Sitting in the shade at the Valley Ranch Texaco during my rest break while biking the “Kingwood – Splendora – Kingwood” route it was hard to ignore the cars and trucks streaming by on I-69/US59. This brought back memories of when I lived in the Oakley Addition in New Caney about a miles east of where I sat. Back in the late 1970’s when I first start bicycling US59 was not the road it is now. When my wife and I drove to work we would sometimes take Community Drive to US59 because the at grade crossing was north of a busier crossing at FM1314 in Porter. We drove across the two north bound lanes and stopped in the middle to wait for an opening to get in the south bound lanes. No traffic lights, just a stop sign for us but not for US59. A number of years later TxDOT built an overpass at Community Drive and then we did the merge into traffic thing, better but not perfect. Now the Grand Parkway is there and the Community Drive overpass is much more complicated connecting the service roads, the Grand Parkway and I69/US59. Biking on these roads was not so bad with the service road allowing me to ride north to Roman Forest and points east and west.

The “Kingwood – Splendora – Kingwood” route name is new because I did not ride through Valley Ranch like I normally do. I also did ride all of the streets in Elm Grove on the way to exit Kingwood making me think the ride would be 31 or 32 miles long but turned out to be 35.77 miles long. As I was biking I wondered how my 2016 miles compared to 2015. So far in 2016 I biked 6.754 miles while in all of 2015 I biked 6,671 miles. So I could stop riding today and beat last year’s miles which were the most I ever rode in a year. My October goal was 600 miles and I am up to 822 miles and week to date I rode 183 miles.

Another great biking day with the weather: an almost clear blue sky, 83 degrees, SE wind at 9 mph, low humidity. I was very comfortable with a short sleeve jersey, even when I stopped at the Valley Ranch Texaco for a break. My Elemnt screen when I stopped and the weather before I left at 2:02.

While I was eating some animal crackers and a Kashi Trail Mix bar a man walked over and we chatted about biking for a couple of minutes. A delivery man walked by a couple of times and we spoke. I refilled my water bottle before eating and had enough water left to get me the last 10+ miles to the end of the ride. Not too far away from the Texaco station I looked at the New Caney ISD Texan Drive Stadium from the service road. They are getting ready for the big football game tonight between New Caney and Porter. Each team is undefeated in district play. The game is called “Battle Line on 59” because the schools are not far from US59 (New Caney east of 59 and Porter west of 59) and in the same school district. They might have to change the name to “Battle Line on 69” when the highway officially becomes I-69.

Once I finished eating I got back on the service road to ride to Kingwood Drive. With the long stretches of uninterrupted road I built my overall average speed up to 15.7 mph until I passed the 31 mile point heading into Kingwood where the stop signs and traffic slowed me down. This ride was one of those where the wind is friendly biking in either direction. I thought when I made the turnaround in Splendora the wind would be in my face but that wasn’t the case.

More great weather tomorrow. I plan on biking but I may make it short because the University of Cincinnati football game starts at 2:30.

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