Day 28 - Elk City to Erick, Oklahoma

Day 28 of our tour
October 31, 2016
37.3 miles today
(1301 miles, cumulative)
1215 feet of climbing
(51,681 feet of climbing, cumulative)


Today marked the end of our fourth week of traveling by tandem. Our day was smooth, and a shorter distance was logical as the temperature was well over 80 after noon, and the wind was in our face.

The tandem's rear internal gear hub seemed to get distracted by Halloween or something, and whatever piece is broken inside just kept quiet as we rode. The bike worked fine all day.

I called Bike Friday, the company in Eugene, Oregon that made the bike, and the bike technician there described a vulnerable spring that occasionally breaks in these hubs, and how a certain inexpensive auto part sold at Napa can be disassembled to yield an identical spring that can then be used to replace the broken spring in the hub. I may try that fix in a few days, but the plan now is to carry on, as the bike is working.

We started out in heavy fog again this morning:

Jean got wet from condensation on her cycling pants:

The sun came out, however, and shone brightly on this nicely restored building in the small town of Sayre which we rode through at our halfway point this morning:

We came across this field and could not tell from the road whether those were white blossoms, or cotton. Jean's first guess was cotton, and she was correct:

Many of the small towns have numerous flea markets or junk yards, and this yard was also a bit of an amateur museum. The airplane made from spare parts swung on the pylon as the wind shifted, and the propellor was spinning in the wind, too, though it was frozen by our camera:

Tomorrow we finally leave Oklahoma.