11/28/2014
Breakin' Even;
I think the idea of breaking even on calories the day after Thanksgiving is rather ludicrous, but, I gotta try anyway.
This day started out like so many do this time of year, cool, in the 40's and breezy, sustained winds around 18mph with higher gusts, a good day for a gravel ride. My gravel bike is definitely not a race bike, heavy, and geared more like a mountain bike, it is more of a bike to look for adventures than for racing. I have no quarrel with people who race bikes, they need to train constantly and vigorously to remain in tip top physical shape and competitive. Race training is a focused thing, every pedal stroke, every deviation from your line could mean seconds lost. Training with a rider who is much slower than you destroys your edge. A bike that weighs a few grams too heavy could mean the difference between winning and losing a race. Gotta have all the good stuff to go with it..... cadence counter, heart rate monitor (gotta keep it maxed out), $500 bike fit, all the expensive light weight stuff, and then monitor all the results of this while you are riding, trying to shave a half second here, and a half second there. Racing is a tough business. I'm sorry, but I had to chuckle at one of the Tour de France racers, now retired who stated that it was nice to be able to actually see France, because all the years he raced there, he never had the time to look. Well, that's not how I ride, I ride to explore, to sight see, to stop and talk to people, and to enjoy a little slower paced lifestyle. Many enjoy the ratrace, but I'm content to let the rats do their own thing. Besides, it's hard to be racy when you ride a heavy bike, and my cadence is beat by a different drummer.
Did I mention my bike is heavy? I'll just lean it against this handy stop sign while I take a picture ...... oops .....
Of course, to be fair to the bike ..... the wind was blowing...
Now to get to the ride ..... As I've said, a typical Oklahoma late Fall day, breezy and temperatures in the 40's, I dressed appropriately, but also took along my small handlebar bag to put my clothes in as I peeled them off later (as it turned out, I didn't need to). Any ride starts out on a little bit of pavement from my home, this one was no exception. Out the door, and up the hill.
After a couple miles of pavement, I branched out on a very nicely graded, wide, easy riding gravel road. This, however was going into the above mentioned 18mph breeze, so it's not quite as easy as it looks here.
From wide open roads, to pretty, tree lined lanes.
As always, there are the light weight limit wooden bridges.
There are water crossings
As well as the sometimes unavoidable mudholes.
When the gravel runs out there is always the ubiquitous Oklahoma red clay. Almost impassable when wet, and when dry, it resembles concrete spilled out the back of a mixer truck as it rolled along.
There were endless vistas rewarding you on top of the long climbs.
As well as endless pastoral farm scenes like this one.
Gravel got hills? ..... Actually, most all of our gravel roads do not follow any highway gradient standard, but instead just follow the lay of the land, which can make for some pretty steep climbs at times.
"Hang on the best you can bro' ....... I got your back"......
You never know what you are going to find next, from beautiful nicely graded roads like this one
To this in just a few miles
This is the kind of road a true explorer lives for.
Gooey mud all along, big water and mud holes.
AS well as tree hazards
And, if you are lucky, an occasional treat. This fine rig is owned by another Richard, pulled by a three mule team. The youngster in the middle is being "trained" by the two older team members one on each side. Richard takes this rig on a cross state ride every year similar to our Freewheel bike ride. He uses this road as a training ground for his team ..... as well as the overseer running alongside. He has several matched teams of registered mules and they are hard working animals. I stopped and got well off to the side long before they got close to me as the mules were very wary and a bit spooky of seeing another person out here. I talked to them calmly and reassuringly as they went by. Richard stopped and we chatted for a bit before we went on.
From mud holes and water and fallen trees, to soft sand, this road (figuratively speaking) had it all. Really, a Fatbike would have been better, but I was surprised at how well my 40 size tires handled this stuff. Every bit as good as my mountain bike. It would get a bit squirrely at times, and the effort increased about 500% but I made it through only to find yet another surprise....
This beautiful fallen leaf hill. The leaves were wet and slimy, and traction was poor, but once again, the bike proved up to the task as we (the bike and I) slipped and slid up the hillside. While the bike handled all the adverse road conditions well, this is not a singletrack trail, and I realize that with a rigid bike, it would not handle singletrack as well as a mountain bike with suspension. When I got this bike, however, I hadn't ridden any singletrack for several years, and wasn't really planning on any in the future.
I couldn't continue on without a selfie .... I had a hard time finding an adequate "tripod" but located a convenient fallen log to hold my camera for me.
Everything is thinning out and looking more civilized .... hmmm... I wonder what that sign is up there on the left?
Oh ........ now they tell me ...... This stop proved fortuitous however, as I got to meet another resident of the area. An older retired gentleman who owned a place off to the right side of the road right here. He let me know that while riding a bike was fine for youngsters like me, but he was 70 and was just too old for that sort of exertion anymore ..... nice old guy ..... I liked him a lot .....
My reward for this ride....... all these wonderful pictures, the great memories and the wonderful experience out in the countryside .... and Oh, yeah ...... a couple hundred of ..... these ..... and a bike wash.
October 22, 2014:
Normally, when one thinks about the oil patch, a Spark is something to avoid. Twice now, however, I have started out to do just that ...... make Sparks in the oilfield! Sparks, Oklahoma, that is. The first time, we just didn't know the roads well enough and turned around to discover some new roads elsewhere, the second time, we covered some of the same roads, but continued on until we reached our destination. Sparks is a tiny community north of me in Lincoln County. Originally started as a tribal town on the Sac and Fox reservation, there was a lot of oil drilling going on around in that area, and the Eastern Oklahoma Railroad decided to make a line through the town. But ..... WW1 happened, then the depression, and the Eastern Oklahoma Railroad was no more, the Santa Fe had no desire to build tracks there as most of the oil was by that time transported by pipeline to Cushing, and the town started dying. At one time, the town boasted 50 businesses, a couple of banks two schools and was a thriving community of about 500 people. Today, however it is a different story. At the last census, there were still 137 people living there, the majority of them over 65. The schools have closed, we saw no businesses open, and the only thing that was still operating was the U.S. Post Office, which the government is trying to close down. Ah, me ..... times do change.
Even though the town is now more or less a ghost town, it was a fitting destination for an October bike ride. Since the acquisition of my gravel bike, I look for opportunities to use it, and this seemed like a good destination. Riding gravel brings back memories of my rural South Dakota youth and gravel was the only surface I had to ride on. The area we passed through is a gravel paradise ..... Lincoln County has some wonderful gravel roads, many more miles of gravel than pavement. The roads and infrastructure are old, but maintained and have lasted a long time. Starting out, we just got on the first gravel road by my house and rode north, and the further north we went, the prettier it got.
The original reason for this trip was to look for old bridges, and there were several on this route. This one has been redone with concrete roadbed, but still has the original riveted iron sides.
The next was only a couple hundred yards up the road but was much older and much more original.
Still sporting the wooden planking on the roadbed, it was old and weathered and looked almost original. The old sides were not the more modern malleable iron but old wrought iron, dating the bridge back even older, probably around the very early 1900's.
The road between the two bridges looked like this .....
Such an idyllic setting to ride bikes. We might have regressed 100 years into the past, and we had it all to ourselves.
Another wooden bridge. This one was completely wood, and if you can make out the beams under it, you will see that they are also wood. Most of these have been replaced with steel beams sometime during the life of the bridge, but this one was still all wood.
One of our first signs of Sparks. I have no idea what this was, but obviously an old business of some kind.
The busiest place in town. If you hang around here fifteen minutes, you will soon know everyone in town ...... and they will know all about you! It was here that we learned that if we call the number on the sign by the senior center that someone will come down and fix us lunch...
Inside.... you will find no big city lines and take a number machines. Just walk up to the window and get your mail.
We also learned here that directly behind the post office was the town jail. Obviously a deterrent to crime. It certainly would have deterred me from wanting to ever spend any time in there.
A view of the jail from the other side.
One of the town's banks, this one says it was built in 1905.
This old building had an interesting past. Built originally in 1926 as a Masonic Lodge, it had also been used as a mechanic garage according to an old resident we met outside the post office. He didn't remember it ever being anything other than a garage. In the cutaway portion in the front was the piping and wiring for a gas pump, so it might have also been a service station too.
Inside, taken through a very dirty window, the place didn't look nearly as good as the outside.
Loved this old house with the morning glory climbing up the porch post. Abandoned and neglected for years, it still maintained a bit of dignity. One could only look and imagine it with kids running in and out, wash hanging from the lines and happy noises from the inside. Today, however, all was quiet.
The old high school. Now it is the City Building and senior center.
An old abandoned church where family get-together's once brought good times and happy laughter.
Back on the road again leaving town, the old hickory reminds us that Fall is almost upon us.
This was the lightest weight rated bridge we found. Scary, a pickup truck would almost be too much. We crossed it one at a time.
A pastoral scene as we moved along various county roads.
The roads and the scenery went on forever! It was a beautiful Fall day, the blue, blue sky filled with big fluffy white clouds and the endless road makes me glad to be a part of it all. This section of the road was all very new and loose gravel for about three miles, there were very steep and long hills and it proved to be very tiring. I had a bit of excitement just past here on the next downhill when the gravel suddenly became quite loose again and almost caused me to lose control. I had turned it loose coming off the top (foolishly), and was up to about a bit over 20mph when I hit the loose stuff, and wondering where the steering went. I managed to keep it upright, but not without some white knuckles for a bit. Ah, gravel, always a surprise.
And yet another wooden bridge, this one fairly long and no side rails. Parke County Indiana may boast many old covered bridges, but Lincoln County Oklahoma has a good share of wooden bridges to find.
At one time, this old building was a sawmill, the ready to cut logs still stacked beneath the lean-to. When I first saw this, I thought of the Walton's sawmill, as it looked almost like the one in the T.V. series.
From here, it was only about four more miles to Jacktown, and a lunch I had been thinking about for at least the last ten miles. I was hungry enough to eat a .......
But, I'll settle for a hamburger at Jacktown. They are huge! We finished our lunch and headed on back toward home, finding yet another wooden bridge over a very unusual intersection in that the creek split the intersection at a forty five degree angle and the intersection and bridge was built around the creek. If you look over the bridge, you can see the road coming down from the opposite direction that would have intersected right at the bridge. As it was, they angled the roads at the last few feet to be able to accommodate only one bridge. This one had steel supports only directly under the traffic area, the other supports were still wooden beams.
And so, the last twelve miles back were uneventful, and soon, I found myself on very familiar roads, heading for the house once again. What a trip! We covered 53 miles from my home (my riding partner even more), almost all on gravel roads in isolated areas of the State, and just had a ball. This trip was not a race, but a ride of discovery, a historical adventure, and as such, not something to be hurried, but rather something to be cherished and remembered as much as a trip through history. Although I felt as tired as if I had travelled back 100 years, and back again.
