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Keith's Hobbies

Hello!! Welcome to my Hobbies & Crafts Pages. I am a disabled Vietnam Veteran. To keep myself busy I do woodworking and painting in my little shop. And I also loved to ride my bicycle, but my vision prevents me from doing this anymore. I love to ride horses but no longer have a place to keep one so had to sell him. If you would like to learn a little bit more about me you can go to Keith & Shirley's Story.
I grew up riding horses and have always loved the rodeo. Have ridden broncs and bulls but my favorite was always calf roping. Due to my disabilities the calf roping is not possible, but I can still sit a horse to ride.

This is my wife and I riding Slick & CrackerJack in a parade!


Another of my favorite hobbies was riding a mountain bike. I'm basically a rode rider tho, don't care much for off road riding. I have a friend at church that rides a lot and he talked me into trying it. I followed him along the bike route and never let him out of my sight. My very first sanctioned ride was in 1993 at the Hotter N Hell 100 in Wichita Falls, TX. It's always held in August and the title tells it like it is.

I made it 50 miles!!!! Ask me if my neurologist was totally shocked! And proud, but not any prouder of me than I was of myself. I gave my doctor a picture of me in the Hotter N Hell, he posted it in his office to show the other guys what you can do if you really want to.

Since I mastered that 50 miles I decided I could do this bike stuff, so my friend Wayne asks if I want to try the Freewheel. I said sure I can handle anything now that I've done 50 miles. Freewheel is a bike ride that takes place over a one week period of time and we go clear across the state of Oklahoma. Needless to say my wife was very skeptical that I could make it that far.


This is a picture of me on the first day of the ride about 60 miles into the day!! June 1994

Well I'll have to admit this was just a bit tougher than I expected. There were hills, big ones! Mountains, tall ones! Going up is tough but coming down the other side is great fun. We started at Broken Bow, OK and rode north to Kansas, from Kansas we went east into Missouri.


Well as you can see I made it to the finish line!! 300 miles on a bicycle!

Freewheel 1995! Yep I'm going again. Started out in Snyder, OK and ended in Sedan, KS. Needless to say the very first nite we are in Tornado alerts all nite long. Sirens going off and us staying in our travel trailer. My wife spent the night in the high school gym I just went to sleep in the trailer knowing I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. to get ready for the ride. Floods too. It was a nasty nite and the camp was totally flooded. Lots of people in tents got washed out.


This is a pic of me getting ready for the start. I'm with my father-in-law. They drove over first thing when they heard about the tornadoes and floods to make sure we were all right. Notice it is dark. LOL we started every day that way. If you wait too long in the day to ride it gets way too warm to be on a bike. But that's Oklahoma for you.



Suns coming up so time to start the ride!!! I only rode 187 miles this time. Lots of wet weather, storms, flats, broken spokes, trailer problems, pickup problems. We made it up to Shidler and it was still storming so decided to pack it up and go home. We were wore out and were glad to get back home.


Now on to my Woodworking page!!!

My Favorite Web Sites

VetWives Homepage
TBI - Traumatic Brain Injury
Keith's Craft Page
Keith's Woodworking Page

Email: shirljo@aol.com