The last time I went biking was November 21st. My time off the bike was not of my choosing though. In those days some chilly weather visited Houston, Thanksgiving happened and yesterday we started putting up our Christmas decorations. Of those days yesterday was the only one with decent biking weather. Today it was supposed to reach 70 degrees but it is good I did not wait for that to happen. I did wait until 12:17 and rolled out the driveway under overcast skies and 63 degrees.

To combat this cool weather I probably over dressed. Full finger gloves kept my fingers nice and toasty, short and long sleeve jerseys under my windbreaker jacket helped as well. Leg warmers kept my legs from chilling out too much. When I stopped in Huffman the temperature at Action sign varied from 70 to 71 and I did feel overdressed. After a 10 minute break getting back on the bike brought a chill until I regained the heat I gave up. By the time I got home at 2:52 my bandana was wet, both jersey were wet and the gloves were damp inside.

While I was not biking the construction crews chewed off the asphalt on FM2100 between the sawmill and FM1960. The resurfaced portion was nice but the rough surface kinda reminded me of a gravel grinder ride but not a full fledged one. I didn’t have much of a problem riding on the shoulder in this area except when an 18 wheeler drove by and kicked up a cloud of dust. With the old surface gone maybe it won’t take too long to get the new one down. No rain is in the forecast until Thursday.

With today’s 32.79 miles I moved up to 6018 miles for the year. If the weather is cooperative I could get 200 or 300 more miles before the end of the year. Tomorrow’s forecast shows 77 degrees under a partly cloudy sky. My average speed today showed what happens when I take so many days off: only 14.9 mph. Garmin Connect and RideWithGPS.com were not so generous reporting 14.6 mph. It took 4 or 5 miles to get warmed up and the first 5 miles took over 22 minutes. This did not get the speed off to a good start. The rest of the 5 mile sections I attempted to recover but not enough.

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