TAT Report 2010-Day 8 August 16-2010

Today  was sort of sad. When we got up this morning, we had our last breakfast with Rich & Jon. They are both heading back home today, as Brooks and I venture Westward.

 Left- Jon (a/k/a Little Jon ), also we've learned, he's known as the Traveling Nome,  say good-bye this morning, as we load up.
Rich (a/k/a Columbus) says he had a good time, and learned a lot.
Both Rich and Jon did a great job riding. Neither has a lot of recent dirt experience, and they both did great.



They will be taking mostly secondary roads back to NY and should be in MO tonight.












Brooks and I headed out, and were soon on some beautiful "back-roads". Billy Goat Hill Rd. comes to mind as a great one this morning. Clear  blue. cloudless sky's, low 80's, and a 10mph breeze from the East kept the dust from the bikes out of our eyes.

First water crossing in OK, easy, non-slippery

The roads changed to wonderful 2 tracks..what this means is if you have grass in the center, they are less traveled roads, and seldom need grading. If they get graded, the grass gets removed in the process. They are some of the best dirt/gravel roads to ride.

Crossing over Lake Hudson. On the map, looks to be about a half mile wide, and several miles long.

In Oklahoma???

The farms we've seen so far are really quite nice. Many nice horse farms. The area is much greener than I expected.

One type of farm we saw a lot of in AK, and again here in OK is the chicken farm. Quite often you'd smell it before you saw it. Huge barns. The type where 1000,000 chickens would be kept. I saw many farms with TYSON signs on a fence post. This I assumed shows they are  a contract grower for Tyson chicken.  Never did see a Perdue sign.

Where is Frank Perdue ?

Anyone know what this means?

When a farm (mainly poultry) is posted like this (other versions also), it means people have to be sanitized before going onto/into the property. Special boots, special jump-suits. Walk through a shallow pan of disinfectant, etc. There are several diseases that if carried into a poultry farm,can spread and wipe out an entire farm.

You know there will be a test at the end of this blog, don't you?

Time to finish up for the day.

We  were doing quite nicely, then got off the route a little. There came a time I went to get back on my bike, and my left leg, knee, or ankle gave out, and I fell straight down, folding my ankle under "all that weight" of me.  I managed to get on, nothing broken, but very well sprained. We got back on the trail, and traveled for another hour, but decided we'd shut down early and get some much needed rest.

We got off the trail, and came into Bartleville, OK (40 miles  due North of Tulsa).  Found a nice clean Econo Lodge, and even ordered a pizza delivered. I lay here with a bag of ice on my ankle, hoping I can ride tomorrow...we'll see.

Stats for today: 127.9 miles  36.9 avg mph, 5hr 35min