DAY 6, JUNE 20, 11:47:01 MDT: Hi, this is Mike Gibney. Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm done with the race. I guess that I'm just not cut out to keep a pace like that, and it just takes its toll on you.... And those guys that are out in front, at the pace they're going, they are incredible, superhuman people. So anyway, I gave it another shot and, you know, hopefully, didn't let anybody down.

By Butte I am reborn. After the first frenetic days, I've settled into a routine. I set my watch alarm for 5 a.m., but wake up at 4 and spend 15 minutes mentally dressing myself down for being here. Get out of my bag for a coyote breakfast—a piss and a look around. Stuff my camp into the panniers. Push off. The anxiety and dread quickly give way to excitement and primal drive—get to civilization for a hot coffee and a pay phone. I don't allow myself to think about Antelope Wells, just the next town, where there'll be rewards and supplies. At home, I had envisioned soaking my gams in cold mountain streams, but that's ridiculous, the stuff of vacations. The GDR is a race. You use every last candle of dusk to make miles. When you can't turn the chainrings any longer it's time to lay the bike down and crawl into your bag with the mosquitoes.

On the toll-free gab line, Tom Purvis has warned us of a rule change. The Wyoming Highway Patrol and the Teton County Sheriff's Department are in hot pursuit of Jay Petervary. He got impatient at the perennial road construction on Togwotee Pass, between Moran Junction and Dubois, and apparently rode through against the flag lady's orders. She phoned the heat, but her real wrath was uncapped for the next rider, Pete Basinger, whom she forced to ride in the pilot car—against one of the few GDR rules. While Jay lost the posse and gunned it for the lawless Great Divide Basin, Pete's conscience made him turn back and ride Togwotee in the dark. Tom implores the rest of us to just take the ride in the pilot car.

There is more news at Flagg Ranch, just over the state line into Wyoming. Matt McFee's fallen asleep at the handlebars and hit a boulder above Lima, Montana. He's bent his frame; the Karate Monkey is dead. Most would have capitalized on the occasion to hitchhike into Dillon and get a bus ticket home, but Matt called his wife in Durango, who FedExed another frame. Then another shocker: The Alaskan, Pete Basinger, has dropped out. He thinks it's food poisoning, but also maybe nerves—he trained not only to win but to break the record. Noah the bike messenger is done, too; he found some hippie campers and decided to hang up the race and hang out instead.

I pedal with one-geared Nathan Bay until I pull ahead in the Great Divide Basin. For the first time I feel comfortable. My hand isn't getting any worse, and my butt no longer hurts. I love the sagebrush steppe country of the Wyoming Red Desert. Several years ago I wrote a draft of a bad novel that takes place here. I thought maybe I could solve all its problems on the bike. Resurrect the thing. Instead I feel mostly brain fade, an alkaline loneliness as I mutter prayers not to run out of water. The prayers are answered with a 45-mile-per-hour tailwind, and I look down and catch myself flowing across the sand at 20 miles an hour. An hour after dark I pitch a hasty camp and awake just before dawn to a herd of wild horses studying me from a safe distance.