Today was a grueling day. Not from biking but from having a garage sale. This week my wife and I were gathering stuff for the sale and today was the sale day. I was up at 5:45AM to get ready and move some last minute items out to the garage. Shortly after 7:00AM the people started to arrive. I had put a sign out but I noticed when cars parked to shop the sign was hidden. So I decided I would stand and hold the sign which was about 2 ft. x 2 ft. 1/4″ plywood with big green letters. At first the sign was not so heavy but as the time turned into 4 hours my arms and hands were getting very tired. I got many comments about my sign holding technique. Most said they stopped just because of me holding the sign. It helped that we live on the main entrance into our village.

Now after all that I still had some strength left for a late afternoon mountain bike ride. I hit the dirt for part of the ride (see the pictures below) along side one of the drainage bayous. The cutup tree beside the trail is from the drought and removal crews. I was not alone as several other people were there as well but I was the only one on a bike. At one point I thought I was going to have a problem with a dog. I came up to a couple walking with their collie without a leash. As I announced “on the left” and  started to go around them the collie charged me and acted like he was going for my left leg but the man called him and he stopped short of biting me. I stopped the bike and the man got the dog to the other side and I was able to ride on. After that the only other unusual thing was to pass two women walking a sheep on the trail. The sheep was on a halter so no problem there. I suspect the sheep was the younger woman’s FFA project since the barn was not too far away.

Kingwood bayou trail

Kingwood trail along a bayou

Weather wise the clouds have rolled in to become mostly cloudy. The wind came with them at a SSE 18 mph clip with gusts to 28 mph. This was not so noticeable in the woods but it slow my speed down when I was going into it. The temperature did not quite make it up to the forecast and was 75 at the start cooling to 73 when I finished.

The route was a little shorter than my typical Saturday since I am riding my mountain bike this week at 13.36 miles. My average speed was 11.2 mph (very slow compared to my road bike average) and my max speed was 22.7 mph. Average cadence was 77.1 RPM, almost identical to yesterday’s. November miles are creeping up to 193.73 and year to date I am at 5177.23 miles. Next week I plan on going back to my road bike for some days at least to put some serious mileage on.

11-12-2011 Bike Ride Data and Route Map

[iframe http://connect.garmin.com:80/activity/embed/128216502 470 570]

Link to the route map and ride data at RidewithGPS.com.

11-12-2011 Home Weather End