The Pineywoods Purgatory in Lufkin is one of my favorite rides. I remember the fajitas but seem to selectively forget the many hills (mountains to us flatlanders from Houston) that one must ride up to get a hand wrapped around one of those tasty fajitas.<\/p>\n
About 500 riders lined up at the 8:00 AM downtown starting line. I was concerned that the weather might be too cool but this was a false concern. 58 degrees at start time with a light breeze meant no leg warmers but a light jacket was in order.<\/p>\n
With an Eastex blast from a double barrel shotgun we left the starting line. Lufkin’s mayor offered some encouraging words and a prayer. The fajitas were beginning to get closer. The ride looked easy as I went down the first decent at 37 mph. The ensuing up hill climb at 7 mph meant reality was quickly arriving.<\/p>\n
Rest stops were greatly anticipated as I began to add some miles. The first mental calculation said 9 miles was 1\/8 of the way to the finish. Other calculations followed as more miles were added to my computer.<\/p>\n
This was the first ride on my bicycle with some serious climbs. Most of my previous road bikes had triple cranks. The Mercier does not. Thank goodness I left the Mavic rims on with the 27 x 12 rear cluster. Many hills required, no demanded, the next to the lowest gear and out of the saddle pedaling. A couple of hills looked like they would grip my bike and not let go to the top riding but I put my head down and pedaled over the top. Whew! One more down.<\/p>\n
As I neared the last 5 miles I thought the hills must be over. Not so quick. Just to make those fajitas more costly the route threw two more steep ones at me. But I was able to pay the price and rode across the finish line at 1:29 PM for a 5:23 ride time. Not a bad payment for those fajitas. After putting the bike in the Jeep I strode into the Civic Center to get my reward. By next year those hills will be a distant memory but the fajitas won’t be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Pineywoods Purgatory in Lufkin is one of my favorite rides. I remember the fajitas but seem to selectively forget the many hills (mountains to us flatlanders from Houston) that one must ride up to get a hand wrapped around …<\/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":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4tok-1h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","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=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}