I waited for the sun to come out and the temperature to get up to the promised 70 degrees. Neither happened so at 1:20 I left home on my Motobecane 700HT mountain bike. I did something I never did before: ride my mountain bike on one of my road bike routes. It wasn’t one of the longer routes I ride but 23.97 miles could be the longest ride on my mountain bike. I went to Huffman with the plan to stop at the Huffman Cellular store but they went out of business. I saw the store on my road bike rides but never went close enough to see if they were actually open. Sometime back I did notice that the banner signs they put out by the road were gone but I did not connect that with them closing. So my trip was a bust in that respect. Riding knobby tires on the pavement for extended mileage saps a lot of energy. If I was going to make this a habit I should buy some slicks or less knobby tires.

Since I wasn’t sure how this ride would go I shorten the route a few miles by not going on Fairlake and Old Atascocita roads. I thought my average speed would be higher than the 12.8 mph (SportTracks) I ended up at. Garmin Connect and RideWithGPS.com showed slightly higher averages (13.1 mph and 13.0 mph, respectively) but lower top speeds (17.6 mph and 17.5 mph, respectively) than SportTracks’ 23.5 mph. Mileage totals after the ride: 40.75 this week, 98.65 for December, 6375.8 YTD.

The only excitement on the ride was the two car collision at Strong Pine Drive and FM1960 on the east side of Lake Houston. By the time I rode through the area going east the police and wreckers arrived. After turning around in Huffman and riding back the police and wreckers were starting to clear the truck and car. No one appeared to be hurt but the small car got the worst end of the crash losing the front bumper assembly. One of the wreckers did not help any by driving over the bumper laying on the road.

Warmer weather is in the forecast for Friday, Saturday and Sunday with a cold front arriving Sunday night. Monday’s high might be 52 degrees. So I will se what riding I can get in the next three days.

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