Cycling Coast to Coast

Today we left Route 66 and rode on SR152 for most of the day to Cordell, OK.  The last few days have been shorter rides in the 60 to 70 mile range, but today we’re back up to 83 miles.  The weather has been getting noticeably hotter, but on these shorter days, we arrive at the host location early in the afternoon and so miss the brunt of the heat.  Today, however, was a long day, and a real scorcher.  At 11:30am, it was already 103F, and as I was sweep, I didn’t get in until about 4pm. 

As we ride along though, I find it really interesting to see how the terrain and vegetation changes.  So far, we’ve seen a lot of grazeland and livestock in Oklahoma.  Yesterday, I noticed that the earth is now reddish-colored.  Also, up until today, Oklahoma has been relatively flat, but today we started to climb up to the Great Plains.  It was a hilly day; not steep, but lots of gradual hills that when summed together (and with the heat) really wore me down.

Yesterday, we had a fun ride from Chandler to Yukon.  As we were riding along, just west of Arcadia, suddenly we saw a giant modern sculpture of a soda bottle across the street.  Of course, we had to stop to check it out, and turns out it was a gas station/cafe called Pops that has over 500 varieties of soda (LaVerde’s, take that!).  It was awesome.  I bought a t-shirt, and enjoyed an awesome chocolate milkshake.  The building walls are glass, and filled with shelves stocked with multicolored soda bottles.