An idea came to mind for today’s bike ride, why not change the wheels on my Canyon Endurace CF 7 to the ones on my Lynskey Helix? This would give me the opportunity to ride the Canyon with smaller lighter tires and carbon rims. Exchanging the wheels delayed the start by about half an hour because the rear wheel I was substituting on the Lynskey wouldn’t line up for the thru axle to thread. After several attempts I left the thru axle in the wheel but not threaded. The wheels now on the Canyon were the Alpha 46 with Continental Gatorskin 700x28c tires. I probably should’ve checked the tire pressure but the tires felt solid when I bounced them on the floor.

With the wheel change done I ate breakfast and then got ready to ride. Today’s route was an almost new one that I’ve biked just once before on April 12th, Atascocita – Balmoral – W Lake Houston Pkwy – Walden. I wanted to ride this route before but it was not open until the railroad overpass on Timber Forest was finished. Riding to Balmoral is not new. Back in May I biked the opposite direction as I circled the southern part of Lake Houston. Ready I rolled the Canyon Endurace out at 9:11 AM. The weather forecast warned of temperature near or at 100 after noon so I wanted to finish before then and completed the ride at 12:34 PM.

Comparing the two rides on this route the distances are close but my average speed was lower today. I’ll attribute that to the headwind.

The first thing I noticed about the wheel swap was the free wheel sound versus the silence of the DT Swiss wheels on the Canyon. It didn’t seem as loud though.

Heading south for 20 miles meant a headwind most of the time. This made it difficult to judge the Alpha 46 wheels for less effort. Only after the ride did I see the wind was 10 mph with 21 mph gusts. No wonder it was hard pedaling into the headwind. It was hard going up over the railroad overpass into a headwind but the ride down was nice. The overpass goes up quickly and I shifted to the 35×15 gear to go up but on the return climb I shifted to the 35×17 gears.

On the way back I stopped at Kingwood Bicycles to check on the Cervelo’s rear brake repair. Bad news, an o-ring split and a repair kit is needed to fix that. It won’t arrive for a couple of days so I’ll be riding the Canyon bike until then. That’s not bad, just not what I planned.