Later this year (on 22 December) Sylvester Stallone will reprise the character of Rocky Balboa for one final bout in 'Rocky VI', bringing to a close the 'Rocky' movies that began in 1976. Since late June, the 'Rocky' movies have been a tenuous, though periodically appropriate analogy for a mountain bike ride that I began in Banff, Canada and which ended a week ago on the Mexican border at El Paso, Texas. In large part, the five-week long route followed the Continental Divide Ride - initially off-road on gravel fire trails and old dirt logging roads through the Rocky Mountains, and in the later weeks, joining parts of the Trans-America Bicycle Route and then the paved desert backroads of New Mexico.

Having arrived in Vancouver in late May, I bought a red (therefore fast) 27 gear, hard-tail mountain bike with disc brakes, some spare tubes and tyres and then some other bike maintenance 'stuff' that was recommended to me for such an adventure, but which I didn't know what to do with. I promptly named the bike "Rocky" and also bought a trailer that attached to the rear wheel and which carried camping gear, excessive food and water and a change of clothes (plus all the bike maintenance gear that I didn't know what to do with). Appropriately the bike was a Canadian "Rocky Mountain" brand - appropriate for the name that I had decided on, the path that I intended to take through North America's major mountain range, the weak Balboa analogy and the fact that I would spend the following five weeks ... "mountin' Rocky" ... (which was as close the trip came to being 'Brokeback Mountain' - but thanks to all those who suggested as much along the way...).

The US portion passed south through six states (or the 6 'Rocky' movies, with which my 'over-cycled' brain thought to associate them): Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. Previously, before reaching the US border on the 49th parallel at Montana, I had also spent a week riding south from Banff through the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia ("First Blood: Parts 1 and 2" perhaps - to continue the Stallone symbolism).

Life on the bike becomes very routine and simple: cycle as far as possible and eat as much as possible in daylight hours, then go to sleep. And in simple terms, Rocky (that's the bike) hauled me 3166kms or 2000 miles (plus another 455kms hitching) over 29 days of riding, averaging 109 kms per day (plus another 5 days either resting, having the bike fixed, or being too hungover to leave Santa Fe, New Mexico). As a majority of the route was off-road, and predominantly scaling the descending mountain passes (crossing the Continental Divide 12 times and reaching almost 12,000 feet in Colorado), the riding averaged only 13.5 kms an hour over the 255 hours on the bike.

So, now both Rocky and I are back in Vancouver and while re-reading the basic numbers, I suppose it reads like a significant undertaking. However, just as the 'Rocky' scripts became formulaic, so too did the riding ... ups and downs (in altitude, if nothing else), 'hitting the canvas' periodically (falling off the bike on various sections of single track), periods of solitude and company (thanks Nick, for being the 'author of the enterprise'), and finally in many ways each passing day in the mountains ultimately lent itself to the John Lennon lines:

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round, I really love to watch them roll; No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go.