




Freewheel Spirit
OK Freewheel is an annual cross-state, week-long bicycle ride that takes place in June each year in Oklahoma. It begins in Texas and usually ends in Kansas.
What a fun, quirky, and super-friendly week of communing, laughing, and being fully in the moment with absolutely no responsibilities except to ride your bike from Texas to Kansas, one day at a time.
That’s OK Freewheel.
The first and last time I rode was 1997. I rode the whole week with friends and still count it among my best vacations.
By that week, a lot of changes had happened in my life, the essential catalyst being getting sober 4½ years earlier.
My group on Freewheel were friends in recovery like me. We traveled to the start in Texas and home from the finish together. A couple of non-cyclists drove a truck, trailer and all of our gear from camp to camp each day. We all gathered together in the evening for spiritual connection and sharing.
It was also about that time I began to replace activities in the fellowship with exploring the athlete I left behind in high school. With a renewing confidence and self-focus I had begun running, cycling, and triathlons in earnest.
People in recovery from alcoholism and addiction often find it relatively easy to give up their substances but sometimes go on for years still looking to fill that hole in their soul. The new “solution” can take many forms, including an unbalanced devotion to exercise.
Super fit, I took Freewheel as a glorious training vacation with each day as a balls-to-the-wall training day. I pushed speed and endurance and sat in on similarly paced groups, reveling in my own growing prowess.
But in the evenings I returned to the camaraderie of the real spirit of Freewheel and the spirit of a life in recovery.

Everyday wasn’t a hammer day. I had days riding along easily, chatting with friends, taking opportunities to jump in a lake or creek, or taking time to explore unique features in towns along the way. Those were the times I remember now that fed my spirit.
But other times I’d get twitchy and break from the slow pleasantness of that easy pace to be one of the first to arrive at the next camp. There I’d join triathlete friends for a post-ride run or dozens of laps in the local pool.
So, with one foot in a growing life of community love and spiritual growth, and the other in the self-indulgent mindlessness of seeking faster, fitter, farther, I wasn’t getting in the middle of either life but rather spending more time on the fringes of both.
Five years earlier, in 1992, Marie and I started a community bike ride in Pryor, Oklahoma with routes that traveled some of the most beautiful parts of the state among the lakes and dams in Mayes and Delaware Counties. It’s called DAM J.A.M. and it continues to this day.
The first or second year, Joel and his local cycling group from Muskogee came to DAM J.A.M. and volunteered to operate a rest stop. They showed us how rest stops are done with flair and fun. Being football season in Oklahoma, they brought TV’s, generators, and updated the scores in chalk on the pavement. If we’d had a competition, they would easily have won the award for best roadside party.
Over the next few years, Marie and I returned the favor and helped Joel at his events. That’s how this thing works — before you realize it, you give and take and share life and laughs until one day you realize 25 years have gone by and those connections are the fabric of your life.
During the past 20 years, my own athletic career fell off to nothing as I worked on other events. The Freewheel board of directors had dwindled in both numbers and governance structure. Attendance at the event has been falling for the past few years too. It was time to beef up the group and bring in new ideas. This year Joel asked me to be part of that, and here I am.
Having missed out on so many years, I really had no idea what Freewheel had become. They’re currently on their fourth, fifth, or more in a string if event directors and have had many board members come and go, with most staying only 1–3 years. There have been typical struggles for control and direction. But, as grassroots events will, it sustains itself through the efforts of a few dedicated souls.
I’d only been to a couple meetings when someone asked if I’d consider becoming the board chairman. Several board members have been around a while and could do the job, but apparently out of desperation for new blood, my big-league experience at Tulsa Tough, and maybe a little hope, I was tagged. So, with a touch of new-guy naivete, I accepted.
This year (2017, The Chisholm Trail), I figured I should go spend a few days and see the event first hand. I met up with the ride Thursday at the camp in Enid, Oklahoma.
The big topic that evening was weather, but that’s always a topic on Freewheel. Professional meteorologists, and back porch weather knowers, all looking at radar, making educated predictions and wild-ass guesses creates excitement and a buzz around camp.

It’s Oklahoma in the Spring — predictably unpredictable. But experience and cool heads prevail, contingencies are made to move campers indoors, and people go back to their small gatherings and one-upping stories of wild weather of past years.
I worked as Joel’s sidekick, marking the last stretch of gravel route between Ponca City and South Haven, KS. We hung out in the camp, I met and talked to people I already knew and had just begun to know. I tried to observe event operations and think about how to best serve the board. I sweated, slept hard, ate perfect small town cafe breakfasts and afternoon pie… oh my!
The past few years it has become clear that connections, growing relationships and camaraderie are more important in life than stuff and achievements. That is really what Freewheel fosters.
There’s something authentic about this event. People make life-long relationships there. Groups of people reunite once a year there. People have met and married there. The sense of long-term camaraderie among the participants is stronger than any other event I’ve been connected with.
It was a blast, just like I remember it, except with nicer amenities than we had 20 years ago.
When I get wound up in my self-important life, it’s easy to hide behind busy and lose myself in all the things on my to-do list. If I stop to think about it, that feels empty and unfulfilling. But when all you have to do is ride your bike, take care of basic needs, hang out telling stories and getting to know people sitting under a shade tree, life slows down and feels real.
OK Freewheel has a nearly 40-year, unique legacy in Oklahoma. It was one of the first cross-state rides in the U.S. and led the way in adding a full-distance gravel option. Several generations have experienced the life of a Freewheeler and the event has established itself as an historical annual reunion. Plenty of people would insist it deserves to be preserved.
Whether or not I have what it takes to help it change course, I’m catching on to the fact that OK Freewheel truly represents a level of civility and engaged humanity that seems to be getting more rare in our society.
So maybe that’s reason enough to give it every chance to flourish. If it proves to have enough demand in the community and I can help, that’s reason enough to give the effort.
For me, while it doesn’t have to be centered on bicycling, I personally want more of that easy-going lifestyle where relationships are what matter most; where life’s satisfaction comes from loving people and being present in the simple moments.
I know OK Freewheel offers that groove, if just for a week each June. The other thing I know is that right now is the best time for all of us to reach for change, because who knows if later will ever come.
