Hello everyone,

What can I say, the gods of wind continue to smile on us favorably. We covered the 70 something. The average moving speed was over 20 mph but if you look at the Garmin ride data which is in an earlier post, most of the time we were well above that. Tooling around town afterwards and forgetting to shut off the device skewed the average much lower. The average temperature though was close to 90 but it didn’t feel that warm while riding.

We crossed another state line and had the ritual sprinkling there. Lou, Howard and I rushed to get there so I could place a little limerick there aimed at Kevin who didn’t sprinkle the California state line and had many punctures, 3 crashes, a sore throat, chest cold and had a screw skewer his wheel. They got a good laugh from that.

We also passed the famous 30 foot Cowboy statue and most had our pictures taken. The highlight was a white owl flying out of his crotch which seems to have been shot out by some cowboys after enjoying a few too many adult beverages. I’ll post a picture later.

In Guymon there is no smell from the pig processing plant but they do employ a significant portion of the town’s population. We visited a bike shop in Guymon where Herm and I bought Bever River Cycling jerseys last year. I bought A replacement bike bottle after I lost the top of one of mine. The owner actually is an attorney who does the bike shop as a hobby. Most of our group descended on his shop animist bought the famous Beaver River jerseys. He said this was his most profitable day in a year. After that we had lunch at a very large tavern / dinner featuring a sports theme. The owner said her family owns several diners in Liberal where we head today and we made a note to eat lunch at Pancake House (not the chain).

Dinner was at a Chinese buffet and was much better than I remember from 2 years ago maybe the wind changes our perception. I am going to keep this short and avoid the philosophical hyperbole that that punctuates my writing mainly because I am at a loss for words.

One last note, may at route wrap asked questions about tornadoes. There seem to be quite a few in the news and most of our crowd is not from “tornado country” especially the Brits. I think electrical storms are a lot more dangerous to cyclists. I’d add that CrossRoads has definitive emergency plans and have multiple alert early warning channels to get the cyclist to safety if bad weather ensues.

Thanks for reding

~Chuck