86 miles in 6hrs 10mins (incl. only one quick bagel stop)
Total Distance - 3,254 miles
Mixed feelings this morning as I woke in time for another very early start. While I was delighted to be getting back on my way, especially on a route away from the interstate, I was more than a little worried by the weather forecast for today. A cold front was to move in today and the computerized voice from the Weather Channel last night had been going over in my mind warning of scattered thunderstorms, some with severe winds and hail. Now the definition of 'severe' in this part of the world is somewhat different from the UK - severe rain = several inches fin a couple of hours, severe winds = possible tornadoes and severe hail = golf ball to baseball sized. I was definitely nervous, especially when I set off just before seven and could see I was in the middle of a vast horseshoe of menacing looking clouds. There was nothing to do but pedal and hope. After about an hour the horseshoe had been left behind but one arm had curved round to move between me and the rising sun. The rain started to lightly drizzle down and I was expecting to get wet. Then, to my surprise, shards of sunlight started to cut through the cloud and quickly carved it out the sky. Looking round I guessed I had at least another couple of hours of dryness. So I pressed on, fighting, with the Garmin gps as I went - piece of ******* junk that it is. The clouds then started to gather ominously again, but this time the road turned to take me south-east into the sunshine instead of the wall of dark grey that headed off north. To make it even better, the headwind that I was expecting to strengthen during the day began to wane giving me a more than pleasant run into Holdenville. To be honest, I hadn't had particularly high expectations for the scenery on this part of the trip but it turned out much better than I expected - not it any way stunning but nice, lush, green, gently rolling, quiet roads.
Then came my dilema for the day. It was 1pm and I had just over 80 miles chalked up. I felt good and wanted to carry on for a few more hours. However, the next town of note was almost 50 miles down the road. While the skies looked good I couldn't be sure they'd stay that way for the 3-4 hours I'd need. So I reluctantly called an 'early' end to the day. And when the thunderstorm rolled in two hours later as I was devouring my last slice of pizza, I was pleased I had.
Speaking of good decisions, I was chuckling to myself about the sign in the pic. as does a storm shelter not become a septic tank as a tornado passes overhead?
Looking ahead for the rest of this leg I've got a tough five days tentatively pencilled in as I try to squeeze what was six stages into five taking me down to Vicksburg on the Mississippi. As a result I'm looking at hopefully doing centuries in four out of the next five stages, with the remaining day being a +5,000ft climbing day - tough. Good news is the weather is looking pretty good for the next week - warm, but with the exception of tomorrow, dry. And the best weather news is that tomorrow will take me out of the 'Vortex 2' tornado hunt region (the Weather Channel has blanket coverage of this V2 project), which I'm assuming is the area in which said spinning things are most likely to occur.
One other quick point is I've got to give a special mention to the folks at the Wheeler Dealer bike shop in Oklahoma City who took delivery of my broken Cannondale yesterday and gave me a lot of help in stripping it down and getting the parts boxed up and to the Post Office. Thanks again and best of luck with the expansion into the new shop folks.
I'm considerably less grateful to the assistant in the PO who told me I couldn't send then package cause it was 1" over the 108" (length + girth) size limit, especially as her colleague had already measured it at 107". Some vicious slashing and re-taping got it below the limit (even further) so it should be arriving back in Balerno in a couple of weeks.
