Supposedly a tropical storm is headed to Texas. The weekend weather forecast had rain for today but each day it moved to later in the day. I thought I wouldn’t get to bike today but the forecast changed. I wanted to ride today before it arrived so I left home at 9:59 and got back home at 1:03. The humidity was 74% making for a heavy perspiration ride. My gloves were soaked when I arrived at the Shell station at Cumberland Blvd. I took some paper towels and tried to dry them out some but my arms were so wet the sweat rolled down to the gloves. I got back on the bike and headed to the Stripes station for a break.

I rode the “Oakhurst – Cumberland – Valley Ranch” route to stay above the weather to the south and east. The threatened rain was here yet but I didn’t want to take a chance plus I wanted to vary the routes. For variety I changed the first 7 miles biking through Forest Cove. This added to the overall ride coming up to 34.82 miles instead of the usual 32 miles or so.

The ride was calm with no dog chases, smooth roads and no wet roads. The weather was overcast to mostly cloudy. The temperature was 89 when I finished and the wind was light at 3 to 5 mph from the NNE. A couple of times the sky looked threatening but only once did I get about 10 rain drops and it stopped. There was far more moisture from my sweating.

For some reason I had difficulty getting my average speed up to 15.0 mph. I finally got there around the 23 mile mark and held it there even increasing it to 15.1 mph for a short period until I had to make some stops for traffic lights. Slowly building up speed from the stop pulled the average down and then I rode to get it back up. The final average speed was 14.8 mph.

At the Stripes station I took a break to dry off some, eat snacks and drink Gatorade. I laid my gloves on some paper towels to dry them off some for the final 11 miles home.

Porter weather at the Stripes stop

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