Oklahoma Freewheel - days 4-5 (June 15-16)

If you are just now joining us, then you would find yourself on a bike in lovely Checotah, Oklahoma, riding alongside me as I traverse the great state of Oklahoma on bicycle with about 850 others.

June 15, Day 4: 
Today we ride from Checotah to Bristow - 74 miles. And no, Checotah is not that guy from Star Trek Voyager. At least, I don't think so.
After battling the storm the first half of the night and moving to the high school weight room, pretty much everyone had very little sleep Tuesday night. I got up late and decided to skip breakfast as we had a another long day ahead of us and wanted to avoid the heat. They had been serving us big breakfasts: egg, sausage, biscuits and gravy, and fruit and they seemed to sit a bit heavy on me, so I didn't think this was a bad idea until I got to riding. I was better when I got a peanut butter sandwich in me at the first rest stop.

I was riding with Kevin again (see Kevin above at a rest stop on Day 1) and he had a flat early on. He also had technical problems with his pedals that also slowed us down.
The ride was a bit shorter than the day before, but it was hotter and with being tied we were more tired. Most people agreed this day was even worse than day 5 which was 86.5 miles.

We hit the famous Route 66 when we got to Bristow, Oklahoma (and rode on it for about half of the day on Thursday). 

We were very happy to find that Bristow had us set up for Indoor camping in the brand new Purple Pirates Highschool gym. Air conditioning and proper showers.

 The bleachers doubled as a place for us to store the bikes. Reminded me of the scene from "Cars" where the cars are in the stands watching the NASCAR racing.

After we got settled in and had one of many "potatoes with all the fixings" served to us as meals, we headed off at 4:45 to the park in Bristow for "Speedwheel", which is a criterium or simple a crit. This is organized to coincide with Freewheel, but is mainly for people who drive in from Tulsa or Oklahoma city to compete. There were several races: Cat 4 and 5 (low level), all the way up to "Masters" (over 40) and Pro (people who are on professional teams). In a crit, the course is fairly short and the riders go around it 10 or 15 times. You see them go by every 4 or 5 minutes, so it is fun to watch. It's an actual race and you can win prize money.

The Masters' race

We went out to support Josh, an 18-year old guy from St. Louis who had been riding with us. He and a few others were crazy enough to compete in this after riding 75 miles.
I could not resist yelling "Allez, allez, allez" as one does in french. Hey, if they are going to call the bonuses "primes", then I can speak french, too.

Go Josh, Go!

In between races, we went across this little lake to the Pirate's Cove restaurant on the golf course for the BEST BURGER in the world. I swear it seemed like it but perhaps it was just because we had ridden so far.


Thursday, June 16 - Day 5
This is the mother of all days on this Freewheel ride across Oklahoma. We ride 84.5 miles from Bristow to Pawnee.

I got up at 4:20 so I could be sure to get an early start. And everyone else in the gym was zip, zip, zipping their sleeping bags, so there was no sleep. Unfortunately, as I was about ready to head out at 5:20 a.m., I heard the clash of thunder! It was pouring and so everyone had to hang around until close to 7 a.m.

However, this made for a nice cool start of the day.
Early on I had the joy of having a big caterpillar truck pull out in front of me going about 24 miles per hour. It was too wide to go around and I didn't want to be in front of it. So I drafted behind it at a safe distance. It pulled me along at about 22-24 miles per hour for about 3 miles. Finally it pulled over and my free ride was over.

This day was the day we rode along Route 66. I loved the old brick downtowns on this road and elsewhere on the trip. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by almost all the towns we went through at how vibrant and kept up they seemed.

Stroud, Oklahoma on route 66

Davenport, OK, where they still know and love the Tom Rye family

Chandler, OK on Route 66

Day 5 was the longest and supposed to have a lot of climbing in the last bit. However, the hills were gradual and we had a tailwind of about 20 mph from maybe mile 57 to 80, so we flew! There were times I was going 30 mph. Unfortunately, we turned for the last 7 miles and had that same wind as a crosswind. And the last 2 miles it was in our face and COLD due to a storm coming in to Pawnee as we did.

Pawnee was the home of Chester Gould who created and drew Dick Tracy and Alley Oop cartoons there his whole life. 

We camped around their old court house in a lovely setting on the old town square. I enjoyed the "historical museum" which had a lot of Dick Tracy memorabilia. They also had a nice local band out playing country music in the gazebo. I listened and plugged my phone into the Cell Phone charging tower (see below).

 

The only downside to Tonkawa was that I still did not have a tent and so I made my air mattress up near a bank awning. When it began raining at 2:30 a.m., two other guys and I huddle under there, eventually using my tarp to keep the rain off us. I ended up staying there until dawn rather than setting my bed back up. Pretty tired, but as a friend pointed out, there are homeless folks around the world who do this every night! So this is a lesson in empathy with the marginalized.