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Oklahoma Freewheel 2009 is underway!

The drive to Tulsa, the overnight, and the bus ride to Duncan Oklahoma went smoothly. My tent was set up by 11:00, I grabbed lunch, then set off for what would be a 71 mile round trip to Texas right about noon.

 I quickly discovered that this day wouldn’t be a cake walk. The wind was strong from the south. From Texas. I was riding to Texas. Not a good combination….The first few miles didn’t seem to go too badly. The wind was strong, but I was taking my time and it seemed like a nice day for a ride. As the miles added up, the sun got hotter, and it seemed like the wind got stronger, making a 35 mile trip to the Red River a pure slogfest. Along the way, I met an occasional rider on their way back, but I soon figured out that most of the people riding today had driven to the Texas border and were only riding one way. Talk about being an over-achiever!

After three hours, I crossed the bridge over into Texas and took the obligatory picture with the “Welcome to Texas” sign before turning around to head back to camp at Duncan. Talk about a totally different ride! With that strong wind behind me, I hardly had to work to travel 18-20 mph most of the way home. It was a blast! 

Riding today was really kind of strange. There weren’t a lot of people out on the road. As already mentioned, most people that rode only did one-way, and I never passed anyone or was passed by anyone going my way on the way down. I think I remember passing six people on the way back, so unlike last year, it appears that most people opted to not ride to the border today. I wonder why?

Duncan is the start of the old Chisholm trail from wild west fame. At one point, I saw a sign pointing to a trail crossing that I intended to go check out (assuming it was close), but by the time I got back to it, I was in no mood to go off-route for anything! I guess I’ll have to mark that off as one of those places that I almost saw! 

At the evening meeting, a young woman gave a brief safety talk that was pretty moving. Her husband was an avid biker who was hit by a car and killed on April 27^th of this year. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for her to get up and talk it about it to us. What really brought the message home was that on the way back, I saw paramedics loading a Freewheel rider into the back of an ambulance after having been hit by a car in town. Later reports were that he wasn’t badly injured, but the two combined to make me want to be very cautious out there. 

Oh yeah…let me tell you how my morning started. I got up early to catch the bus, and decided I would just make do with the Super 8′s free breakfast (Gag! It was bad.) Well the hotel desk clerk was a talker, and he was taking great delight in telling me about the fight he got into last night while taking his son to a strip joint because he’s getting married. Can you believe that. It just goes to show there’s a whole other culture out there that I’m really glad to not be a part of. 

 

Here’s a link to the GPS track….

 

God bless….

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This entry was posted on June 8, 2009 at 1:52 pm and is filed under Cycling, Oklahoma Freewheel. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: bicycle, Cycling, Fitness, Oklahoma Freewheel, vacation

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