Tour de Dale

May 12, 2012
Dale, Oklahoma

This is an annual must-do for our club, a benefit ride for the High School Band of Dale High School. Dale is a tiny little town of less than 500 people that still manages to hold on to their High School. Most of the other surrounding small towns have their kids bussed to Shawnee for High School. So, when they have a fund raiser to benefit their band, and it comes in the form of an annual bicycle ride ...... our club joins in with vigor. This year, they did good..... 281 registered riders, at $25 per rider. All for the band. The Sag duty is done by volunteers, and they also supply the goodies at the rest stops, including home-made cookies.  So, all the money collected goes to the band. A worthwhile reason for a ride I'd say.

This year, once again, it rained on their parade.....  or their bike ride anyway...... I've attended this ride for five years in a row.....it's rained on four of them. It definitely cut down on the participants, but the pre-registered riders paid even if they didn't ride. They could have, it was their choice. I chose to ride. I also chose to ride my touring bike with the nice big fenders due to the rain. By the time the ride started, however, the rain had tapered to a light drizzle, and an occasional sprinkle or two. So really, it wasn't going to be too bad, unless it started back up. The storm was coming in from the east, an unusual direction, and making it totally unpredictable. Here is the start of the ride, we left promply at 8:30am.

As you can see, the crowd is considerably less than 281 riders, but I was surprised that this many showed up to ride. As well as the discomfort of the rain, the air temperature hovered just above 50 degrees. I remember a shortened ride in the rain at Dale three years ago, it rained so hard, I just did the 12 mile version of the ride, and thought I was going to drown. Not only was it raining so hard, but the spray coming off the front wheel was spraying up my nose, and into my eyes and mouth adding to my discomfort. That was also a very cold rain that day. This year, I was much better prepared. The fenders are worth their weight in gold..... no spray. The only water that hit me was just the small amount from the drizzle and showery rain coming down from the sky, I hardly got wet at all. I also didn't have a brown stripe up my backside, or up my front, like all the other riders had after ten miles. When I finished, after the rain had stopped, I felt like I had done the ride in the dry. I also had room in the trunk bag to stash important stuff like wool glove liners ..... insulate my fingers even when wet....    but when I wanted them off, and my rain jacket off after the rain ended, into the bag it all went. Along with the rain jacket of another rider ..... ah these touring bikes are wonderful.

About halfway through the ride, I overtook (I know, but it actually happened) a young female rider on a road bike, and as we chatted I kept thinking....... I know this girl from somewhere. So I started asking questions about rides she had done, but nothing tripped my memory. She kept telling me about her friend up ahead and how much stronger she was, and how she was hoping to catch up. And, we did catch up to her at the one and only rest stop. This girl looked even more familiar. As we left the rest stop, and decided to do a longer version of the 25 mile ride, stretching it out to 35 miles, she suddenly said......"I know you, we did this ride together 5 years ago"...... and after she told me their names, I did indeed remember. So, we had a lot of catching up to do. This is one of the things I love about these organized rides ..... you always run across old friends. I didn't get a recent picture of them, but here is an old picture from the last ride we did together.....

The two girls were the same, Jeff, wasn't along on this ride however. He's back in Africa again, looking for oil.

So, the outcome was, much fun, lots of reminissing, and a promise not to let five years happen again between rides. I didn't do the dash and run thing, so didn't get in the picture, but you can just see a little bit of my bike at the lower left corner of the photo. All in all, it was a great time, and I'm not sorry I went at all. I'm certainly not sorry I took the tourer, even though I had to struggle a bit to stay with everyone on the hills. I had originally planned on doing the 50 mile distance, but with the weather, and the touring bike, and the fact that the girls hadn't ridden hardly at all this year, we had decided that while 25 miles was too short, 50 miles was too long.....35 miles ..... like the baby bears porridge....... was jussstttt RIGHT!