DAY 10, JUNE 24, 14:18:16 MDT: Good morning. It is J.P., and I got into Silverthorne last night, got me a little cheap room, cleaned my act up, shaved up, woke up this morning, cruised on into Breck, had some breakfast, getting ready to head up and on over the pass.... And, oh yeah, I'm going to have a pretty good day, I think, because, happy birthday to J.P. All right, have a good one. See ya, bye.

The halfway cutoff, in Steamboat Springs, is two days away, and I'm still in Wyoming. I meet a cyclist couple from Atlanta pulling a BOB trailer, touring the route south to north. They're full of stories of all the racers ahead of me, the fine sandwiches they had in Colorado. "Can I make it?" I ask them.

"If you're feeling frosty," the woman says. I'm not feeling very fucking frosty. This is the country where Kenny Maldonado, the New Yorker, had been at large in 2006. I recall the dispatches—when he dropped out in Rawlins, I felt relief. When I roll by the Greyhound station, Day 12, I know what Kenny was feeling when he bought a ticket. And now Rick Hunter, who has been running up front with Jay, Matthew Lee, and Alex the Aussie, is out in Colorado—bad knee. There are 14 of us left. The Divide is eating riders.

I throw my sunshade in the dirt just north of the Colorado line. Crossing state lines proves the biggest boost to morale, and tomorrow I'll be in Colorado. A buck antelope wakes me before dawn, kicking and snorting as if I'm a threat to his buckhood, so I gather my possibles and ride south. It gets hot fast, and I run out of water on the dusty climb up County Road 38. I know I can't make it all the way to Steamboat with no water. But then, a mirage. A sign on an old schoolhouse reads COFFEE.

I've fallen down a rabbit hole into Wonderland. Kirsten, a tattooed kindergarten teacher from Northern California, makes me my very own pot of good coffee and feeds me mushroom quesadillas and chocolate cake. While I eat, she smokes American Spirits and checks the GDR progress on her laptop. "Matt Lee was here a few days ago. He ate breakfast but wouldn't even take an orange with him." I feel ridiculous attempting to explain to her that oranges are heavy.

I make the 'Boat with 16 hours to spare. While I'm limping to a pizza joint, three GDR riders buzz down the main drag—it's Matt McFee, Nathan Bay, and someone I can't make out. I don't yell at them; I don't want to talk, just eat a pie and beat them out of town. I'm not in the Maldonado position yet, but I know I'm close.

A day south of Steamboat, the map cues refer to a "smattering of rural homes." I see a filthy gardener bent over, working on a lawn mower. It's actually Jeff Kerby, changing a flat. His Dickies shorts are so greasy they appear to be leather, and his single-speed is a homemade number constructed by his friend Chauncy from a melted-down ore car. We ride together, chasing Nathan, Matt, and the Brits, climbing into one of Colorado's ubiquitous dry thunderstorms. Lightning strikes close enough that Jeff's MP3 player sparks from Van Halen to Twisted Sister. "Dude," he says. "That was too close."

This first day riding with Jeff, Day 14, is when the strangeness begins. The tiny ghost town of Como is boarded up at dusk, so we keep pushing into a black, wet valley. We see a yellow light ahead. "GDR rider," Jeff says. Someone has pitched his bivy sack in a field of cow pies.

"Which GDR rider is this?" Jeff calls.

"GDR rider, it's Kerby and Billman!"

I walk toward the light, even more convinced that the object is a sarcophagus-size tent. Hello? GDR rider? "I don't like it," Jeff calls to me. "Let's get the fuck out of here." With that, I start thinking about what else it could be. Weather balloon? Downed alien craft? Rocky Mountain idiot trap? I back up, slowly, toward my bike.

"Fuckin' weird," Jeff says. We ride into the dark drizzle and, a safe distance away, pitch camp in the mud. The next morning he relays the incident at the pay phone in Hartsel, where the lady in the general store tells us about "Little Buddy," the resident alien of Pikes Peak. Soon a half-dozen paranormal Web sites have picked up the story of our interface in the high desert. GDR voyeurs are out there.