Denouement

I awoke Sunday morning to a beautiful cool, sunny day. I loaded up and was about to pedal out of Stilwell when I noticed a flat on my rear tire, the first flat of the entire 950 mile journey. I patched her up, thanked the silver turkey, my bike, for being so steadfast and peddled on.

It was a beautiful ride through rolling hills and horse pastures. Early on, I noticed that my rear derailer had stopped putting the bike in 3rd gear. Not a biggie, but I started to wonder what else might break before I reached Tahlequah, now less than 25 miles away.

Coming dowm my last hill before town, my front derailer started to slip. I couldn’t get the chain to move to the biggest gear. It was clear that the silver turkey was exhausted.

Google maps, which was very reliable the whole journey, also had a meltdown. Rather than taking me downtown, it took me on one final gravel road to the Cherokee Nation’s complex south of Tahlequah. Argh.

I peddled north on route 62 with full sun in the sky, only 4.5 miles to downtown and the conclusion of my ride. Route 62 is a big, busy 4 lane with no berm and high curbs, one of the more unsafe roads of the entire journey. I was not happy about being rerouted this way by Google but I peddled on nervously. In less than 10 minutes, the skies turned grey, then black. I was about 2 miles from downtown when it began to pour rain. I began to wonder what else might happen as I biked closer. Tornado? Do I really want these folks to suffer more? My name, Bontempo, means fair weather and is really an oxymoron. My concern grew as I reflected on this.

I heard my name being called from a grey truck driving next to me. It was my host Dana. The rain was getting hard enough that it was difficult to navigate. We both pulled over and she suggested that I load my bike in back and ride with her. At that moment, it began to hail. Yeah, of course it was hailing. Nature has done this to me before. With hail plinking on my helmet, I loaded my bike into her truck and we drove off.