(Today’s short 30-miler took us through Yukon, OK, home of Garth Brooks. Yukon is also home to more non-denominational Christian churches than I have ever seen lined up on a one-mile stretch of road. I counted six, all with interesting names, like the “Canadian County Cowboy Church.” More on Yukon in a minute….)
Driving me to STL this morning to catch my flight to OKC, Pam asked, “So what’s interesting about this segment? What do you want to see?”
My reply: “Nothing. This is probably the least scenic leg of the trip. We just need to do the miles.” The first day did not disappoint my low threshold.
Granted, it started out rather well: the bike box was checked through baggage without a hitch, my flight was only a few minutes delayed, and Jon was waiting at the airport when I arrived. I had a moment of panic after we landed in OKC, when my iPhone informed me that the AirTag that I had put inside the bike’s downtube compartment was still in St. Louis. I hoped it was a signal delay, and—sure enough—as I was exiting the plane, I looked out the window, and there she was on the baggage truck. Exhale, Dan.
Reassembling the bike with Jon’s help went smoothly, and we were on the road at 1:45… directly into the teeth of a brisk north wind with 30 mph gusts. We only had to endure that for 10 miles before making a left turn and heading west to El Reno.
Having the wind slamming into our right flank was way better than having it in our faces, but the road we were on had no shoulders to speak of, so we were basically riding inside the white line of a 55-mph state highway with a wind that was trying its damnedest to push us into the middle of the road.
At Yukon, after passing those churches, we had to navigate a tricky intersection with roadwork, and then I heard a scraping noise and my speed slowed to a crawl. I looked around and saw that my rear rack had come detached from the brackets under my seat. It was still attached to the bike by two screws near the rear axle, so the whole thing—rack and pannier bags—pivoted on those two screws and flipped backward, and was dragging on the ground behind my rear wheel.
The two screws holding the rack to the bracket were gone. I know they were there when I boxed the bike, and it seems kinda weird that both screws would be able to work themselves loose simultaneously. I ended up improvising by removing one of my water bottle cages and using those screws to re-attach the rack. I had some legitimate fear that the first pair of screws had stripped the holes, but I caught a break: the replacements threaded in just fine and seem to be holding. Fingers crossed. As Jon and I have learned from various misadventures with tires, equipment problems never seem to resolve permanently.
Rideworthy 