Here we are again for our seventh DAM J.A.M. We still think it's the best ride in the world.
This excellent jam around the lakes and dams in northeast Oklahoma was first organized
twenty years ago by Jim and Marie. That's why it's the DAM J.A.M. (Jim And Marie)
It was a perfect day! Here we start out with some strong riders and we keep up for a minute.
Pretty soon we turn east and head out to the country.
The roads around Pryor are excellent. Jim and Marie always carefully choose the routes.
Police were everywhere this year. They stopped traffic and helped us through every difficult intersection.
We're headed into the rising sun on Graffiti Road. It was a perfect, cool morning.
The routes are marked better than you could hope. There are three or four marks for every turn.
We took the fifty-mile route again this year because you get to cross
over to the east side of the lakes where it's really hilly and beautiful.
Sometimes it's fifty; other times it's fifty-seven; this year it was sixty.
To keep it simple we just call it a half DAM J.A.M.
The rest stops are the best anywhere because the people who run them are really nice.
We ran into Carol's employer at the DAM J.A.M. this year! Well, not literally.
We wore our Pelé shirts because he's our old friend.
Pelé looked better in it than I do.
So off we go on the 1/2 DAM J.A.M. route.
Crossing over Hudson Lake.
We go right into downtown Salina for another excellent rest stop.
On the other side of Salina the police are still out to block traffic for us.
Climbing out of Salina there was another friendly police guy to help us turn off the highway safely.
He even grabbed my camera and ran ahead to get a picture of us!
Now we're climbing up to Wickliffe.
The roads were cool and shady.
There are friendly animals everywhere. In sixty miles we didn't meet any savage dogs.
Police were there to help us onto Highway 20.
Every year the police support gets better. We had help miles and miles away from Pryor.
Here we come into Wikcliffe.
The ladies in Wickliffe always put on a great rest stop. This year it was a Luau.
They made these really great smoothies. In Brazil we call them batidas.
The road from Wickliffe down to Pump Back is a long, cool, shady descent.
The best part is a twisty turny steep descent, but it ends in an intersection
with Kenwood Road. The police were there again to keep us safe and Jim & Marie
had marked the road about ten times to warn us about the intersection.
Here we are at Pump Back where they pump water from Hudson Lake to Chimney Rock Lake at night and
let it run back down during the day to generate electricity. It levels the load on the thermoelectric
power plant and is more efficient overall than turning down the power plant at night.
So we have to climb the hill from Pump Back up to the top where Chimney Rock Lake sits.
It's a really steep climb. The Screamer doesn't climb well at all.
Here at the top of the hardest climb we've gone more than half of our sixty miles.
The 4077th M*A*S*H rest stop is just what we need after that killer hill.
They cheer and clap and ring a cowbell for you if you can drink one of their pickle shots.
You can lie down and recover from the climb.
The M*A*S*H guys.
Then we go around Chimney Rock Lake and take a long
beautiful downhill on Scenic Highway 412 into Locust Grove.
Between Locust Grove and Pryor we stop at our last rest stop behind the Low Water Dam store.
This one is sponsored by a Boy Scout troop so we trade Scoutmaster ideas.
Then we cross the Grand River south of Hudson Lake.
This is the hard part. It's a long, flat five miles outside of Pryor and two miles of it was into the north wind.
At last we come into Pryor!
We go about a mile on the main road north through Pryor.
Then we turn west into Whitaker Park.
Stronger riders are there to cheer us on!
Finished at last! Our top speed was 33.4 m.p.h. We climbed 1007 feet. There were
two major climbs and descents of over 260 feet, beginning and ending at the level of
Lake Hudson. We call that a pretty good hill around here. The Screamer really screams
down the hills--we can reach over 40 m.p.h. if we don't have to use the brakes.
What a surprise! Marie herself was there to meet us!
We weren't the last to finish, but these guys probably went 76 miles.
Over sixty miles were on the odometer when we put the bike back on the truck.
We like to end up at the Dutch Pantry in Chouteau for the world's best Amish home cooking.
Visit the real DAM J.A.M. website