The Ladies Wondered

Texbiker.net Posted on by

I biked to Huffman today and the ladies at the Huffman Chevron wondered where I had been. This is the first ride there since the 9/3/13 collision. I was headed there when the collision took place. I recounted the events on that day and showed them my receding hematoma on my left leg. They said I was lucky and wished me well. It was nice that they missed me and it was good to get back there for a Diet Pepsi to wash down the Kashi Trailmix bar and oatmeal cookies. I sat on a milk crate resting with sweat dripping off my elbows like earlier.

Riding towards cars waiting to pull out on my right still causes me to be extra cautious. Several times today I encountered cars in this situation and wondered if they would stay put. They all did.

No rain at the end of today’s ride. The scattered clouds, 10 mph SSE breeze and 90 degrees made for a pleasant ride. I applied sunscreen for the ride. Late tomorrow the first cool front should pass through dropping the overnight temperature into the 50’s, maybe. Daytime temperature should be in the 80’s though.

The route came to 33.04 miles at 15.4 mph average speed. This is the longest ride since my return from the accident.  The Motobecane Le Champion CF continues to ride like it is new so the effects of the accident probably were limited to the parts I replaced. I plan biking further tomorrow, maybe 35 to 37 miles.

I spotted some flash rust on my chain so I will need to wax it. This is the one drawback to using paraffin wax on the chain but I can put up with it.

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Texas Bicycling Daily News Roundup

Texbiker.net Posted on by

Bicycle Astronomy at National Night Out
bike4heck.com
Oct. 1st in Texas was the National Night Out where neighbors were encouraged to go out and talk with one another. My neighborhood decided to have gathering on one of the streets and have a small BBQ. …

PhotoVelo Bicycle Scavenger Hunt | Free! Prizes!
Bike Friendly Oak Cliff

The 5th Annual PhotoVelo Bicycle Photo Scavenger Hunt
RSVP
Sunday, October 6, 2013  |  12 p.m.–5:30 ish  |  Lee Harvey’s
HOW IT WORKS
Register your team online here. Or, arrive at 12:00 to enter your team. …

Federal parks closed
By Kimberly Sutton        www.yourhoustonnews.com/woodlands

Montgomery resident Mike Finn was riding his mountain bike through the trails of Scott’s Ridge Recreation Area Tuesday when a Sam Houston National Forest Ranger stopped him unexpectedly.

Scott’s Ridge is part of the Sam Houston National Forest and is closed because of the lack of funding amid the federal government shutdown.

Finn is not the only one affected. Texans and citizens throughout the country will not be able to visit George H.W. Bush’s library in College Station, the Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidential library in…

City Park Session
The Austin Mountain Bikers Meetup Group
Sunday, October 6, 2013        4:00 PM
City Park – Emma Long Motorcycle Trails
7548 Oak Shores Dr, Austin, TX (map)
Meet at the picnic tables.

As the name suggests, we will be hitting some gnarly areas on the trail for some practice concentrating on 20% ascending and 80% descending and over the course of an entire lap.

Bring your helmet and gloves of course and also pads if you have them.  The weather should be mild and…

Waco Wild West Century Bike Race
Photo gallery

BRAIN selects cities for 2014 Dealer Tours
by BRAIN Staff        www.bicycleretailer.com
LAGUNA HILLS, CA (BRAIN) — Bicycle Retailer & Industry News staff will visit retailers in Miami, Salt Lake City and Austin next year as part of the magazine’s popular Dealer Tour program, which first launched in the fall of 2008.

Advanced Sports International, parent company of Fuji, SE Bikes, Kestrel, Breezer, Terry and Oval Concepts, returns as title sponsor of the BRAIN Dealer Tour in 2014, supplying a fleet of bikes for participants to ride. …

…Editors and sponsors will visit stores in Miami, Florida, on Feb. 4-6; in Salt Lake City, Utah, May 20-22; and in Austin, Texas, Oct. 21-23. …

Is that VC Member and Sponsor Brad Houston up the road at the states?
violetcrown.org

General Meeting-October
GHORBA.org
Star Pizza Party Room
3800 South Shepherd Houston, Texas 77098
United States
Event category: General
Monday, October 14, 2013 – 7:00pm

Come join us for GHORBA’s next general meeting. Why? To meet and welcome (read: haze) our new officers, break bread with fellow riders, celebrate Columbus Day AND Canadian Thanksgiving, and to hear what is going on in your…

October 2, 2013 Walnut Creek Workday Results
Austin Ridge Riders
A solid group of 10 people put in 25 hours of trail work to repair the Main Creek Crossing transition from West to East. The sightlines were also opened up to help minimize the potential for cycling and pedestrian accidents. Afterwards we gorged on…

A cyclist’s dream: Bayou to become much more bike friendly — even the danger bridge is being replaced
By Tyler Rudick            houston.culturemap.com

High above the banks of White Oak Bayou near Shepherd and West 7th Street, city officials broke ground on the first leg a bold public-private initiative to create a 150-miles web of hike and bike trails in the next seven years.

The $215 million Bayou Greenways project — originally conceived in a 1912 master plan for the city — envisions a 1,500-acre network of parkland snaking along Houston’s waterways. Within the greenspace, roughly 80 new miles of trails will be added to an existing 70 miles.

“We are going back to the past and focusing on…

New Events Added to the Calendar

Tweets

Texas Bicycling Blog and News Roundup

Texbiker.net Posted on by

Northwest Cycling Club
Saturday, October 12
TXBRA – CX – SA Cyclocross, It’s a Bexar
Fall Campout Double Lake Recreation Area
8:00am
Ride Starter-Open
Sunday, October 13
TXBRA – CX – SA Cyclocross, It’s a Bexar
Fall Campout Double Lake Recreation Area
Saturday, October 19
8:00am
Ride Starter-0pen
Saturday, October 26
TXBRA – CX – Spooky Cross
8:00am
Ride Starter-Adrienne Mynatt
Sunday, October 27
TXBRA – CX – Spooky Cross
Monday, October 28
7:00pm
Board Meeting

METRO Bike & Ride Public Meeting
Attention Bicyclists and Transit Users
Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) is working with METRO to finalize the METRO Bike & Ride Access and Implementation Plan, an effort to better connect bike and transit trips. Please join us on Wednesday, October 9th to learn more about the plan and provide your input.
Wednesday October 9, 2013
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Houston Permitting Center
1002 Washington Avenue
Houston, TX 77002

Highland Village Mayor’s Message – Oct. 2013
Written by Patrick Davis, Highland Village Mayor
…Our police department is hosting the 6th Annual Fallen Heroes Bike Race on October 12, 2013. The race will benefit the Texas Chiefs of Police Fallen Officer Fund. The event will take place at the Shops at Highland Village. This year they are partnering with the Highland Village Business Association and Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Flower Mound to provide a “Taste of Highland Village” event to showcase the Shops at Highland Village restaurants. Our event, now titled “Gears & Grub,” will include food, live music by Emerald City and Superfreak, children’s activities, and a chance to meet some of our race sponsors in the vendor area during the race. This year the bike race is open to civilians to compete against some of the fastest bike officers in the metroplex. If mountain biking is not your thing there is also a 5K before the bike race. I invite all the area runners, bikers and families to come out and join us. Kicking off the event, many of our local restaurants are participating in Highland Village Restaurant Week where they will donate a percentage of their sales that week to…

Full List of Cyclesomatic 2013 Events
Bike Friendly Oak Cliff

The ONLY annual bicycle festival of it’s kind in North Texas, Cyclesomatic is back for it’s 5th edition.  For full information on each event, check out the…

Flat Creek Open Saturday Oct 5th
www.AustinBike.com
Flat Creek Crossing – Johnson City will be open this Saturday, 10/5 starting at 9:00AM.  It is always a good idea to try to go out there whevneer they are open because that does not happen all the time.  To follow the conversation, …

Bike Out Hunger
www.wheelbrothers.com
Bike Out Hunger invites you to join their rides for 2013 in Athens (Nov 2, 2013) and Mansfield (Nov 9, 2013).

We were lucky enough to be granted an interview with Rand Jenkins of Out Hunger to ask some questions about the event.
Why join Bike Out Hunger?
Two main reasons:
1) Great group ride
2) Great impact feeding hungry kids in your neighborhood

How long has the event been around?
The first Bike Out Hunger ride was in April 2010 and was a 6-day event. We had 75 participants throughout the week and raised tens of thousands of dollars for ending hunger in Texas. We’ve been adding to and improving every aspect since then. We’ve added travelling massage therapists, single day events and various attractions/highlights throughout the ride from serving breakfast to those in need, being recognized from…

Highlights from the 2013 National Bike Challenge
by Jenny Rilling        www.bikedfw.org
BikeDFW hosted the local North Texas area for the second annual National Bike Challenge, sponsored by the League of American Bicyclists, and Kimberly-Clark. Last year’s national goal was to reach 10,000,000 miles ridden between May 1st and August 31st. This year, LAB upped the ante by challenging us to collectively crank out 20,000,000 miles with one extra month added to the challenge. September 30th was the last day of the 2013 challenge, and folks across the US rolled out an impressive 18.4 million miles in the past five months.

Our local area pretty consistently put in 1% of the national miles throughout…

New Events

Tweets

https://twitter.com/LA_Underhill/status/385387821520797696

https://twitter.com/MitchellGSides/status/385292019087581184

A Batch of New + A Whole Lota of Wet

Texbiker.net Posted on by

I got out the door much earlier than the last ride. I thought it would be a good ride to try out some new stuff: Shimano R088W shoes, new SPD cleats and new white socks. The shoes use the ratchet closure system which I love. The main reason I love this system is the ease of tightening the strap (and loosening too) while I ride. My feet have a tendency to shrink as I ride so I need to adjust the strap. The cleats are new because I did not want to remove the old cleats from my faithful Diadora SpeedR shoes. And why use old socks with new shoes?

Before getting underway at 10:39 I checked the weather radar to be sure the rain was around. The radar showed a distant patch way to the west of Houston. The weather forecast included a 40% chance for the afternoon. I figured I would be back before any rain. On went the sunscreen but I should have used RainX.

Choosing a north route after going to the south yesterday I headed to Community Drive and Valley Ranch. To avoid the Grand Parkway construction at Community Drive on the US59 northbound service road I turned right on FM1314 at Porter to get to Loop 494. This takes me to the Community Drive and then up the overpass to the southbound service road. As I approached the overpass I saw the orange barrels lined up along the east bound side barrier. I figured these were moved out for short term construction issues. Biking the overpass to where it intersected with the curve that normally the traffic takes to get on Community Drive I could see the southbound service road was closed under the overpass. The curved road was now the main service road lanes and the shoulder I ride on gone with white dots at the edge of the asphalt. Since the traffic was not too heavy this did not cause a problem but I see where it might be if US59 itself gets moved there during construction. Once I got back to the service road proper the lanes returned to normal.

Going through Valley Ranch I looked forward to stopping at the Stripes station for a Diet Pepsi and a break. Sitting under the pump island canopy I looked to the north and the sky. Lots of blue with a few white clouds was what I saw but when I finished and looked to the south dark clouds were on the horizon. Picking up the pace I headed out for the last 11 miles of the 29.32 mile route. No problem riding through Briar Tree and Oakhurst but when I turned onto Kingwood Place Drive going south I knew I might get wet. The break at the Stripes station could be the difference between getting home dry or not.

Once I was back on the southbound US59 service road just north of Kingwood Drive the rain drops caught me but taking the U-turn under US59 onto the north bound service road I moved away into a few rain drops. I turned off the service to Kings Manor and the residential streets in Kingwood for the final 4 miles home. The closer I got to the shopping center on Kingwood Drive at Chestnut Ridge Drive the heavier the drops came. I ducked on the sidewalk at the shopping center as the rain picked. Not too wet other than from my perspiration I walked the covered sidewalk to the east end thinking maybe the rain would leaving soon. Reaching the end I sat down in chair from one of the restaurants and waited. The Edge 510 showed 25.5 miles and a few minutes after 1 PM. The rain did not let up and instead came down even heavier. The fabric cover over the sidewalk started leaking badly so I walked back near a Palis Royal store where the cover was wood and not leaking. Loud claps of thunder and lightening appeared periodically so I stayed put. Finally the heavy rain dropped off to a steady one but did not stop. After waiting for about 30 minutes I decided the only I was going to get home was ride in the rain.

10-2-2013 Radar Finish

The weather radar when I got home.

The distance home from this point was about 3.75 miles and it rained all of the way but the closer I got to home the lighter the rain. At 2:40 I pressed the stop button on the Edge 510 after turning into my driveway and 60 feet to the garage. I wiped down my bike and the new shoes. It would have been nice to get at least one ride in the new shoes before getting them soaked!!! The new white socks may now be gray ones. The cleats weren’t affected by the rain but they kept my feet solidly in the pedals.

I don’t plan on riding tomorrow (Thursday) so it will be dry and sunny. Friday will be the next biking day.

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