My late start (11:41) meant the weather had time to warm up but the overcast sky held the temperature below 90 at the beginning. When I reached the Huffman Chevron station for a break at 1:12 the clouds broke up and the sky came through bumping the temperature up to 94. By the time I finished the ride at 2:37 it was up to 98. Officially Houston has had 5 days in a row at 100 degrees but I don’t know if it will make it today. If it misses it won’t be by far. The late start came about because I watched stage 2 of the Arctic Race of Norway where it was cool enough that the racers wore arm warmers.
I saw another biker early in the ride in Kingwood near Kingwood High School and later I saw another but I can’t remember where. I rode the “Atascocita South – Walden – Huffman” route for a total of 32.38 miles pushing the week’s total to 203 miles and the month to 408 miles, leaving 392 miles to reach my goal for the month.
When I arrived at the Huffman Chevron one of the ladies came to the door to tell me the blue PowerAde fountain drink was back in service. I thanked her and got a 32 oz drink to go with the snack crackers and Clif bar. The shade and cold drink helped cool me down and slowly the sweat stopped running down my arms. A number of paper towels were needed to soak up all of the water.
While I was enjoying the shade and food I heard the Amtrak train whistle around 1:25. A few seconds later the train swooshed through Huffman. It appears the train is now back to using this track on a regular basis. I left the Chevron around 2:15 riding west on FM1960. The wind from the SW provided some resistance but I held my speed around 16 to 17 mph which helped increase my overall average speed to 14.5 mph.
I am not biking tomorrow and Sunday weather looks like rain. Two days off the bike is a good idea.
Checking the National Bike Challenge Leaderboard I am ranked 198th not including today’s ride. Not bad!
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