Ulysses had his sirens and I have my road bike. After three days riding my mountain bike I gave into the call from my road bike from the other side of the garage. To be honest I tried to stay with my plan to ride my mountain bike but I saw the mileage for three days and realized that one good road bike trip would equal that effort. So to get that mileage I decided to ride the New Caney – FM1485 E – Huffman route again and not get lost this time. I can report I was successful. This time I turned on Hargraves Street where I should have and then took the streets to get me through the Commons of Lake Houston without one wrong turn. The route rode correctly now totaled 41.81 miles instead of the 47 some miles when I wandered off course the last time.

Just to show how my return to the road went I checked my average speed a few times towards the end: 35 miles = 16.2 mph, 38 miles = 16.2 mph and the ending average 16.0 mph. I am not exactly sure why I maintained this average speed but I will take it. Supposedly a “cool” front could approach southeast Texas this weekend but during the ride the air felt cool compared to my other rides. Max speed was 22.3 mph. When I got home and checked the temperature it wasn’t that cool though at 96 degrees. I could have started earlier than 10:26 AM but I took care of some small chores and double checked the Google map for the Commons of Lake Houston to get the streets I needed to turn on. Scattered clouds over top of me meant the sun kept me warm and the light 8.1 mph SW breeze helped a little but I still seated up a storm. When I got to the Huffman Chevron station I wrung out my gloves to create a puddle on the concrete that was still wet when I left about 30 minutes later.

I thought my ride heading west over Lake Houston on FM1960 would be the usual one but when I got there the repair crews moved from the south side of the causeway to the north side so I rode the east bound should going west until I got past the construction barriers on the north side. So Now my rides to Huffman will need to jog to get around this repair work.

Other ride statistics:

• 2:36:44 riding time
• 41:14 time stopped (mostly drinking a 32 oz Diet Coke in Huffman)
• 80.9 RPM average cadence
• 89.07 miles this week (today almost doubled the first 3 days combined)
• 211.28 miles for August
• 4146.24 miles YTD
• link to RideWithGPS.com data and map

8-9-2012 Bike Ride Data and Map

8-9-2012 Cadence-Distance

8-9-2012 Elevation-Distance

8-9-2012 Home Weather Station End

8-9-2012 IAH Weather End

8-9-2012 Speed-Distance

8-9-2012 Splits-Time

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