Dodging rain in Oklahoma

GOOD DAY yesterday, but that’s a little misleading. I don’t have any personal experience with what you might call a bad day on the road. The stalwart iron piggy put 459 miles in her mirrors, from Angel Fire, New Mexico, to Meno, Oklahoma. It was down, down, down all the way, from 8,400 feet to 1,300.

I slept on a picnic table in the town park. It poured rain all night but the table had a metal canopy over it. I was snug as could be, woke up raring to go while it was still dark. And no wet tent to pack up. Life is good.

We had rain in Angel Fire overnight Sunday.

Blue skies all morning but I knew there was a bad weather system coming north out of Texas. CCjon and Nestor were driving right into it while I was trying to get as far east as I could before rain coming up from the Gulf crossed my path.

And then here it comes… That’s rain to the east (left) of that little prairie house in the windbreak trees. Piggy’s pointed east on U.S. 412, the rain’s coming north to cross the road in front of us.

Got past that one but here comes another… This is a side road, looking south toward Texas.

Same place. How things looked to the east.

I walked up the side road to see what the cows thought of my chances of finding a dry path forward. The looks they give you can be hard to read. What I got from the conversation was, We’re out in the rain, what’s so special about you?

I hung around at the crossroads, waiting for the rain cell to move to the north side of the road ahead. And then it just kept coming… endless…

So I rode through it.

Didn’t bother suiting up in the rain gear. On a warm day your clothes dry fast enough at speed. I didn’t think I’d get very wet anyway, tuck up behind the windshield, give the throttle a twist and make a rider-sized hole in the rain.

There was not much visibility in there, and quite a lot of water on the road. At 70mph piggy’s grip felt just a wee bit loose.. so I held at 65 and we were through to the other side in I’ll say 10 to 12 minutes.

My jacket was dry. Jeans were dry from the knees up. From the knees down I was as soaked as if I had waded across a stream. Could have poured water out of my boots. My gloves were saturated, too. As you can see, they live outboard of the windshield.

So on we roll, through the woebegone little towns on this particular blue highway across Oklahoma. Wait, I mean to say… Oh-oooooo-OAK-lahoma!*

(*Where the wind goes sweeping down the plain.)

America’s incredible vanishing Main Street… Same deal all across the heartland. Exodus of the young who can’t find or make a place for themselves in the local economy.

Tumbledown houses everywhere, Joad…

On we ride across the prairie and the oil patch and the terrain starts growing hills. Southern edge of the Flint Hills, I thought? Will do a little checking when I have time, see if that’s so. When I rode by here yesterday I was thinking I must be far enough east to be just south of that part of Kansas.

More rain ahead…

This one I waited out. The cell was maybe six miles wide, a good two miles of rain coming down in the middle.

There’s the tail end starting to move across the road, south to north.

On the other side now, without getting wet again.

I rode on to Meno, stopped to fuel up at a Cenex around 8 last evening.

Always chat up the night fuel guy, he knows the lay of the land. And buy something out of the cooler. I bought chocolate milk.

Is there a park in town? Yes, there’s a park. Will anyone mind if I throw my sleeping bag on a table tonight? Nope. So where’s the park? Turn right at the next side road.

Breakfast this morning… groats cooking in a pot on the grill.

Will camp in Arkansas tonight. Maybe Missouri, depending on what’s ahead for weather.

Tony DePaul, September 4, 2018, Enid, Oklahoma, USA