Total Mileage: 1745.6 miles
Today is the day my friends that we rode into Oklahoma and crossed another state off our list. The cue sheet was broken up Lowell today for our 60 mile ride and my legs were thankful for it - they were a bit sore after our longer ride yesterday.
Jay and I have a tradition going where we have been crossing all the state lines together; today was no exception and add the addition of Kristen and Holly. As we headed off, we decided that today would be a slow and steady day where we stopped to smell the roses on the side of the road. The first 16 miles went by relatively quickly. I got a flat thanks to a staple, but nothing too major.
We stopped for a quick photo with an elephant before heading off to find our police escort.
The police escort would take us from Texas into Oklahoma because it is illegal for bikers to ride on the interstate once you crossed over into Oklahoma. Sadly because we were sandwiched between three state troopers we were not able to take a picture with the state sign. Never fear people, we will be heading back to Texas in two days so we will probably be pulling something similar to what we did for the Louisiana state sign.
We were off to the races, well at a slow pace, until Holly got her first flat of the day. A gave us some time to take in our new scenery and snap some photos. It is crazy how flat and open everything is out here.
One of the missions of the day was to snap some photos with bales of hay - Holly and Kristen had not gotten a picture quite yet. About six miles from lunch we pulled over and did some illegal maneuvers to jump a fence with our bikes to take some quientessential B&B pictures.
There was a paddock across the street with a couple of horses so Nate and I decided to head over and see if we could get one to come over to the fence. Nate turned out to be quite the horse whisperer and with the help of some green grass, he was able to woo a horse for us to pet.
After those shenanigans we headed off to lunch at Cookietown, population 6. No people that is not a typo. There is a church and two homes and a lot of open space.
No one else stopped for pictures on the bales so we did a group photo shot. The is always time for pictures on hay on slow days.
From the things started to get good. Holly got another flat three miles out of lunch so of course we pulled let to let her fix that. As she was pumping that up the inner tube exploded and she had to start again. As soon as the second tire was on and we were ready to go the tube popped. While she was getting the third tire on we started to hear a faint pssssss and it turns out that my tube blew from just being in the hot sun (thank you Boyle's Law). Because of the warm temperatures we decided to let out some of the air in our tires and at this point Kristen realized that she had a slow leak; we all decided that she should do the pump and pray method and we would get a few miles under our belt before wedge to change it. Well that lasted about a mile and a half before we ad to pull over. Thankfully there was some shade.
From there it was a straight twenty miles to the host. While not awful, there was a headwind and the temperature was definitely on the rise, 96* but feels like100+. Now I know that I should not be one to complian here because of the heat wave going through the northeast right now, but things are different when you are on a bike, with no shade or cloud coverage. The four of us ended up chatting the rest of the way which definitely helped to pass the time.
Addendum: Chika and I figured out how to take off my cassette at midnight thanks to a YouTube video and some tools in the truck
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