I waffled back and forth on today’s route. The reason is that US59 north bound is closed at FM1314 and I thought traffic would increase on Loop 494 as traffic tried to get around the closure at Community Drive and the Grand Parkway construction. I considered riding the grass farm route over by Huffman but after remembering the last US59 closure and the traffic I chose a north route. I wanted to get 40 miles or so but with a later start I knew I wouldn’t go too much farther.

Riding out of Kingwood through Woodridge Forest I then stayed on Loop 494 to New Caney. Loop 494 traffic started to get heavy when I reached FM1314 and stayed that way until FM1485 in New Caney. This wasn’t much of a problem since Loop 494 has a 4 foot shoulder most of the way. There was a dicey moment at the New Caney ISD bus barn stretch when a really wide load truck and trailer passed me. Fortunately there was no oncoming traffic and the truck moved to the left around me. The cargo looked industrial but I am not sure what it was.

At FM1485 the traffic returned to normal as I rode to SR242. I turned left onto SR242 riding to the Old Houston Road traffic light. If I had time to ride longer I would stay on SR242 to FM1314 but I took the Old Houston Road south to FM1314. This road has little traffic. Reaching FM1314 it was a 7 mile ride to the Stripes station at FM1314 and Valley Ranch Parkway where I stopped about 25 minutes to dry off some, eat and rest. At that point I rode 29 miles with a little over 11 miles to home. While I was a Stripes another customer walked over asking if my bike was one of the expensive ones. I said yes and he then asked about riding on my narrow saddle. I told you can get use to it and he asked if it took several years to do that. I answered probably 4 or 5 months. I don’t think he believed me. He walked back to his big Chevy pickup with his two sons. They were friendly as they backed out.

The route totaled 40.26 miles which accomplished my goal and I got home by 2:45 after starting at 11:33. Average speed was 15.9 mph.

After all the rain we had this week and before, today’s weather was unusual for July. It was 80 degrees (97% humidity) when I started and 82 (96% humidity) when I finished. The sky was mostly cloudy and the sun did not have much of a chance to warm things up too much. With the perspiration and moving through the light breeze it felt like a fall day. A couple of times I thought a long sleeve jersey would be nice. A note on the humidity: this is from my home weather station. The IAH weather station humidity at the end was 70%.

Mile markers:

• 159.19 miles this week
• 466.26 miles for July (250 miles left to reach July’s goal)
• 3841 miles for the year

Links to Garmin Connect and RideWithGPS.

Tomorrow’s forecast: 93 degrees, 40% chance of rain. I should bike after church. Another opportunity to get wet. Monday and Tuesday could be warmer and dry.

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