When I looked at wunderground.com this morning before leaving on the ride I knew the wind waited to buffet me as I rode. The wind showed 15 mph from the SSE with 21 mph gusts. This meant the open exposed areas could be challenging to say the least. My route selection took me south to FM1960 before heading east over Lake Houston and almost to the Liberty county line. From there I rode back to Huffman and then on home. As expected the wind slowed me down until I reached FM1960 from Huffman-Eastgate. From that point the remaining 14+ miles was with the wind.

We are experiencing about 10 degree warmer than normal weather with the low around 70 and the high about 90. Today when I left at 10:13 it was 78 degrees with 79% humidity thanks to the strong wind coming off the Gulf of Mexico. Sometimes the wind decreases after I begin riding but not today. When I got home at 12:47 the wind did go down to 13 mph but the gusts increased to 22 mph still from the SSE. Of course with the mid-morning start the temperature went up while I rode settling at 87 degrees by the time I finished. The humidity went the other direction dropping to 53% so I did not perspire too much during the ride. My Wrist bands and gloves stayed relatively dry. This warm weather should be around until the end of the week.

The route I biked today went on familiar streets but some were in the opposite direction. For example I usually ride west on Huffman-Eastgate but today I went east. The same goes with FM1960 from the Liberty county line to Huffman. I tweaked the first two miles of the ride to get 2 miles before I reached Bear Branch Elementary school in Kingwood. This gets me to certain milestones along my route that helps me judge how long the ride will go. There were several sections that exposed me to the wind so my overall average dropped slightly below the typical level to 15.3 mph and my top speed was 20.7 mph according to SportTracks. For a change Garmin Connect and RideWithGPS.com closely agreed. The route distance totaled 34.63 miles which also corresponded to Garmin Connect and RideWithGPS.com numbers. October mileage is now 557.54 and 5854.38 YTD miles. I pedaled at a 78.5 RPM average cadence.

One thing I noticed while riding was the new surface on Huffman-Eastgate Road. For some reason this road suffers from “asphalt slip” where the asphalt slides to the shoulder during the summer or other hot times. This causes large cracks in the road and uneven places that just want to swallow a bike tire. This road gets a lot of traffic since Hargrave High School is on this road which doesn’t help the asphalt slip. During my ride the road’s traffic consisted of 3 or 4 cars plus two Harris County Precinct 4 tractors mowing the weeds on the roadside. When school lets out the flood of school buses can be overwhelming. Some of the other routes suffer from asphalt slip so much that I ride in the opposite lane.

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