A new week of bike riding starts today. When I woke up this morning the temperature was 46 degrees. I thought we were done with temperatures in the 40’s until fall. While I waited for it to get warmer I watched stage 1 of tour of the Alps, a couple of YouTube channels and ate breakfast. The weather warmed up a little quicker than expected and I got ready for the bike ride. Deciding where to ride I chose my New Caney – Roman Forest Blvd – Oakhurst route thinking the railroad crossing into Tavola at Via Principal Parkway would still be closed. It turned out to be open with new concrete replacing the old bumpy asphalt. Wednesday might be a good day to try out that crossing.
The bike for today’s ride was my Cervelo Caledonia. I rolled away at 11:18 AM. I mixed up the streets enough that Strava didn’t match any other rides with today’s choices. I don’t ride this route very often but I do ride the streets on other routes so nothing new. Looking at my past ride history in SportTracks it appears I have two names for the same route: New Caney – Roman Forest Blvd – Valley Ranch. I may need to combine these two. The distances are similar. Today I rode 33.91 miles putting me at 467.49 miles (67%) of my 700 mile goal for April.
Getting to Roman Forest Blvd. I rode through several Kingwood Villages, Woodridge Forest, Brooklyn Trails, along US59 to Community Drive moving to Loop 494, north to Payne Road and back to US59 and on to Roman Forest Blvd. where I made the u-turn to head back to Kingwood. From the u-turn the roads were the same from several other routes: Valley Ranch Parkway to FM 1314, Old Sorters Road, Briar Berry Lane, into Oakhurst on a couple of streets I don’t use very often. Mills Branch Drive took me to Rock Creek and south over the cobbles before reaching Northpark Drive. Kingwood Place Drive and Kellington got me to US59 and then the u-turn at Kingwood Drive. A short ride on the frontage road to Kingwood Parc to get to Loop 494. At the traffic light I entered Kings Manor and rode back into Kingwood. More side streets and greenbelt belt trail along Kingwood Drive and back to residential streets to finish the ride at 1:50 PM.
With the cooler morning the wind had a chill even though the temperature was in the lower 70’s. I decided to wear a poly short sleeve T-shirt under the long sleeve jersey and wind jacket. I thought the T-shirt might be over doing it but it turned out to be okay. Weather: Start 73 degrees, 37% humidity, dew point 45, partly cloudy, wind E 12 mph; finish 75 degrees, 40% humidity, dew point 42, a few clouds, wind SE 14 mph gusts 20 mph. The stronger wind posed a problem for the ride back to Kingwood but it was not a full headwind. The only places where the wind was hard was when I rode out in the open with nothing blocking or slowing it. Valley Ranch Parkway south of TX 99 was one of those places. Link to my AXS.SRAM.com ride report. I didn’t realize I made 41 Rear Derailleur Shifts. 1:42:41 using the 35×13 gears points to the wind not being much of a problem.
