We boarded the train in Rensselaer, New York and dug into our paperback novels and paper sacks of sandwiches, ahead of us forty-two hours of rumbling clacking where first we’d see rust belt towns inside out through neighborhoods where the tracks pass through, then, after dragging our bike boxes across the station in Chicago to make the switch to the Zephyr, where urban density fell away to plains to the pearly grin of the Rockies. We had booked a stop in Thompson, Utah, which at the time you could do. I have an image now of stepping off onto that concrete platform at 2am, being handed my gear, then the train evaporating, leaving darkness, crickets and an electrical hum from the one courageous bulb overhead. My first trip out west, my first cycling vacation.