I’m beset by maps. On my son Sam’s puzzle map of the United States, Oklahoma is the most interesting state—it’s a pot with a proper handle! Since we moved to rural Payne County a year ago I’ve wanted to ride my bicycle across that handle and get a better look at Oklahoma. The trip would cross six of Oklahoma’s twelve distinct ecoregions, and there’s no better way to observe transitions between these unique and diverse areas than from the seat of a bike, moving at a turtle’s pace.

My modest expedition started at my new favorite bike shop, Guthrie Bicycle. I phoned Kent, the owner and chief mechanic, while snow flurries flew, and he found me exactly what I wanted: an aluminum, single speed, rigid mountain bike with fat tires and pincher brakes for the price of two pairs of high-tech running shoes. Why a single speed—one gear—33 teeth on the chainring and 18 on the rear cog? Simplicity. Asceticism maybe.

My Dad learned I’d be packing about 30 pounds of gear, including food and water, for an unsupported solo trip across the state and said, “Crying out loud, no gears—why don’t you just ride a unicycle?”

A couple days before I left for No Man’s Land, I rode the bike back to Guthrie for a tune up. While we were chatting, a white-haired, wire-bearded man on a fully-loaded touring bike pedaled over the railroad bridge, east on Highway 33.

"Where you going?” I hollered. He stopped. His name was Duane, from Port Townsend, Washington. He was riding to the East Coast, then circling back home through Canada. “This a lifelong dream trip?” Kent asked.

“Maybe an end-of-life trip,” Duane joked. He was a fit mid-sixties I’d guess, and had just come out of the Panhandle, with big, favorable winds. “Where’s the Methodist church?” he asked. “The Methodists are good about letting me camp.”

I made a mental note of this while Kent pointed up the hill.

Southwestern Tablelands and onto the Western High Plains

The novelist Robert Boswell recently asked me about the source of the Cimarron River. I was shamed to admit that I didn’t know. I learned on Google that the river’s source is near the town of Folsom, just west of here in New Mexico, but is now a dry bed of rock. “Cimarron” is a hybrid of Apache and Spanish and means, appropriately, “wanderer.” My route would follow and cross the legendary river several times.

My brother Clay drove me across the panhandle to the modest marker where the corners of Oklahoma, New Mexico and Colorado meet.  Clay, unlike me, doesn’t slow down for historical markers, but this one impressed him.

I pitched my little tent a stone’s throw from the three-state marker and slept under the desert stars. This country punctuates my long-held argument that Oklahoma is not part of the Midwest, but rather the beginning of the Southwest. The Merc, the stone general store in nearby Kenton, operates on Mountain Time.

In the morning I strike camp and pedal in the shadows of Black Mesa, the formation that boasts the highest point in the state at nearly 5,000 feet. The first leg of my ride is, geographically, downhill for 200 miles. I roll past ocatillo and yucca.
A flock of wild turkeys. A soft tailwind, hitched to my 12 to 14 mph average, allows me to ride in a sort of vacuum of nearly no wind at all—a true anomaly in this country infamous for wind. In Boise City, inmates in old school striped prison garb work on the landscaping of the Cimarron County Courthouse. I grab a footlong at the Love’s Subway and spin eastward. Trucks with magnanimous Suzlon wind turbines idle at the port of entry. Five minutes past the intersection of US 56 and 64 I get a flat.

Goathead thorns—sometimes called puncture vine and Texas sandbur by locals—are the bane of cyclists in the Southwest. Bicycles are the most vulnerable where the lightweight rubber hits the trail, and my first flat comes just two hours into my tour.

I carry three extra tubes and a patch kit in my panniers but know that the tiny horned seeds can still bring me to a standstill. I get the flat in front of a Dust Bowl-era farmhouse, where Phil asks if I needed anything. I tell him nothing other than the shade of his Siberian Elms. Phil is originally from near Mexhoma and warns me further about the goatheads. Without support, I’ll be relegated to the main route through No Man’s Land, which is fine since there are few alternate routes, and the presence of gas fields forces a rider vector north and south too often when I need to make time eastward. I need to hit Guymon tonight for re-supply.

Tim Egan, in his best-selling nonfiction book about the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, is convinced that I’m riding under the potential for the worst weather in the world, but I haven’t seen it. The forecast for Woodward calls for a high of 96. East of Guymon I tune into KGYN’s morning country classics show. Tammy Wynette. Marty Robbins. Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman. Perfect pedaling music for this landscape.

At the store in Elmwood two boys sell me a tall glass of cold sweet tea. Slapout is slapout of everything, so I push toward the town of May, where I was told that the store has good sandwiches. This is true. I loiter in the air conditioning while Ray, a technician, explains in layman’s terms the wind turbine field that I’d been watching grow bigger for a couple of hours. He’s proud of this new industry that appears to be reviving the economy of parts of the High Plains. Ironically, the wind that broke people in the 1930s may end up helping families of the next century thrive.

Santa Claus on a Harley suggests I camp at Fort Supply Lake, and I’m happy for the tip. A bicycle tourist would be wise to plan his or her trip around Oklahoma’s U.S. Corps of Engineer campgrounds. It rains just enough to cut the dust. Around midnight I awake to a opossum eating my cheese. I get lazy when not in bear country and did not hang my food bag; the outlaw opossum makes off with my sharp cheddar.

Central Great Plains

For the first time in over two hundred miles, I find myself standing on the pedals to climb modest hills. Trees mark the boundaries of wheat fields. The air is more humid. At the My Way Café in Seiling, three Native American women ask me if I sleep in ditches; they seem disappointed when I explain my tent and preference for campgrounds with showers. I’ll like Canton Lake, they say. “There’s a casino there.”

I turn off of Gary England Avenue in warm sunshine and onto Indian Road toward the lake. Three Native American young men stand along the road and give me the high sign as I pedal by. There is no car traffic, just turtles and snakes. The campground at Big Bend is bereft of people and cleaner than a good hotel. A strong wind keeps the bugs at bay.

I breakfast at the Longdale filling station, which serves a good Texas toast sandwich and Cain’s coffee on tap. 

My grandfather, Donald Boyce, was born in Homestead, in northern Blaine County. There isn’t much there other than the grain elevator and a smattering of houses. In the cemetery, I find the graves of his uncles and Aunt Shirley, who lived alone in a farmhouse just south of here; the house has long ago been razed. A bicycle trip across the state is something my grandpa would have loved; when he was a boy he rode a single speed not unlike mine. 

Before Hennessey I cross the Cimarron—full-up with mud-red water. I’m tired, it’s hot and an armadillo outruns me up a hill. I justify it by reminding myself I’m on a singlespeed, but this is an excuse—how many gears does an armadillo have?

While I refill my water, I read about Pat Hennessey, the freightmaster who was murdered violently on the Fourth of July, 1874. It’s dark when I get east of town and, near Turkey Creek, I dig my lights out of my pack. At Stillwater I turn north and take the gravel to our house, near the Noble County line. It’s cheating, I know, but I’ll get to see my wife and kids and sleep in my own bed before rolling toward Arkansas. On the news I watch footage of a funnel cloud over the wind turbines near Fort Supply.

Crosstimbers

In Payne County I have to make a choice: the home place of Woody Guthrie or Will Rogers? This time I choose the northern route around Tulsa and the Arkansas River complex. A few clicks down muddy Glencoe Road and I’ve crossed into the Crosstimbers ecoregion of blackjack oak and little bluestem grasslands. Near Lone Chimney I realize I’m in thoroughbred country and wonder where Denis of Cork lives and if maybe I’ve coasted past his home pasture.

Cleveland is a picturesque town of brick streets and a McDonald’s. I cross the Arkansas River with a full belly and turn east onto New Prue Road. I stand on the pedals for the steepest hill of the tour. I have no idea where I’ll camp tonight, and it’s getting late in the afternoon, but uncertainty is the appeal of a seat-of-the-bike-shorts trip.

Oklahoma boasts a wealth of fine campgrounds and it’s my fortune to run across Walnut Creek State Park. The mustachioed ranger warns me of weather, so I use all my tent stakes and batten down the rain fly. It looks like the front is going to swing north. The stars are out, and a raccoon traipses through my camp, hunting for cheese. I shoo him into the trees. An hour later I hear thunder. Soon rain pops against the nylon. In ten minutes the aluminum poles are bent against my nose as my tent struggles to withstand what I’d later learn are 65 mph winds. The sensation is like being inside a giant opaque sandwich bag, cycled through the dishwasher.

In the morning I’m proud of the little tent that braved the worst storm I’ve ever spent outdoors. In my survivor’s glee I miss a turn and put on extra miles on the way to Claremore. In the delta maze of the Arkansas River Valley, a mountain biker is limited to accessible bridges. A police officer in Sperry shows me how to navigate road construction on Highway 20—bridge out—before an elderly woman on a three-wheeled bicycle whips me down Cincinatti Avenue. Hey, she has 3 speeds.

Caves and Prairies and the Ozark Highlands

Though it costs me 20 “off-route” miles, I shoot for the campground at Oologah Lake north of Claremore. The land mellows here, a saddle between the Crosstimber country and the forthcoming Ozark Highlands. I stop at the marker for the Battle of Claremore Mound, which took place along the Verdegris River in 1817 between the Osage and Western Cherokee. It occurs to me on the long coast back into Claremore that Rogers State University is one of the prettiest campuses I’ve seen anywhere.  

At Snowdale State park, I refill my CamelBak and pedal across the Neosho River to Salina, perhaps my favorite town of the trip. I’m partial to pre-Civil War history; Jean Pierre Chouteau held shop here in 1796. Salina is where the Ozarks begin and the rest of my trip consists of gorgeous out-of-the-saddle climbs. Where are the tourists? The northern Ozark Highlands are still a secret.

My last day is nearly 100 miles because I miss my turn in Jay and must backtrack. I’m running low on legs and blood sugar, but the gravitational pull at the end gets my average up to about 14 mph.

There is no fanfare at the Arkansas border. I find a tick on my leg—surely an Arkansas resident, as, in my humble experience, Arkansas is the tick-thickest state in the union.

I have ridden 651 miles in six days. I call my wife, Hilary, on my cell phone. I tell her that next summer I want to swing south and circle through Woody Guthrie country and the ecoregions I missed on this trip. Okay, she says, but first we make plans to come back to Salina for a weekend. In a car.