Our First Time

In the spring of 1991, Marie, Allen, and I were tossing around an idea: could we ride our bicycles to Grand Lake to visit friends at their lake home? It sounded like a great weekend adventure.

We were just three people who enjoyed an occasional ride but knew little about organized cycling and even less about bicycle road trips. We'd done a few local recreational t-shirt rides but weren't plugged into any clubs, didn't know the familiar Tulsa-area routes, and had no idea what it really meant to ride all day. But how hard could it be, right?

So I did what I do — I dug out some old-school USGS quad maps and traced what looked like a promising loop between Pryor and the lakeside town of Disney. When I showed it to the others, it started to feel real.

We made a plan: ride the loop as a test, then go back to the maps for the segment from Tulsa and test again. So one summer Saturday morning, paper map in pocket, off we went.

We drove to Pryor, parked at a convenience store, and unloaded our bikes. Adventurous spirit overcame naivete, and we set off, not entirely sure what we'd find along the way.

It was slow going at first. Roads that looked promising on the map turned to gravel, sometimes after we'd already committed a mile or more. A couple of false starts later, we finally found our groove.

Once we got clear of Pryor, the ride up to Grand Lake was fabulous. We had no idea about most of these roads — it seemed like every turn revealed another smooth, sweeping, blissfully car-free stretch that felt made for bicycles. The landscape was beautiful, with lakes and dams appearing around nearly every bend. We rolled through Indian Springs Road and into the state park at Spavinaw, one of several unexpected bonuses that day.

Around lunchtime, we coasted into Langley and spotted a café near Pensacola Dam. We went in to refuel before crossing the dam to our turnaround point in Disney. 

(I have a side story about eating at that same restaurant a few years later while scouting the route for DAM J.A.M. The details aren't important, but let's say I developed a strong aversion to kneeling in roadside ditches on hot Labor Day afternoons.)

On the way back, we had a fine ride across the Grand River between Grand and Hudson Lakes before turning west toward Strang. By then, we were talking less and pedaling slower.

It was a hot mid-afternoon, lunch was sitting heavy, and some of us were getting a little cranky. That particular combination — the physical tiredness plus not knowing how much farther you have to go — has a way of manufacturing anxiety out of thin air.

We were ready to be done. Surely someone in Strang could point us toward the shortest way back to Pryor.

We rolled into that quiet little community and found a couple of friendly folks sitting on their porch. They waved with looks of good-natured amusement, so we stopped and asked. Just keep heading west, cross the old iron bridge, then a couple more miles to Waterline Road — follow that to the end, then take the section-line roads west into Pryor. Easy enough. Thanks.

Somewhere along Waterline Road, we caught a second wind. With the end in sight, we stopped for a roadside break. We marveled at our "discovery" — conveniently ignoring the fact that hundreds of cyclists already knew most of these roads and that many had appeared on Freewheel routes over the years. We felt like pioneers anyway.

And somewhere in that giddy, self-congratulatory mood, an idea took shape: what if we turned this into an organized ride and shared it with others?

Between the three of us, we'd ridden a handful of t-shirt rides and thought we had a pretty good sense of what they looked like. Without fully appreciating all the unseen details involved, putting one together seemed like a snap.

We started brainstorming like new parents kicking around baby names. It needed the word "dam," obviously — the lake connections were right there. And of course, our egos wanted our names on it somehow. After several silly suggestions, I said, "Wait — if we put our initials together, we could spell…"

I didn't even finish the sentence. From Jim, Allen, and Marie, we could make J.A.M., and dam rhymes with dam. Dam Jam. Jammin' at the dams. That was it!

We drove back to Pryor, exhausted and excited about our potential new venture. Back in Tulsa, we talked it up, picked a date, and spent the next several months planning — and more than a little guessing. When the first Saturday after Labor Day finally arrived, that roadside brainstorm became the first of many DAM J.A.M.s. Putting it on and watching people enjoy themselves was deeply gratifying, and it was the start of some wonderful relationships with the people of Pryor.

That's how DAM J.A.M. was born.

But here's a little more to the story.

About three years later, Allen moved on to other things. After he stepped away, Marie and I continued directing the event and putting our own stamp on it. That's when we changed the name.

It's still called DAM J.A.M., of course — but now J.A.M. stands for "Jim And Marie."

I think it's much better this way.

— Jim Beach, Road Painter