I Fell in Love
by Esther Goldsmith

One of the ways to advance your biking skills is to cycle with others who are stronger than you are. Then put yourself in a totally unfamiliar setting, in the midst of over 1300 cyclist plus family members for seven straight days. Enter Freewheel 2000. Moni Neville and Andy Baker convinced me to go. Add Davy Baker, Mel Norton, Randy Coffin, and Eric & Joy on a fully loaded tandem, and you have an eclectic bunch.

We took off with a bang on day 1 and had so much fun, laughing and playing like young kids. Before long I started looking for a bathroom; they told me to pick any spot. I quickly learned to let go of some of my modesty and headed for the bushes. Then prankster Mel announced to everybody within earshot what I was doing in the bushes. He made announcements all day long.
That night I was so tired that I couldn't do anything except fall asleep.

The next morning I was a zombie. Mel and Randy stayed behind with me while I tried to gather strength. After a leisurely breakfast we left town at 8:45am, and strolled and lingered most of the day. That one day that they stayed with me to take it easy gave me time to recover. Along the way we saw funny chalk messages and greetings in the street in big bold letters written by Moni. She used up a whole box of chalk leaving messages for us.

After we arrived in Pauls Valley, Moni found a spot for us to set up camp and her tent ripped so we decided to share my tent, which I was borrowing from her. That was a blessing in disguise because it worked out beautifully. I believe I even slept better. Every day I was the last one in the group to roll out of the tent, because I have morning routines even on vacation, a real tortoise. And when we hit the road, once again I was the tortoise. My speed rhythm has not matured, yet!

Harrah had a tornado watch. Tents were coming down all over the place with people heading for hotels, churches and the gym. Jerry Neville came to visit Moni and offered to take us home to a safe place to wait out the storm, then bring us back the next morning. He was thinking of our safety, but I didn't want to interrupt my purpose for coming and decided then that if there were two tents on the campground, one of them would be mine. I'd know it was time to seek shelter when our tent blew away. We stayed put. It did rain quite a bit and Moni and I finally decided to put on our designer rain gear by "Hefty" and took off at 8:45am. It poured buckets.

Some of the most fun I had was with the young people. They made huge impressions on me as we peddled along side by side. My best young buddy was Alan 15, from Tulsa, who came to Freewheel with his dad, grandparents, uncle, aunt & cousin. He's a strong cyclist, bubbling over with talent and a gifted writer. It was pouring down rain that day leaving Harrah and visibility was so poor that you could barely see in front of you. Magically he appeared next to me in this storm and we talked about funny movies we've enjoyed. He unknowingly helped to calm my shaky nerves on the downhills where volumes of rain settled, where any slight slip would send you airborne. Everyday he magically appeared like my guardian angel and we'd talk. He's a cool kid with a bright unlimited future. It was good to see so many young cyclist and family groups like Alan's.

A cool grown-up is Andy's brother Davy. He has trained the group over the years to know that he's on vacation, does his own thing, on his own time and he'll see us maybe for a few moment in between but definitely at the finish line. And he's so pleasant about it too. Super cool!

Total weight for Eric and Joy with all their gear on the tandem was about 600 pounds. They carried their inflatable seven inch full size mattress and it seemed like everything else including the kitchen sink. Eric cooked his chain one night in wax and sure enough Andy walked right into the pot and kicked chain and wax everywhere, but especially on the tents. He was definitely comedy material everyday.

Moni was always looking for ways to increase my comfort level. After all, I had only camped out one night in my whole life prior to Freewheel and had only completed one 65 mile day. She recommended that I wear a sunblock to take care of my skin for seven days. There was no way that she could have known what would happen next. I had an allergic reaction and my skin burned, swelled and blistered and boy was I miserable and irritable. Andy said I looked like somebody dipped my face in a bucket of hot grease. I finally had to find a pharmacist to get treatment so that I could continue on in the heat. Then I sought shelter in the gym for a couple of hours when we arrived in Perry. After hanging out with the gang all evening I retired to the gym but it was so quiet that I couldn't sleep, so I packed my huge duffle bag, hopped on my bike and very wobbly returned to be with the group. We sat up late talking and like clock-work Andy got hungry. He ate my whole weeks worth of snacks in one sitting, crawled into his tent where he nightly thrashed about kicking noisily and then set free enough human helium to launch a missile. And this is the kind of night noise around camp that became my lullaby. I slept well.

I had plenty of excellent food in all but one camp site. To this day I still think they went through a lot of trouble to make meat taste like what I imagine dog food would taste like. After several attempts to doctor it up I just couldn't eat it and wished there was a dog around to make happy.

In those seven days we had humidity, dry heat, pouring rain, brutal head winds, continuous hills, a tornado watch, basically the typical Oklahoma variety of weather to make or break you. On the final day we woke up to more rain but at that point a blizzard couldn't keep me from my goal of crossing the finish line. I headed out solo and began to realize that this experience was about over and I wasn't ready for it to be over. I all but boo-hoo'd to Andy and Mel. When I reached the finish line I was met by David Krawczyk & Moni and they took my picture. David greeted me with dry clothes and a towel that he brought from home. What a thoughtful treat and a good one because I had no more clean clothes.

Freewheel boils down to, you eat a lot, you bike a lot, you take a shower, you get to spend time with a lot of people and you sleep. What really makes Freewheel so special is the people that you encounter and live with for one solid week. You share fond memories that connects you forever. Any time I'm riding now I think of the Freewheel experience and re-live a portion of it in my mind, still missing the sheer freedom of it, but even more, missing all the interesting people I spent special moments with..

A magnificent thing happened to me on Freewheel: I fell in love... with the great outdoors!

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