Dad, daughter tour Okla. on tandem bike

A father-daughter team from Ahwatukee set out last month for a weeklong road trip across Oklahoma. Over the 433-mile journey, Steve Berry and his 14-year-old daughter Lauren checked out the small-town scenery and Lauren taught her dad a little Spanish.

On the second day of their seven-day trip it rained 5 inches as they pushed toward the Kansas border, making for the most difficult day of travel on their tandem bicycle.

"It was very difficult to ride in the rain," Lauren said. "You just get wet and live with it."

With 30 miles in for the day and 30 more to go, Steve remembered stopping for lunch in a wet, cold heap.

"I'm looking outside and we're only halfway through the day and it's just pouring down," he said. "There was nothing we could do but get out and get on with it."

The two were participating in the Oklahoma Free Wheel 2008, a weeklong bike ride through Oklahoma's most rural towns where the nearly 1,000 participants spend the nights along the way at designated camp spots on the route.

"It was really cool for me to see the sights - the plains and the Midwest," Lauren said.

An Oklahoma native, Steve got the idea from his brother who had ridden tandem with his niece the year before and was planning to do it again. He said he was looking for a chance to spend some quality time with his daughter and to explore the more rural parts of the state he grew up in.

"We're on a tandem bike so we're obviously hitched together. It was fun to be able to physically work together up the hills through the miles," Steve said.

Lauren, who plays the violin and will be a freshman at Desert Vista High School, said she had some typical teenage worries.

"I have never done 24 hours a day for seven days with my dad. I was afraid I might get annoyed," Lauren said with a laugh. "But we got along really well. There were only a couple times where I was like, 'Dad, I can't pedal any faster!' "

Unlike her dad, an experienced rider and triathlon participant, Lauren said she was never really much of an athlete before the trip. She began training in January, going on runs and working out at the YMCA.

The pair didn't try out their borrowed tandem bike until the day before the race.

"It was easier than I thought it was going to be," Lauren said. "But my dad did a lot of work since he was in front and had to steer. I just had to sit back and pedal."

A semi-truck loaded with their luggage rolled alongside the riders, stopping at each designated campsite where riders could rest and eat.

They camped out in the small cities' town centers, high schools and colleges along the way and even rode through the cities where Steve's parents had grown up.

"It was fun really just seeing a whole different world in terms of a small-town community atmosphere," Steve said. "It's something that we obviously don't have in Phoenix."