April
Never Cancel the Ride from Home
Story by Laurie Allshouse
Under very nasty, cloudy skies, we left Oklahoma City for Sulpher and Lake of
the Arbuckles. A light rain would last for about five minutes and then it
would be clear for twenty minutes. This pattern repeated itself as we drove
down I-35 on an early Friday afternoon. Just as we spotted the OBS crew at
Buckhorn Landing, the heaven’s opened and it rained really hard for all of three
minutes. When it finished, Jim and I hurried to get our tent erected
before the next onslaught began.
Paying for our now claimed camping spot turned into
quite an ordeal, not unlike the keystone cops escapades. An automated
machine is at the entrance to each campground circle. We went up to pay
and the machine told us the spot was not available. Funny. No one
had marked the spot. We went to ask the campground host. He told us
to find another spot. That one had been paid for. We walked down the hill
behind Gary’s camp. I checked the number then ran back to the
blasted machine and paid for D-3. The machine didn’t give me a receipt.
Now we had to figure out how to get the van to our camp driveway. We found
the road but it was on C loop. I had just paid for the wrong site!
As we were standing there, trying to figure out how to rectify this mess, GW
came over with our receipt. He had paid after us and was having a better
rapport with the machine than I was having. A ranger drove by and we
flagged her down. She didn’t seem surprised with our predicament and
calmly directed me to the hated apparatus. There she freed the D-3 space
and gave me my $20 back. Then she told me a short cut to walk over to the
C loop machine. Two women were ahead of me. They were paying for ten
sites for a troop of Boy Scouts. C’s machine was a lot more user friendly
but after five swipes of the first woman’s card, it wouldn’t accept anymore.
The second woman used her card for the next five spots. Finally, it was my
turn and it accepted my money for C-3. Whew! What an ordeal just to
pay for a campsite! We captured our tent and with a person on each corner,
we moved to our new home. I was exhausted and hungry!
Gary Cannon suggested driving to Dougherty for lunch.
Trudy from Ft. Cobb rode with Gary and we followed in our van. The big
town of Dougherty has two restaurants. We had eaten at one last year on
Spring Fling but Rose’s Café was new to us. Gary teased our waitress about
her pierced tongue and asked for the Coconut Crème pie. She informed us
that the pie was being made in the next morning in anticipation of our arrival
by bike. Gary told her that since it was rainy, we would probably have
between 15 and 20 people. Little did Gary know that the next morning that
comment would come back to haunt him.
Back at camp the people just kept rolling in.
Dannie Lamb was just half a mile from camp when we passed him on his trike.
He took two days and rode from Oklahoma City to Paul’s Valley and then to
Buckhorn Landing. At 6:00 the camp host came over and told us that since
no one was in the first site we had wanted, it was now open. We were all
set up with Johnnie and Diana Lerma joining us. We weren’t about to move
again. But when Jana and Esther drove up, we had prime property available
for them. Greg and Amy came and sat their tent up in our circle while we
were in town having dinner.
Everyone was sitting around enjoying the stories of
past campouts and rides when Jana came back from a visit to the DiMonico’s
travel trailer. She had heard that a strong rain cell was headed our way.
Everyone dispersed and went to bed even though it was still hot and muggy.
I was asleep when the air cooled and the light show began. Rain,
lightening, and thunder awakened us. The wind howled. It was a rock
and roll night.
Our tent survived in high fashion. Since we were
“down the hill”, we seemed to escape the brunt of the wind. Two tents had
been blown over. Many people were bailing water out of their tents.
Trudy had borrowed a tent from her nephew. She had erected an umbrella
over her pillow to prevent a drip from hitting her in the forehead. Dennis
Clark’s $15 special he had Scotch Guarded and seam sealed with great pride is
now for sale. Rolf and Laverna set up their tent in the middle of the
night. They didn’t get it on the circular pad where tents were required to
be set up. A river went through their tent during the night.
Saturday they moved their tent to a designated spot. Laverna spent the day
at a laundromat while Rolf rode.
The morning was cool, cloudy and the threat of more
rain was on everyone’s mind. Amazingly, we counted 40 bikers ready to roll
when Gary gathered the troops and distributed maps. Joe DiMonico’s words
of wisdom, “Never cancel the ride from home”, seem to have created quite a
following. We had a great ride and never got rained on all day. Our
ride to Dougherty was hilly, as Gary had promised. We filled Rose’s Cafe.
Gary took quite a ribbing from our waitress about having more than the 20 people
he had anticipated. We all managed to get a small piece of coconut crème
pie and it was delicious.
Our ride back to camp continued with more hills.
We ended up with 41 miles. The weather was perfect for me. I love it
when it is cloudy and cool.
John Wente set his tent in our camp circle. Four
tents can be squeezed onto one site. Johnnie baked a Dutch Oven Blackberry
Cobbler for the pot luck dinner. Other food filled the central camp site
and camp chairs sprung up as hungry bikers wolfed down the victuals.
Stories and more stories were told until tired campers trundled off to bed.
Saturday night was much quieter, calmer and colder. Our down sleeping bags
felt good against the chill in the air.
Thirty riders were ready for the Sunday morning ride to
Sulpher for breakfast. It was a bright sunny day and only ten miles to the
Country Cookin Café. Trudy, John Wente, Gary Cannon and Donnie decided
that we’d add a few more miles for the return back to camp. We rode
towards Davis and over the Chickasaw trail for an added 10 miles. We
avoided busy 177 and only had 31 miles for the perfect Sunday morning ride.
After tearing down camp, John Wente twisted our arms ;-) to get strawberry milk
shakes at Braum’s in Sulpher. Jim got a banana split to fuel his drive
back to the city.
Another great biking weekend was enjoyed because we
didn’t cancel the ride from home.
Click thumbnail for larger
view of photo. Captions below
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