Flood Debris, Squealing Brakes Bike Ride
I rode to the south on a modified “Stroker Road – Huffman” route. I modified it to get around the flood cleanup area on Kingwood Drive and to bike 40+ miles. Thanks to that I biked 42.4 miles. With those miles I am up to 273 miles for September with a goal of 300 miles. I really want to reach 6000 miles for the year by the end of September which means I need to ride 448 more miles this month. This will put me in position to hit 7000 miles for the year.
The route still took me through areas in Kingwood still digging out of flood debris. These are photos I took on the ride today. (click on the image to enlarge it)
Weather was picture perfect with 80 degrees when I started at 10:44 AM and 86 at the 2:15 PM finish. The sky was a nice blue but the wind wasn’t so nice: 14 mph from the north with 17 mph gusts. This made for hard bicycling whenever I hit the headwind. I don’t remember too much of a tailwind though. Humidity was a pleasant 45% but that may change in a day or so to more normal Houston levels.
At the start of the ride I tried to get the PowerPod power meter to turn on but it refused so no watts readings for this ride. I am disappointed with the PowerPod as this is the third time it quit working. I am going to contact Velocomp to see about returning it for a refund. Maybe riding without a power meter will free me to not look at the Elemnt computer as much.
Riding on Ramsey Road east of FM 2100 I saw evidence of high water with debris caught on fences pushing them down. It looked about 2 feet high but that was beside the road. In the past I rode here with water across Ramsey Road in places after a heavy rain.
Even with the brisk wind biking was great and mid 80’s temperature meant I didn’t sweat as much or the wind dried it up as fast as I produced it.
When I got to the Huffman Chevron at 12:55 PM I took a 25 minute rest stop to prepare to ride into the wind going west on FM 1960. I was 30.5 miles into the ride. The love bugs pestered me as I sat in the shade under the pump canopy which hastened my departure by a few minutes. The trip west on FM 1960 wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be and I improved my average speed to 14.9 mph.
I didn’t make the turn onto Atascocita Shores Drive but continued to Pinehurst Trail and then right. This was because earlier I changed the streets to go through Atascocita South. As I waited to cross W. Lake Houston Parkway on Aerobic Drive the traffic light changed and I started to cross WLH when a big box truck started blowing its horn and squealing brakes as it ran the red light coming towards me. I sped up and got out of the way but the cars behind had to wait for the truck to get out of the intersection. That was about the only excitement during the ride!
More great bicycling weather tomorrow.
Strava Ride Summary (click on the image to go to Strava.com)
