Total Trip Distance: 1687.61

Red soil

Lucille:

May 12 - Monday - The first thing I did today was walk around Shamrock.  Like many of the small towns we've seen in New Mexico and Texas, at least half of the stores in town are permanently closed.  At first I was thinking that people must be shopping in larger towns and so the stores in the small towns are forced to close, but distances between these small towns and a somewhat larger town are so great that I don't know if that's it.  I find it rather depressing to see so many closed places.  I took Highway 40 east and just before getting on Highway 152, I passed Eric and Tom.  I stopped at a Texaco station and yet another closed restaurant at the intersection of these 2 highways and waited for the guys and we ate our lunches together, seated on the pavement by the closed restaurant.  After lunch, I explored the nearby town of Sayre, a cute little town with a large courthouse as the center of town and a few open shops and many closed ones.  Then on to Cordell, our destination for the night.  We are staying at 41 Motel, the only motel in town.  We had pizza tonight.  A large group of teenage girls and their mothers were there planning some event related to graduation.  The landscape today was green low rolling hills, red soil, round bales of hay in the fields.  I'll explore Cordell tomorrow.

Texas longhorns in Oklahoma

Making hay

First oil well we saw

ERIC:

Day 19 - (5/12/03) Today was another tough ride.  We left Texas after 1 hour and 5 minutes of riding.  The scenery changed a few times today.  As we entered Oklahoma on Route 66 out of Texas we saw a lot more trees.  We rolled thru Erick, OK.  It was a small town that was the hometown of Roger Miller.  Roger wrote the old song "King of the Road".  There was a museum under construction for him.  Today was the last time I think we will be able to ride on Route 66 as it will start making its way north to Chicago.  This is my second to last day riding before I need to get back to reality.  This trip has been great.  My favorite part of today's ride was a spot where I heard some sort of pumps in the distance.  They were very loud and we heard them for a long time.  It was very rhythmic and sounded like distant drums.  We saw Air Force planes circle overhead for most of the day.  I think they are monitoring the weather somehow.  Oklahoma has a lot of road kill along the roads.  It was interesting seeing dead animals that I don't ever see.  We saw armadillos and turtles among others.  I wish we could have seen some that were not smashed.  We fought alot of wind today.  Thunderstorms are predicted for tomorrow.  The town of Cordell is cute.  It has a big courthouse in the middle of town and the street runs on both sides of the building.  The streets are lined with stores and restaurants.  There is the "Amazing Grazing  Cafe" and "Starving Marvins Pizza". There is a big clock on the top of the courthouse that reminds me of the movie Back to the Future.  We ate at Starving Marvins.  There were a bunch of high school kids discussing and planning an upcoming event.  Most of them had the high school sports shirts on.  After seeing on the news over and over the high school girls in the Illinois hazing incident, it was great to hear girls talking about how they didn't want to wear strapless dresses to the dance.  It is nice to know that not everywhere are high school kids violent.

Our fifth state

Day Nineteen - 5/12/2003

TOM:

Day 19 – Shamrock, TX to Cordell, OK was 75 miles.  Although the elevation descended from 2300 feet to 1550 feet, the rolling hills and SSE wind made the trip slower.  The wind today was a little stronger than yesterday and was mainly a cross wind with some component in the face.  Our riding time today was 5 hours and 59 minutes with an average speed of 12.5 mph.  Today we said good bye to Texas and hello to Oklahoma.  This is our fiifth state out of the nine states that we will visit on this trip.  We were on Route 66 in Texas and also in Oklahoma until 4 miles past Erick where we got on Interstate 40 for a few miles.  At Sayre, OK we got on highway 152 and travelled directly east to Cordell.  As we traveled further east the land was covered by more trees and green grass.  There was also evidence of  more water by the running creeks and small ponds.  There is more farming and ranching.  We saw many different kinds of cows and people making bales of hay. We also saw our first oil well just after entering Oklahoma.  The scenery is now very green with very red soil.  There are many wild flowers along the side of the road. Many types of birds were seen along the roads.  There were some white birds that stayed with the cows and would fly away when the cows moved to look at us passing by.  The temperature has been very good for biking on the whole trip and today was no exception.  We started with a temperature of  62 degrees and ended the day at a temperature of 78 degrees.  Another good day of biking and seeing the country.

Eric

Open field

Rolling hills

Shamrock, TX to Cordell, OK was 75 miles.  This was another generally downhill day descending from 2300 feet to 1550 feet with rolling hills..