{"id":30378,"date":"2015-07-25T13:45:59","date_gmt":"2015-07-25T18:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/?p=30378"},"modified":"2015-07-25T18:27:21","modified_gmt":"2015-07-25T23:27:21","slug":"early-and-long-bike-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/2015\/07\/25\/early-and-long-bike-ride\/","title":{"rendered":"Early and Long Bike Ride"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was the longest ride of the week at 43.41 miles<\/strong>. I rode the “Kingwood – Hare Cook Road – Kingwood” route to the southeast towards Crosby. I started earlier than the other rides this week at 9:07 and got back home at 12:48. Along the ride I saw 36 other bikers, mostly on FM1960 on the Lake Houston Causeway. A few stragglers were on Fairlake Drive and Old Atascocita Road. I left earlier to avoid the heat some and because I decided to watch stage 20 of the Tour after I got back rather than before. It was nice to be back home 2 hours earlier than yesterday when I watched the tour before riding. With this many miles today it puts me at 208.16 miles<\/strong> for the week and 719.26 miles<\/strong> for the month. Now that I am within 115 miles of my 834 mile goal for July I think I will declare Sunday a rest and recovery day. Out of 25 days in July I biked 20 and 9 days in a row. This is the third time I rode this route this year.<\/p>\n

At 31.8 miles into the ride I reached the Chevron station in Huffman for a needed rest stop. Before that I only stopped for stop signs, traffic lights and to refill my water bottle at a Shell station on FM2100 north of Hare Cook Road. I was at the Chevron about 40 minutes allowing time for most of the sweat to dry up after using 6 or 7 paper towels to stop the perspiration from running down my arms and legs. I soaked a Greensheet newspaper I sat on so much the pavement was wet when I picked it up. I wore wrist bands which seem to soak up a lot of sweat before it reaches my gloves. The weather screen shots while I was at the Chevron station.<\/p>\n

\"7-25-2015 <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"7-25-2015 <\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

The overall average speed came in at 14.9 mph but it was up to 15.2 mph for several miles and 15.1 mph as late as 41.2 miles before dropping as I slowed the pedaling to home the last 2 miles in Kingwood.<\/p>\n

For the last couple of weeks I have noticed the rusty bolts holding the handlebar in the stem. At first I was thinking titanium bolts until I saw the price on ebay.com. I thought I remembered seeing stainless steel metric hex head cap screws at Lowe’s. Last night on the way home from dinner my wife and I stopped at Lowe’s and bought 4 bolts. I took one of the rusty bolts with us and the sizing tool at Lowe’s gave the size as 5M-.80 x 16. When I got home I replaced each bolt individually to not mess with the handlebar setting. The lock washer on the old bolts was a chore to remove but thanks to some 3in1 oil and pliers I moved them from the old bolt to the new bolts. Now when I ride I can look down on shiny stainless steel cap screws holding the handlebar. The stem is carbon fiber. Below are the old and new screws. Tomorrow I am looking at the rear derailleur cable to see why the shifting to smaller cogs is not working right.<\/p>\n

\"Old <\/a>
Old rusty screws <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"New <\/a>
New SS screws in place <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

[iframe https:\/\/connect.garmin.com\/activity\/embed\/844198186 465px 500px] [iframe https:\/\/www.strava.com\/activities\/353856865\/embed\/a379c8772df7da6f50774d45e337af6782045f19 590px 500px]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was the longest ride of the week at 43.41 miles. I rode the “Kingwood – Hare Cook Road – Kingwood” route to the southeast towards Crosby. I started earlier than the other rides this week at 9:07 and got …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[5245,5243,5196,1424,4699],"class_list":["post-30378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bike-ride","tag-bicycling-teas","tag-cycling-texas","tag-kingwood-hare-cook-road-kingwood","tag-road","tag-stradalli-rp-14-carbon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4tok-7TY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}