Not even duct tape or baling wire would’ve held the pedal of Vic Heister’s bicycle in place when he got to Tahlequah Wednesday with the FreeWheel 2006 bicycle tour.

After a ride through the hills of Sequoyah and Cherokee counties, even those universal fix-alls weren’t up for the job.

J-B Weld, on the other hand, did just the trick.

“I let my daughter ride it,” said Heister, as he watched Doug Moore cold-weld the pedal back together at Paceline Cyclery Wednesday. “She overpowered the pedals on the hills.”

Heister and his 17-year-old daughter, Rachael, are two of the cyclists taking part in the annual FreeWheel tour, which started in Hugo on Sunday, went to Atoka the first day, to Wilburton on Monday, to Warner on Tuesday, and rolled into Tahlequah yesterday.

Pryor, Grove, and Baxter Springs, Kan., complete the tour itinerary.

As Wednesday was Flag Day nationwide, tour participants were encouraged to wear their finest red, white and blue Spandex and put flags on their bikes.

(That was a followup to Tuesday’s “Crazy Daze,” when cyclists dress up in the craziest outfits imaginable. Some residuals of Crazy Daze could still be seen the day after, in Tahlequah – cyclists don’t normally wear large stuffed animals on their helmets).

“This is the first time we’ve done FreeWheel, and until we broke down we were doing really good,” said Heister, who hails from Leonard, Okla. “We’re getting in shape.”

Like most of the other Freewheelers, Heister camped out near the Tahlequah Junior High School. With one pedal out of service, his ride from the camp to Paceline was a little – shall we say – limited.

“I rode it down here with just one foot,” he said. “I’m sure it looked a little strange. They’re probably still talking about me on main street.”

Once Moore finished working his J-B Weld magic, he sent Heister on his way, with a rare (for a J-B Weld job) guarantee of customer satisfaction.

“By morning, you won’t be able to chisel it off there,” said Moore, and then added as Heister headed out the door, “I hope that holds for him.”

One of Heister’s fellow FreeWheel campers, Cliff Murray of Tulsa, said that – hills and breakdowns notwithstanding – Wednesday was a pretty good ride for the cyclists.

Murray said he’s done other tours, including the famed “Hotter’n’Hell 100” in Texas, but this is his first FreeWheel.

“I’ve been cycling for years, but I’ve never done this tour,” he said, as he watched expert J-B Welder Moore start his next repair project. “It’s been good so far. Today was a good day – and I’m meeting lots of interesting people in bike shops.”

In the wee hours this morning, cyclists began hitting the road. They could be seen in a steady stream, filing up State Highway 82 toward Pryor. Several recumbent bicycles and even a few tandem cycles were among the mix.

At 6:30 a.m., Tulsa pedaler Sharla Beauford had stopped at a local convenience store to pick up a bottle of water on her way to her next destination. Though she’d been amply prepared for this leg of the trip, a cluster of water bottles she had tied to her bicycle shook loose, fell and hit the pavement – and a fellow in a red SUV promptly ran over the bottles and squashed them.

The SUV, she hastened to add, didn’t have a Cherokee County tag.

“We got a real warm welcome here,” said Sharla, who camped out in a tent last night at the junior high. “We ate a couple of hamburgers your [Tahlequah High School] band was selling and enjoyed some of the events downtown. People in Tahlequah are always hospitable.”

Beauford’s husband, Sam, was already ahead of her, and didn’t see what happened. She was anxious to catch up with him.

“That sucker gets to going, and he just can’t stop,” she said. “I’ll probably see him in Grove.”