Cordell, Oklahoma

Cordell is another small town on our path to the Pacific. The ride here was all on rt. 152 so I didn't take a cue sheet because I wasn't planning on missing any turns. But when going along on the same road for a while, it's easy to go nuts. That's why it's good to surround yourself with a good group of riders and conversationalists. Natalie Sara Max and Ryan W. all made up the riding crew at some point in the day. The ride was short and fast and we got into town pretty early. My group chore this week is cooler crew. In addition to mixing gatorade, or haterade as I label my brew, we are in charge of packing and unpacking coolers and refridgerators with all our food and acquired leftovers. Unlike other groups who will save dairy and meat products that have been cooler and warmed several times over weeks, I am very liberal with my trashing of old food. I don't want to eat bacteria filled food and I don't want anyone to get sick from doing the same. I follow a simple rule of Ray's, we'll start calling them dadisms; if in doubt throw it out. In an effort to minimize wasting food, I squeeze in an extra post ride meal for everyone to eat. Today my crew and I made nachos out of a bag of fritos, left over ground beef rice and beans. I sprinkled a little hotsauce and seasoning salt over the whole concoction and smothered it in cheese. It tasted good, but people would have eaten it if it were mashed cow liver, everyone is just so hungry after a ride. So we also lay out a full spread of fruits veges dips cookies and anything we can find to make more room in our coolers and storage bins for travel the next morning. So far this system has been working flawlessly. Dinner was cooked for us tonight by Peggy and Charolette who were fun to talk to and called me Mr. Connecticut. Sara and I chatted with them quite a bit and they called her Ms. Pennsylvania. They were conviced we knew nothing because we were from north of the bible belt. Southern culture was an alien to us and therefore our opinions and knowledge of it didn't matter. So when Sara and I told Peggy and Charolette we were teaching the group a country line dance that night, they thought we would fail at it hardcore. Sara and I actually had used our downtime in small town OK to learn the Boot Scootin' Boogie to teach to people for our hodown and crossover into Texas tomorrow. We tried to get our hosts in on the action but Peggy kept saying things like "I was raised Baptist, I'll go to hell for dancing." She was really adament about not dancing even after we tried to lasso her and pull her on the floor with our imaginary rope. So her and Charolette sat there watching as Sara and I taught the group. We told them to critique which Peggy was more than ready to do as she expected complete and utter foolishness as the end result. She was both very wrong and very impressed when in under 15 minutes our whole group had mastered the moves and looked stylish doing it as well. She said we danced like Texans which was the ultimate compliment after she had been harassing me all day long. Cap that off with a night of star gazing and casual conversation and a 10pm manual church bell ring and you have yourself a night. Farewell, Oklahoma. You have brought out the cowboy in me and showed me many great beauties. I will miss you.