It’s been long enough since my collision September 3rd so I rode the route I intended to that day. The time of day was different with me leaving home at 11:12 and I rode through the spot around noon. No exiting traffic from the high school. This helps to restore my confidence to ride this route but at the same time my awareness of the traffic is much higher. Cars coming out of side streets now get an extra look. Maybe I should have stopped at the spot of the collision and walked around but it didn’t occur to me at the time.

The weather for today got off to a cool start with 54 degrees at 7:00 at home. The sky was crystal clear blue and the humidity was 30%, a big drop from the 70% and higher last Saturday before the cool front arrived. When I left home the wind had a chill to it so I appreciated the long sleeve jersey I had on. Riding through residential streets on my way out of Kingwood meant lots of shade from trees. Each time I entered the shade the cooler air reminded me fall is really here. 72 degrees at the start but it warmed up as the ride distance increased. By the finish at 2:00 the home weather said 81 degrees. I stopped in Huffman at the Chevron and sat in the sun. It felt nice but as I got finished with the Diet Pepsi and cookies the sun heated my black shorts to high temperature. I moved out of the sun into the shade to check emails and weather on my phone. It was a relief.

Before the ride I decided to adjust the handle bar position because my arms felt too stretched when I rode on the brake/shifter hoods. I thought rotating the handle bars forward a few degrees to put the horizontal mark in the stem clamp center line and then move the shifters higher up the bars would shorten the reach. In order to do this I unwrapped the handlebar tap and the under tape that held the cables in place. Wrapping handlebar tape is not easy for me but the re-wrapping ended up better than it was before, in my opinion. The overlaps looked better and the termination tape near the stem did not have all of the bumps it did before. The ride tested my theory and I did feel the hoods were closer but slightly lower. I was comfortable with the new position so I will stick with it for awhile at least.

Biking south through Atascocita, Eagle Springs, Walden, Huffman and back home totaled 35.68 miles and I improved my average speed to 15.6 mph. The wind was stronger than yesterday: NNE 9.4 mph gusts 18.4 mph. This didn’t bother my legs as much so I powered through with only a couple of wind induced slow downs. I could tell when the tailwind assisted me biking south.

October mileage now totals 191.73 and year to date I biked 5409 miles. I will be off the bike for a couple of week while my wife and I vacation. There will be some days that the daily Texas bicycling news is not published as well.

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