The goal today was ride enough miles to reach 756 miles for the month. This would leave 200 miles to reach my goal. I couldn’t ride to the south because of the Kingwood BridgeFest 5k/10k run this morning which was okay because I needed some variety. I decided to ride the “SR242 – FM1314” route. This route with some minor today was 49.42 miles long. I rode this route 4 times this year and this is the longest of the 4. (click on the image to enlarge it)

I saw one other biker during the ride on SH 242 about a mile west of US59. I almost missed him behind the passing cars. He was riding east and I was going west.

My planned stops were at the Chevron station at the FM1485 and SH 242 intersection for ice and water. I made that one in good shape. The next stop was at the Stripes station on FM1314. I got there in good shape too. This one was a rest break. I ate and drank while cooling down in the gas canopy shade. It took some paper towels and breeze to dry up all of the sweat by the time I was ready to leave. While I was sitting a man walked over to me to ask about my helmet mirror. He said he and his wife just started biking and he wanted to be able to see the traffic coming from behind. He asked where to get a mirror like mine and I told him and he said he would check them out. The stop was at 37.7 miles into the ride and I got there at 12:37. As I was getting ready to leave two ladies pulled up to the pump where I was at in their Jeep Grand Cherokee (same color as ours). After one lady finished filling up she told me to be careful as she got in to leave. They had a Texas A&M sticker on the back.

I left riding across FM1314 to Briar Tree towards home. I didn’t get too far though. At 38.5 miles I got a flat rear tire. It wasn’t hard to see why, a piece of glass was sticking out of the tire. Fortunately I was at Ben’s Branch Elementary School and I walked over to the front entrance where there was shade and a bench. I removed the tube from the rear tire and located the hole. It was in the section of tube with some ridges on it. I thought this would not help the patch stick but used the sandpaper to rough the area up and lower the little ridges. If the hole had been an inch to the left it would be out of the only section with ridges. I applied the patch and waited a couple of minutes to see if the patch would hold before putting it back in the tire. I aired up the tire and put my stuff away. I made it to 40.5 miles and could feel the rear tire going flat. The patch did not hold over the ridges. I found a shady spot and removed the rear tube and put my spare tube in. Before the street I was on, Rock Creek Drive, did not have much traffic. Once I set up to fix the flat I think every car in the area decided to drive on Rock Creek. Before doing that I ran my finger around the inside of the tire to be sure there wasn’t something else causing the problem. Nothing else found. I aired up the tire, put my stuff away and put the tire back on the bike. While I was sitting there working on the tire a foursome of golfers was playing the hole on the other sie of the street. I heard someone yell from the tee but I didn’t give it much attention. A few minutes later one of the golf carts stopped across from me to look for a ball. That’s when I noticed a ball in the street about 25 feet to my left. I pointed to the ball and one of the golfers came over and picked it up, moved it to the esplanade beside me and took a shot towards the green. He didn’t get there but he was back on the fairway. One of the other golfers said I would have been safer if I was sitting in the fairway rather than the street. I laughed.

I got back home at 2:45 without any further trouble from the rear tire. I reached my goal with 757.38 miles for August. Now I am only 198.62 miles from my goal of 956 miles.

Up to the rest stop and flats I was averaging 15.4 mph but the stops to fix the flat dropped my average to 15.1 mph and riding through Kingwood dropped it down further to 14.9 mph by the time I got home. Once I was home I checked the weather and was surprised the wind was 9 mph from the south with 22 mph gusts. This explained why I had trouble getting back up to speed after the second stop to fix the tire. I didn’t see that when I took these screenshots at the Stripes station earlier.

The next three days look fantastic for biking. Next Saturday I will in Wichita Falls for the Hotter’n Hell 100. Not sure what the weather will be there yet. A few days ago a front came through and it was in the 70’s for the high. Today their forecast is clear and 94 degrees on Saturday August 29th. I hope that holds.

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