When I was thinking about where to ride today I wanted to do something different. That can hard to do considering I’ve been biking for over 30 years from the same starting point. Add in that some places I ride to only have one way to get there and coming up with different routes can be challenging. What if I do a “freeform” bike ride based on a route used many times? That’s today’s bike ride. The base route is Atascocita – Walden – Huffman and the freeform part comes from making street choices in many places. The choices might be streets and greenbelt trails from other routes but not used in the base route. Some of these choices I made in advance and some as I turned a corner or rode on a street with optional turns that would go in the general direction. I had no idea what distance this would end with but hopefully equaled or exceeded the average for Atascocita – Walden – Huffman. It turned out to be a longer than average ride at 35.6 miles (the average is 34.3 miles). And I left out one greenbelt section back in Kingwood that probably would’ve added a mile or so. No mindless bike ride today.

This week now totals 140.94 miles making a 200+ mile look possible. June biking is up to 930.16 miles, the most in a month since October 2022 with 957.98 and I could surpass that on tomorrow’s ride.

Starting at 8:45 AM on my Cervelo Caledonia bike it wasn’t too far into the ride that I made the first choice and more followed not long afterwards. Another freeform decision was to not wear arm sleeves which I wear on each ride. I will return to wearing them because of they keep sweat from running down my arms but it was comforting to have the wind blowing on my arms. When I finished at 11:44 AM my arms were dripping. I almost wore wrist bands knowing the sweat could be a problem.

Weather: Start 85 degrees, 77% humidity, dew point 76.9, a few clouds, wind SW 8 mph; Finish 92 degrees, 58% humidity, dew point 75.4, mostly clear, wind S 7 mph.