Freewheel Day 0

Saturday June 10. Traveling to the starting point: Hugo, Oklahoma

Today is finally the day! I’ve been planning on this trip for months, and have gone through my packing list so many times I nearly have it memorized. So this morning I got up at 6 am, showered, loaded my bike and my two bags with all my gear and grabbed a quick breakfast. After a last kiss from my sweetheart, I was out the door. With me I took 2 loaves of banana bread that my beautiful wife had made for us boys to eat on the way. We ate one loaf on the road and I gave the other one to my son Ted who was doing most of the driving. On the way out of town I stopped to pick up my work buddy Glenn Gagnon. We got him all loaded up and left town at about 7:10.

First we drove the 150 miles to Oklahoma City to pick up a couple more riders. As pre-arranged, Jim Lake was waiting for us at an intersection on the east side of the city. Jim is a full-time commuter cyclist who puts in over 4000 miles a year on his bike. We had met him on the Freewheel internet forum, and so were anxious to meet him in person. After loading up Jim, we ran down the road a ways to pick up Glenn's brother Paul at his house. Paul works the night shift, and he had fallen back to sleep before we got there, so our arrival woke him up again. His dachshund bravely sounded the warning from the porch, but when we came to the door he yelped in fear and streaked around to the back yard. We never saw him again. Paul insisted on getting his morning coffee. (We were to learn over the course of the next week that his coffee was very high on his priority list.)

Our next stop was Ardmore to pick up my son Ted. He had agreed to drive us to Hugo, keep my truck for a week, and then pick us up in Kansas the next Saturday. We got to his apartment at about 12 PM. We loaded up all 5 of us, all our gear and 4 bikes into my compact pickup, and headed out. Didn’t take us long to realize that my compact pickup was really crowded. The cramped quarters and high anticipation let to lots of jokes and good natured kidding. I couldn’t help noticing that the road all the way to Hugo looked like a good cycling road: smooth and with wide shoulders.

We arrived at Hugo at about 3:30, found our camp at the old train depot in the center of town, changed into biking clothes and piled back into the truck for the run across the border. (We needed to start our ride in Texas so that we could ride completely across Oklahoma). Ted drove us across the river to Arthur City (it was no city) and put us out at a little gas station. Heading north on our bikes we rode across the Red River bridge & stopped at the “Welcome to Oklahoma” sign for pictures. Immediately Paul’s front tire went flat and he changed it there in front of the Oklahoma sign. Back on the road, we spun off the 12 miles to Hugo. It was very hot, the hottest part of the day, but we had a good tailwind and we drank lots of water.

Back at camp in Hugo we said goodbye to Ted, changed clothes again and tanked up on water. Paul had his second flat just as we rode into camp (on the rear this time) and he found some shade in which to repair his tire. In camp we hung out a while, enjoying a cool breeze as the heat began to dissipate. We took off on our bikes through town to find dinner at a bout 5:30 or so. Paul’s rear tire flatted again. After fixing that, we rode around town until Paul’s nose led us to Dawna’s Diner, a nice little place on a side street. Our waitress was named Cynder, and the nite’s special was ribeye. Paul and Jim both had the catfish. Jim must have been hungry, because he finished all of his own, and whatever Paul didn’t eat. Glenn and I settled on the cheeseburger. I added a salad and 3 glasses of diet Pepsi and he had fries and we ate till it hurt. The neatest thing about the restaurant was the black and white porcelain pig in the restroom. Don’t ask me.
Bye the time we rode back into camp the evening had cooled off and a really pleasant breeze was blowing. There among the hundreds of tents we had our first meeting of Freewheel 2006. Later I bought a Freewheel tee-shirt at the concession stand, and Paul and Jim rode to Walmart for tent pegs and a big package of little ice cream cups which made Paul a very popular guy that evening in camp.