Cycle touring across the USA: Riding into the sunrise and exploring Oklahoma

I’m travel writer, author and broadcaster Simon Parker, and I’m bike packing 4,000 miles from Seattle to Key West, Florida.

For ten weeks I’ll be meeting hundreds of fascinating people on the road, asking if the USA is really as divided as it can sometimes seem.

These interviews will become the basis of my next book, Fractured States, published July 2024.

In this week’s film I’m exploring Oklahoma and making my way towards the border with Arkansas.

Follow my journey on:
X: @SimonWIParker
Website: www.simonwparker.co.uk
Instagram: @SimonWIParker
Facebook: simonparker1987

Pre-sale of Fractured States: www.amazon.co.uk/Fractured-States-Miles-through-America

When this is all over I’m pretty sure that these are the memories that I’ll cherish the most being up at the Cracker Dawn cycling on long straight roads surrounding by oil pumps and cycling into a rising sun and a Coca Cola Lori zooming past me really does feel like I’m in the

Heart of this country I have now reached the state of Oklahoma and it’s a place that I’ve always wanted to visit ever since reading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath if you haven’t read that book highly recommended but cycling through here it’s almost like the flash point the

Epicenter of a changing America and its dependence on fossil fuels because all across this Horizon you see these pump jacks these are these oil extractors which are bringing oil out from deep under the Earth however on this side there are hundreds of wind turbines and they are whizzing round on

This very very windy day a wind that I am battling into but it’s seeing things like this in the flesh that really give you an idea of how America is changing on the ground and especially its dependency on different forms of energy America I love you this is not personal

But 99% of the coffee that’s being drunk in this country is a crime against humanity so I’ve had to take the lore into my own hands buy my own travel Cafeta and plunge on the roadside cheers that is however more than enough from me for this week and instead I’m going to leave you with a few words from a man called Bryson hair and I met Bryson a few hundred miles back and he is one of the many voices that is going

To be part of my new book fractured States and I asked him about the state of modern America and he kindly shared some of his opinions with me how do I feel about the United States I just feel like we’re separated as a whole I feel like people don’t know who

They are and people scared to explore things and try new things people are so separated and poverty is so high right now because of inflation that a lot of people are just lost we are lost we are lost place right now and it’s scary because you can’t even you can’t count

On your president neither like you know we we don’t know what we getting told you ask I bet you you could ask 70 you could probably ask 85% of people my age whe a Democrat or Republican is and I’d say about 75 that same you you ask

Everybody my age 22 years to 18 to 22 years old what what uh party is Joe Biden from they won’t give you the answer they don’t know the answer you ask them what a Democrat is they don’t know the answer that you ask them what a republican is they don’t know the answer

People don’t they don’t they scared they not scared but they just don’t have the interest in uh they they’ll talk about it but they don’t understand like that we can make a difference and you know they get stuck with that that mindset of that nobody can make a difference that

That that the United States is down such a path that they’ve been taking since since the 60s that you know we we we going to put oursel in a hole pretty soon and like I was telling about conspiracy theories a lot of people my age just they go crazy over conspiracy

Theories people rather believe in aliens than believe in God