March 31, 2013
Day 37: Stinnett, TX to Guymon, OK
Thunderstorms pass during the night, leaving behind wet pavement but mostly clear skies. It looks like a good day to get back to my push to the north, but out here looks can be deceiving: a strong wind blows cold from the northeast. No matter which direction I go it's going to be a long day. I have all kinds of time to think about this as I grind out of Stinnett at six and seven miles per hour on the flat stretches.
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On the way to Gruver I pass a field full of steers, most of whom lay in the light yellow grass next to the fence line. As I pedal slowly by, jacket flapping and nose sniffling, one after another notices me, starts to stare, and then within a few seconds stands at attention like it's some kind of salute. When I stop a little farther up the road, they all start to walk my way and congregate in the nearest corner of the field, waiting to see what's going to happen next. I feel like the beef messiah returned to guide his flock.
After I try to explain to the herd that I'm just some crazy guy on a bike, I crawl on through Pringle and Morse, towns that now aren't much more than a grain elevator with a few houses and trees set behind them. I impress myself with how I'm able to keep the swearing to a minimum, but a lot of it comes from the fact that the forecast calls for the wind to flip from the northeast to the southeast some time in the middle of the afternoon. I figure if I can hold it together until then I'll be able to finish the day strong.
Soon I pass by a huge feed lot, where cows with faces of solid white or tan or black poop and fart and make an entire one-mile stretch smell like a portable toilet at the end of a three-day outdoor music festival held in the desert where everyone had only Taco Bell and cheap beer all weekend. On the plus side, it's so empty out on the plains that I can stop wherever I feel like and take a leak right off the side of the bike — and watch as the wind bends the stream so that after about a foot it hooks left almost at a 90-degree angle.
When I ignore the wind it turns out to be a remarkable day. The clouds of the morning disappear, and as the sun approaches the top of its arc the world becomes warm without pushing into hot. The rural highway I'm on has almost no traffic, and I'm far enough away from the larger towns and cities that passing drivers start to wave again as they speed past. And when I cruise by a wide open pasture, ten horses start to gallop alongside me before wandering over to the fence with looks of wonder on their long faces when I stop to rest. Except for the wind slowing me down, this ride through little Hansford County is as wonderful as I'd hoped it would be when I decided to come this way.
Because it's Easter Sunday, the streets are empty of cars and people and the grocery store and every restaurant in the thousand-person town of Gruver is closed. That means an Easter feast of spicy gas station burritos and Gatorade, which turns out to be way better than it sounds.
Traffic goes away altogether on the highway that runs north out of town. And soon, in an amazing turnaround from the morning, so does the wind. It doesn't shift to the south; it just disappears. That leaves me to ride flat, empty roads in peace and a sleeveless shirt. I look out on massive sweeps of green and yellow, ride along ranches where wooden fence posts hold up the barbed wire instead of metal, and listen to the calls and responses of birds and the subtle buzzing of insect wings that flap a hundred times a second. It's a kind of quiet and stillness I've never before experienced on the plains. It's such an enjoyable place to travel through today that I hold out hope it'll last for hours and hours.
It sticks around long enough to hit the Oklahoma state line, where with the wave of a hand and a modest Welcome to Oklahoma sign the road in an instant loses its shoulder and turns to shit. The surface of the highway changes color and texture every hundred feet or so from all the patches and replacement sections, and huge potholes line the edge. And because that edge comes and goes at random, the half-assed rumble strip often wanders into the traffic lane before it drunkenly swerves back and then disappears altogether. There are a lot of things to rip on Texas for, but those guys are master craftsmen when it comes to building and maintaining their highways. They wouldn't stand for this.
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I stop for the day in Guymon, at one of the four RV parks in America that still welcomes people camping in tents. In the summer the place also runs its own pizzeria and drive-in movie theater, which makes it basically the coolest thing in the entire state of Oklahoma. I set up the tent beneath the giant drive-in screen, where I'm serenaded by the sweet sounds of highway traffic, banging and clanking freight trains, and the all-day-all-night drone of a diesel-powered pumping engine that runs at high RPMs in the field behind the park.
Hunkered inside my sleeping bag and protected from the cold night that surrounds me, I try to figure out where to head next. This is tougher than it seems, because Kansas has two special gifts in store for me. Starting tomorrow, stronger winds surge down from the north and the east. The day after brings bitter cold that's carrying an inch or two of snow along for the ride. Spring is just a suggestion this year.
Today's ride: 71 miles (114 km)
Total: 1,794 miles (2,887 km)
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