I have not been able to ride since last Thursday. We were in Naples, FL, for our nephew’s wedding. We stayed at the LaPlaya Resort on the beach though our particular building was across the street from the main building. Naples has a lot of bike lanes on the streets we were on. I saw many serious bicyclists and numerous casual ones. My brother-in-law (father of the groom) told me they visited a bike shop (Naples Cyclery?) a couple of miles from LaPlaya to rent some bikes. While there he touched a $10,000 bike. Later when he told me about this I said that might have been about half the cost of the bikes in the Tour de France. We flew to Tampa and drove to Naples. It turned out we could’ve flown to Ft. Meyers and not had to drive so far. I did not know Ft. Meyers had a big airport. We flew home yesterday evening.

With today being a rest day for the TDF I had more flexibility on when to leave for the ride. I left at 10:34. The sky was almost dark gray and I checked the radar to see if there was any rain in the area. No rain close by but there was a big patch to the north and west of New Caney. This led me to choose the route to Huffman. I started off with the usual route of 32 miles but as I was riding I switched to a longer one going south of FM1960 into Atascocita before riding to Walden. This route ended up at 34.22 miles long. I wanted to add a couple of miles to at least feel like I was making up for not riding all of those days we were in Florida.

Riding south I noticed the sky was dark gray that direction too. I stuck to my rule “if it isn’t raining go biking” even with the threatening sky. No rain for the first 11 miles but as I crossed FM1960 on Atasca Oaks Drive a light rain started. It didn’t last too long and by the time I got to W. Lake Houston Parkway on Aerobic Drive it had stopped. From there to Huffman no more rain.

As I started east onto the causeway over Lake Houston I could see a truck with an oversize load pulled over on the shoulder. I was planning to pass in the main lanes but he started to drive away before I got there. While I was riding over the causeway the wind was very strong and I had to fight hard to keep the Stradalli upright and going forward. The traffic would shield me from the wind for a few seconds but when there was no traffic the wind was brutal. While I was on the causeway three big trucks hauling parts of a drilling rig passed me going east. The wind was particularly a problem when they after passed. They were probably part of the first truck I saw on the shoulder. Later while I was at the Huffman Chevron I saw more trucks hauling parts of the drilling rig. There were probably 8 or 9 trucks in total.

When I arrived at the Huffman Chevron it was not raining though the sky was still threatening. While I rested and ate it started to sprinkle and then rain. I was thinking about riding in the rain but the temperature dropped to 74 and I didn’t want to get that wet and cold too. I waited at the Chevron about an hour, checking my phone for weather radar. I could see the rain moving to southeast and at 1:19 I took off. It was sprinkling lightly for the first 1/2 mile but stopped by the time I got to E. Lake Houston Parkway. From there to Atascocita Shores Drive FM1960 was wet but the wind had let up some. I expected to have wet streets all the way home but as I turned onto Atascocita Shores the street was damp but not so wet. It was like that all the way home.

I am getting a lot of practice washing my bike. Hopefully I don’t need to wash it again for several days.

The metrics for today’s ride.

Garmin Connect is having some server issues so I will include the link only.

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