be hospitalized. Health problems kept him from competing last year, and in the 2009 Tour Divide race, the Belen High School teacher never even made it out of Montana before he realized he had pneumonia.

"The weather was so brutal this year," said Kerby. "Snow, wind, rain — it was like what a really harsh January would be like in Belen. I pretty much forgot that it was June. It wasn't just the atmosphere or trying to dry out your shoes in wet 30- or 4-degree weather. It was also things like the muddy trails and rushing water on slippery downhill sections."

Upon dropping out, Kerby left a few voice mails that were transcribed for the race's Web site, www.tourdivide.org. The nature of the messages illustrates how tough the race is and how heartbreaking it can be to drop out of a race that involves so much sacrifice and preparation.

"This is Jeff Kerby, I'm calling in from Butte," his message begins. "I was here yesterday. Trudged out for about 9 hours, another downpour again, the weather's just been horrible. Anyway, basically I'm sick ... I'm going to be dropping out ... no sympathy, no excuses. Basically, I did everything I could to stay out there."

Kerby even called back to say how grateful he is for his friend and fellow teacher Chauncey Matthews, who designed and built both the single-speed bike Kerby used in 2007 and the one used this year.

"I wish the outcome could have been different," Kerby said in the message.

Kerby thanked Matthews again after returning to Valencia County and resting for a few days.

"I don't know if I'll do the race again," said Kerby. "My family would probably prefer that I don't. It's such a time and emotional investment. I was riding about 60 miles a day to train, and you easily can drop $40 a day on food on the road, plus some guys stay in hotels and ride $6,000 bicycles."

By the time Lee checked in at Abiquiu, near Española, only a handful of riders had even made it to New Mexico yet. Kerby ended up having to call it quits between the Montana checkpoints of Butte and Wise River. He lasted into his eighth day.

"There are so many things that can go wrong," said Kerby. "One guy I heard about, who was riding the trail behind us on a time trial, got hit by a truck and was hurt pretty seriously. These are mountain roads that are rarely used."

One of the more fascinating parts of the race is the way it's recorded on the tour's Web log. Transcriptions and audio recordings of called-in reports from racers let supporters and other observers keep up with the event.

Reports range from important guinea-pig knowledge from frontrunners who experienced harsh conditions first to the tribulations of Kerby and others who were suffering from the realities of trying to traverse rugged Montana terrain.

Kerby actually became known for his reports of strange sightings and encounters, and his vivid descriptions of those experiences. One person who commented on Kerby dropping out of the race wrote "I'm sad that we will no longer be hearing your entertaining updates."

In 2007, Kerby called in from Colorado to say he and another racer witnessed a bizarre, unidentified sight that he described as "a weird alien light, side of the road, nowhere-ville."

Some of Kerby's memorable call-ins from 2009 include:

"Canada was cold and it was wet and it was beautiful, but weather was absolutely miserable ... Spent the first night, I think it was Elkton ... under a bridge talking to, I guess, a homeless drunk guy .... it was an interesting conversation; ended up trying to fall asleep, but I was afraid he was gonna knife me."

"I was freezing in this tent; I was getting frost bite. First thing, as soon as I got onto the bike, I saw a bear, he raised up at me, I didn't know what to do, so I just went at him ... he ran away, so that was good."

"At one point, I hung a left when I should've went right on this snowmobile trail ... I left the bike, because I wasn't sure I was wrong, and I hiked up and saw these two women. And I was like, can you help me? And they looked at me and they're like all, 'Let me get somebody- and they said 'Josh!.'"

"Well, Josh comes out of the brush, and he has this half-mullet/half-mohawk thing going on, and he has clown eyes painted on his face, tattooed, and he has this three-inch salamander lizard thing on his index finger, and he's stroking it. Well, he comes up and asks me to admire it. And I'm like, admire it? Can you help me get to D1? He didn't know anything. All he did was stare at this damn lizard like Gollum in Lord of the Rings or something."

"I'm just happy to be alive, and didn't get accosted by the circus animals."

One bike shop mechanic from Butte wrote "your account of the 'clown guy' encounter near Basin was the highlight of the Tour for me. Something that I'll never forget."

Kerby, an English teacher at BHS, says students often question why he attempts races like the Tour Divide.

"The kids think I'm crazy when they see me show up to school in January on my bike with ice all over my face," said Kerby. "But they can say they know someone who did something pretty unique. They see someone attempting something big."

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