I had fallen back asleep having hit the snooze button with the thought that I need to get up because I need to write when suddenly someone started jumping up and down on my bed.

"What the f***?" I thought as I looked around the room for the culprit. "Huh. There's no one there. Oh right. I'm in a hotel. It would be a bit odd if there were."

I looked at the room. Yup. Still shaking.

"Construction?" 

I slowly started coming to the realization. "Ah. Earthquake." It was a calm realization. 

"Wait, Oklahoma??" 

Even then, I wasn't sure it was an Earthquake. The earthquakes in California I've experienced feel like jackhammers. Even the one in Maryland had a jackhammer nature to it. This shaking felt much slower and smoother somehow. It was as if someone was pushing and pulling the room in long strokes. This lasted long enough that I began to question the integrity of the building. "They don't build structures in Oklahoma to be earthquake proof." I reasoned as I pondered the fact that I had no clothes on. "This could be awkward."

It started to subside after some many seconds.

I got up, got some clothes on, and headed down to breakfast after a shower. The word in the breakfast room was that this was on of Oklahoma's largest quakes. 5.6 on the Richter scale. The woman at the counter confirmed it was a fracking quake. "We get them every day now but ones that big are rare. I was afraid the building was going to come down. They started about 5 or 10 years ago." she explained.

The only thing I could think was, "California, here i come."

Day 23 TAT Day 12

It was raining pretty steadily when I got up. Staying another day in Fort Smith just didn't feel right but I had been static for days now and the smoothness of motion I had developed had already left. I was dropping things again. Unwisely, I waited to futz with the rollchart holder and new tank bag that Megan, of Dual Sport Touring, had shipped me until I was at the bike standing in the drizzle.

Details. 

I waited a few hours between breakfast, a stop at a gas station, and an extended Good Sit(tm) at the nearby Starbucks to see if the rain would let up. It just continued seemingly unaware of its rudeness. So once my Good Sit felt like it had been sat long enough, I put on my gear, still wet from my brief excursion from the motel, and headed back out into the rain. 

To my surprise within less than an hour the rain subsided and I found myself riding in cool weather under cloudy skies coming upon area after area where it had just poured. 

The day proceeded as so many before it had. 

Trees? check.

Hills? check?

Deep gravel? check.

Pavement? check.

Water crossings? check.

Closed Roads? Check.

Super Slick Wet Red Clay? check.

But today was specially marked by wildlife. Within the first two hours more than a dozen deer jumped out across my path. None of them, thankfully, were close. 

"Forest Rats" I call them. Tagging one in a car is bad but tagging a deer on a motorcycle is Bad(tm), especially Out Here so far away.

At one point, a strange little bird ran out in front of the bike and headed down the road at a good clip. It had a striking resemblance to a certain Road Running cartoon character.

"I wonder if that's an actual Road Runner." I thought as I reached for the camera. I would come across a few more of these critters and would run but not fly but every time they were too quick and I was unable to get a photo. Even with the camera attached to a lanyard on my jacket, I'm still not quick enough on the draw. 

There were, of course, more dogs. I decided the mean dog the other day must have been a rottweiler and not a pittbull as a very fast Pittbull came out of no where and was extremely motivated to chase me down. I sped up in time but was impressed with how long that dog stayed at a full run after me. 

There are also these mean nasty extremely aggressive fly things around these parts that attack with reckless abandon once you get off your bike. Despite your efforts to swat them, they easily avoid your attacks and then fearlessly go for your exposed skin without any regard for their own survival. I felt ridiculous as I was jumping around swatting at thin air seeing glimpses of this prehistoric sized fly thing that I'm sure no one else would be able to see. Fortunately, there were no witnesses of this out of town lunatic and the invisible fly.

"It's the loneliness." the Swede had said.

I had been concerned about bears. I had been concerned about mountains lions, and I had even been concerned about wild boar. 

But I have never been concerned about bulls.  

I came around one muddy slick corner when there in the middle of the road walked a bull, or maybe it was a steer but I wasn't about to get close enough to check. I stopped. It stopped. It looked at me intently as if to ascertain "threat or not". The road was fairly narrow and if the bull was only a number of bike lengths away so I knew if it charged I wouldn't be able to turn around in time. How quickly can a bull change direction when charging? I suspect probably fairly nimbly. We stared at each other for what felt like quite some time when, apparently unimpressed, it turned and walked into the woods over a section of knocked down fence. It momentarily got its hind leg caught on the barbed wire but freed itself in short order and went on about its day. 

The super slick red clay continued in finite stretches carefully positioned, like the Spanish Inquisition, where you least expect it. The bike would get upset and slide in all directions but I was strangely less concerned about it. In place, as the road wended its way through hills the surface would become quite disturbed with ruts, mounts, rocks, and gravel. From time to time, the hills were steep. 

At one point, in the distance I saw two riders approaching from the West. 

TAT Riders.

We spoke only briefly. They were heading West to East and spoke of a group of DRZ400 riders that I was likely to encounter. They also mentioned another solo rider up ahead who would probably very much like a riding companion. I gave them a card and we parted company. 

At one point I came across sections of wet rocks. While the red clay is like riding on oil these rocks are like ice. The front wheel would touch them and suddenly start sliding only to be caught by the relative traction of the Red Snot, as the locals call it. 

There were small water crossings.

Slowly, the landscape changed from tree covered hills to semi-tree covered lower elevations. Bridges became larger. 

One bridge I came upon looked particularly convenient to jump off of. I suspect Audrey will be pleased to note there was a sign placed there clearly for my benefit.

Also there were plenty of signs foreshadowing a potential future. 

These signs are everywhere once you come down from the hills.

I had not slept hardly at all the night before, kept awake by an unsettled mind. 

My phone rang. I am never excited to hear the phone right. It seems like it's always bad news, but this time I was excited for this call which I hoped would be a call of triumph, accomplishment, and good feelings. 

I answered. 

A new car purchased.

Just a few short miles away from the dealership.

A deer.

Damage.

Injury.

Tears.

Extreme frustration after too many setbacks.

And you just hurt because they hurt. It sucks because there's nothing you can do.

I didn't used to get it, but I do now. 

"Do I turn around?"

"No." 

Crushed, I called it a day. 9:30PM and I was out cold.

Day 24 TAT Day 13

I woke up at 2AM as I usually do if I fall asleep too early. But I was so tired I managed to fall back asleep and slept fairly late. 

Outside, the weather was wonderfully cool. I had crossed into Oklahoma the previous day and I had been very concerned about the heat here, but this was the more glorious weather so far on the trip.

What had been tree covered hills turned into the big and flat almost instantly.

The red clay of the Arkansas hills had given way to ridiculously isolated pleasant gravel roads in the middle of nowhere under big sky.

Somewhere along the way I realized that something had changed. After extended periods on the red clay and the rocks that abstained from all traction, I had become less tense. Here I was riding on what I had previously called First Gear Gravel in second and third gears. I pondered whether maybe there was something different to the nature of this gravel that made it provide better traction or upset the bike less but I couldn't tell. There was a new effortlessness to riding these surfaces where Things(tm) would happen and instead of tensing up I would merely glide over them leaving them behind almost as quickly as they appeared.

"Yup. Seen that before."

 I would intentionally move the bike, at speed, into the deeper gravel to see if maybe I was just making it up, wanting to believe I had made some riding breakthrough. But it wasn't any difference in technique that I could ascertain. It was just, as far as I could tell, a familiarity with the chaos that is gravel.

"The less I react, the easier it is." seems to be the rule. I just let the bike do what it's going to do. 

It's strange to think the section I was most dreading, which is Oklahoma, has so far been the most pleasant and interesting riding. Where as the mountains are always where I head, the endless beautiful trees and wonderful switchbacks become monotonous after the first 1000 or so. But after having been there for so many days in a rows, the mind craves the difference.

Interestingly, it's not nearly as flat here as it appears. Creeks and rivers cut deep channels into the landscape and unlike the paved roads that merely cross bridges over them that one hardly notices, travels the gravel route each such dip in the terrain becomes an event. 

In sections, the terrain is also interestingly hilly.

At one point, the route circled a wetlands restoration project that looked like something straight out of Africa. The photo doesn't do it justice.

 

And, as is my mission, there were turtles to save.

And for Duncan's benefit, I noted how many sunflowers seem to grow haphazardly on the side of the road. 

There are places out here where there is a different feeling of alone. It's an unoppressive alone.

And there were hints of how bad it could get as evidenced by the recent rains.

But despite the changing surfaces, the muddy sections, and the gravel, none of this was unsettling me. The miles clicked off easily. 

I even came across some windmills.

The challenge, however, is that these roads take more energy out of me than the corresponding pavement. So despite the relative ease, after 240 miles of this, I tend to be on the verge of exhaustion which makes writing these reports much more challenging. I try to write them in the mornings but they usually take well over a couple of hours to put together, And that's just for a first error laden pass. This makes for a late start for the day. 

But there's no rush. There's no point to Getting There. This will all be over too soon anyway. Sure, I may have to go around some of the passes in the Rockies because of snow but there's no deadline.  

There's a freedom in being unneeded, unwanted, and without pressing obligations to anyone. But there's a sadness in this kind of freedom.

Life may interject itself and force a return, but not yet. 

Right now, there's only this storyless road. 

And it's calling me again.