Rest days! I last biked 5 days ago. Between a day spent at the Houston Medical Center with my wife to rain from the Hurricane Patricia remnants the bike did not leave the garage. Yesterday an overcast sky and a stiff north wind (23 mph with 30+ mph gusts) most of the day caused me to shift to a 3 mile walk around the Hunters Ridge Village in Kingwood. Fast forward to today. Around noon the clouds started to break up and the sun came through. The temperature finally moved from 64 to the low 70’s. I got dressed to ride with a short sleeve jersey over a long sleeve one. I headed out at 12:45 on the “Atascocita – Walden – Huffman” route.
Along the route I looked for evidence of the 5″+ rain we received over the weekend. The only signs were lots of pine needle piles in the street and the higher water in Lake Houston. I stopped on the FM1960 Lake Houston Causeway about midway and took these pictures:
The trees in the left picture usually stick up out of the water several feet higher. The middle picture shows a couple of stumps. The one farther away has a bird perched on it.
It felt good to be out on the road again. Nothing unusual on the ride. I stopped at the Huffman Chevron at 20.95 miles into the ride for a break. I waited long enough to time my arrival at Kingwood Drive to be after the high school dismissal. I left the Chevron at 2:49. The weather screenshots while I took a break at the Chevron station.
Notice the wind speed in the left picture. This cost me a lot of effort when I left Huffman to ride home. The headwind was stiff riding across Lake Houston until I got near the west side of the lake. For some reason when I approached the turn onto Atascocita Shores Drive the wind let up some. By then I built up my average speed to 15.1 mph. I got back home at 3:38 biking 32.71 miles.
When I reached Kingwood Drive there was no traffic for a change and I got across without stopping.
This was the 36th time on the “Atascocita – Walden – Huffman” route in 2015. Mileage stats: 675.15 miles for October, 6192 miles for 2015.
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