The rainy weather moved away and the heat moved in. As I got ready to leave this morning looking at my home weather station I saw 99 degrees. That was very warm for 10:50 am so I think it may need to be looked at. When I finished the ride at 2:14 pm the weather station showed 103 degrees while the other home weather station reported 96 degrees. Definitely something is wrong.

I wanted to ride 40+ miles so I chose the “New Caney – Roman Forest – Valley Ranch” route adding a couple of extra streets at the end for a total of 41.4 miles. This boosted the week’s total to 112 miles and the month to 288 miles keeping me schedule to hit my 800 mile goal for the month.

With a partly cloudy sky and light (6 mph SE breeze) biking was good. As long as I moved the heat was not bad with the air keeping me cool. When i stopped at Stripes on FM 1314 a man walking from his pickup truck to the store asked if it was too hot to bike and I replied as long as I was moving it wasn’t too hot. I stopped there 29.2 miles into the ride at 1:00 pm and stayed about 20 minutes while I ate some snack crackers and drank ice water. Sitting in the shade felt good with the light breeze blowing through.

Back on the bike I rode through Briar Tree, Oakhurst and Kings Manor on the way back to Kingwood. I didn’t see any cyclists along the route today.

After yesterday’s ride I waxed the chain on the Stradalli because it was making metallic noises probably from all of the water when I rode in the rain plus washing after the rides. The chain was much quieter today.

For most of the rides this year I wear Gildan cotton socks but with all of the rain I have not been happy with the way the hold moisture as well as when I perspire. I have one pair of Sock Guy socks and they are much drier. Checking the Sock Guy website I saw the price was around $10.99 per pair which is much more than I am use to paying. On the way to Walmart I stopped at Bike Werks to buy some tire levers and look at their socks. All they had were cotton socks, not solving my problem. At Walmart I looked in the sporting goods department but all I found were soccer socks which are too high for me. Moving to the men’s department the sock selection was vast with numerous choices for polyester fabric socks which is what most biking jerseys are made of. I found a package of 12 pair from AND1 named black Performance Quarter Cut Socks Light Weight. The fabric content was exactly what I was looking for: polyester 94%, rubber 4%, and Spandex 2%. These should wick the moisture away and not ball up when they get wet like the cotton socks did. Even better was the price, $9.84 plus tax; 12 pair for less than one pair from the Sock Guy. I tested a pair on today’s bike ride and they were comfortable and kept my feet dry. Hopefully I don’t test them in the rain any time soon.

More hot an dry weather on Friday and I plan on biking in it.

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