Route 66, Day 14
by Bryan Patterson

June 29, 2015 - Not an early start, but none the less we were all ready to ride. With 5 bikes and 6 riders someone had to ride the van, so Cristian and our driver James in the wagon. It seems that having the wagon park every 5 miles is a good thing even if we didn’t stop it’s a good marker. We rode out of the camp site, which was actually West of  El Reno city, but we had soon past by and were into our stride on Route 66. A wonderful route, which was off the main highways, so that the James gang were safe from any distraction. Pretty amazing route with, once again, buildings that were in ruins. Houses, small cafes, gas stations, restrooms, all sorts of properties which must have seen some wonderful times when Route 66 was the Mother Route. It’s sad to see it in such disrepair.

We were riding well and soon reached Clinton, a small town which felt very friendly. We had lunch at the Clinton Café (we wondered if this was where the Clintons had holed up in the bad old days and maybe named the town??!!) The café was on Fresco Street and the owner is Carlos who gave us a heads up about Route 66 and some of the things we might see. Really great sandwiches served by his wife, cool water and oh yes AC.

Oklahoma is much more agricultural than Texas, and with rolling hills. Some of which were extremely long and tough getting up. Still on Route 66 we reached Weatherford, which is where Thomas Stafford was born and lived and he was one of the early an astronaut.

On the rolling hills and going up one of these Jerry had a lucky escape from a dog! We had heard sayings that if anyone said “My dog don’t bite” that really meant “Yes” it does!! Following up behind I was lucky enough to have a car pass and scare the dog away!

We were basically staying parallel to highway 40 crossing the Canadian river which looked like when in spate would be a huge river. Today it was still a very wide river but not much water in it. Lots of trees stuck on sandbanks which made it look likely that when in flood it would be a dangerous river. Over the bridge there was a huge dead rattle snake, on the side of the road.

Close to our camp site we met two Japanese guys who were walking to New York and pulling a cart behind them, and we thought that we were tough, what!! They were from Osaka, Japan. Passing through a gas station to get to our camp site I talked with Terry who had a wonderful 3 wheeler bike and was gassing up. I rounded the bike and found to my amazement that he had two prosthetic legs! He’d been electrocuted and lost both his legs, was from Buffalo, Oklahoma, not NY.