Two things came to mind as I mounted my bicycle for today’s ride. One is the miraculous protection of God. Okies can be ornery, but most tend to be friendly. Whether I’ve encountered many of jerks on my rides is hard to tell, because the Bible says God will grant us favor in the sight of most people when we cling to His justice. While plenty of folks ignore the three-foot clearance rule in passing, I’ve never felt threatened.
Two: The primary reason I ride is for the adventure. Frankly I’m quite frustrated with the lack of opportunities for adventure in my life. The military was something like an adventure, enough so that I was willing to enlist twice even knowing what a load of bullshit was involved. Being a school teacher was mildly entertaining for a few years but the bureaucratic idiocy kept sliding deeper into the cesspool and it just got old. It wasn’t as stupid as military idiocy, but it was also not at all adventurous, so it simply wasn’t worth the hassles. Since then, I’ve been bored to tears and being able to ride the roads is the one way I can get a little release.
Indeed, I’ve often been moved to volunteer for disaster clean-up only to discover some agency like FEMA was involved. If you’ve never experienced FEMA, it’s all the worst bureaucratic idiocy of the military amplified by a complete lack of even a pretense of mission. They only understand one thing: control. That’s the whole mission; not control for any particular purpose, but for its own sake. It becomes impossible to volunteer because you have to submit a fifty-page document with the most demonic intrusive questions about anything and everything you would never dream of asking yourself. And if you don’t submit, they treat you like a terrorist. I’ve helped folks during that initial period before the likes of FEMA shows up, and then I leave.
Today’s ride didn’t even count as a photolog. It was just an attempt to escape and have a little adventure. I’m not training for anything on these rides. I do hope to increase my comfort with longer distances, but that’s still just more adventure. On top of that, today I was dodging two rain bands sweeping through the area. I didn’t have time for a really good, long ride.
It was a pretty simple box — south on Choctaw Road to SE 104th, east to Harrah Road, north to SE 44th and then home.
I stayed on Henney Road down to SE 59th and took that brutal hill eastward to Choctaw Road. While we had a good rain overnight and into the morning hours, it was not enough to cause flooding out here. As I dropped down into the upper Hog Creek Valley, there was no sign of high water where it crosses SE 59th near Henney. However, where 1-40 crosses Choctaw Road (which goes under the interstate), the bottom is one of the first places to fill with water and the last to dry out. The fellow in the big pickup behind me was quite the gentleman, allowing me to pedal through the shallow water before he drove into it. While it’s technically illegal for drivers to splash water on cyclists and pedestrians, this was just basic human decency at work, as he waved and smiled.
But apparently the storm did plenty of damage to the power lines, because a crew was working the wires on Choctaw Road just south of the truck stop. Where Hog Creek comes along almost parallel to Choctaw, just south of the truck stop is a very large and expensive development on that slope for a half-mile along. It appeared they were without power.
Farther down where that huge yellow storm-proof mansion sits on the corner with SE 89th, a tributary of Hog Creek crosses and joins out on the south end of the horse pastures, after flowing through a very expansive pond system. Upstream on that tributary is where the century-old dam broke a few weeks ago over near SE 74th and Indian Meridian. It didn’t really do that much damage to where it crosses SE 89th, but it tore up one of the berms that contain the pond nearest Hog Creek itself. The owner had already repaired the damage, in contrast to the many washouts the county hasn’t begun to fix from even several months ago.
But Hog Creek itself wasn’t up high, and I rode on up the hill to SE 104th and turned back east. It’s been so long since I rode that direction I don’t even remember what it looked like. As Hog Creek wanders toward Thunderbird Lake, I had to cross it again. There are several homes there in the bottom that nearly flooded when that dam broke and dumped thousands of gallons into Hog Creek in just an hour. Today all I saw were beautiful homes in an even more beautiful valley — Hog Creek rarely disappoints the eyes, no matter where you cross it.
However, it’s also one of the deepest valleys in the area, with matching steep sides and brutal hills to climb. SE 104th was still a beautiful ride heading east, and after a couple of miles the hills flattened out a good bit. It was just so peaceful and lovely, despite the scudding clouds and thunder just a bit north of there.
This is the view of Harrah Road from SE 104th, where the latter dead ends. 
Turning north on Harrah Road I realized this was a very familiar stretch. Back when I first started this blog (now 6+ years) I was still working with Mr. Brooks. By then he had sold his lake house, but when I first started helping him out, a primary duty was driving him out to the place on the west shore of the Shawnee Twin Lakes. The path he preferred often took us down Harrah Road to Stella Road SE 119th, which runs all the way to the twin dams, and his lake house was just a quarter mile off SE 119th (AKA Horner Road). As noted on a previous ride, this whole area between the south edge of Watkins Reservoir, north of Thunderbird and east to the Twin Lakes is called Deer Run, though the official labels vary. (Double checked and corrected a false memory there.)
Farther north and back under the interstate again, we start seeing the outlying properties associated with Newalla, a tiny village centered on the intersection of SE 59th and Harrah Road. In the old days it was “Harrah-Newalla Road” but you won’t hear that often today. Newalla has been in decline, with a lot properties now vacant around the town, and perhaps a few in the actual village itself.
But from there, Harrah Road is undergoing widening. That means drainage, curbs and paved driveway aprons. The picture show it’s about halfway done with the final surface work. While squeezing past the somewhat heavy traffic for that mile, I actually caught some light rain. Just a few sprinkles, but I was already quite wet from perspiration. It was a bit cooler because of the clouds and rain, but still warm and very damp air.
While SE 44th eastward toward Watkins Lake was still barricaded, westbound was clear. Given the rate things are going, there will be some washouts still untouched by repair crews when winter comes. I’ve traversed SE 44th between Harrah and home quite a few times, and it seems the water courses were properly done in those seven miles. In fact, one of the few wooden bridges still stands along this route. Most of those have been replaced with the tin-horn style long ago, but only because the older wooden ones washed out or collapsed under heavy load. So here between Luther and Peebly one remains, only a few feet wide, but the wood is in good shape and the creek has never washed it out.
As always, the hills got tougher as I approached home, but at only 25 miles, I had plenty of energy to attack them with vigor.
