With rain clouds roaming the area I switch my planned route several times. Finally after answering the phone a number of times I got out the door at 1:50 PM heading on a northerly route to Community Drive. I kept a wary eye on some darker clouds moving around the somewhat blue sky as I rode through Kingwood on the way to US59 but no rain drops hit me. Earlier the radar showed some of this area might be getting rain and I saw some evidence in low spots in the pavement but the road surface was dry.

When I first got out my biking clothes I included a short sleeve and long sleeve jersey. I watched the temperature slowly limb to 74 so I left the short sleeve jersey off. As I rode I wished that I kept the short sleeve jersey and the long sleeve one. Despite the 74 degrees the wind chill (if there is one at 74 degrees) made it seem cooler than it should have. The 20 mph wind gusts did not help this any either. Hoping the exercise heat would offset the wind chill I continued riding. At some point the cloud cover got heavier and the temperature dropped to 72. The wind gusts went away but the steady wind went from 13 mph to 17.3 mph so the wind chill effect stayed active.

This route ended up at 28.36 miles at a 14.8 mph average speed, 22.4 mph top speed and 77.1 RPM average cadence. My average speed dropped some because I was in a school bus line on Community Drive slowly moving through the stop sign. At that point I also turned into the wind but I thought I was making up the lost time. riding time totaled 1:54:35 and 5:55 stop time. Other than the wind and school buses I did not run into any obstacles. The ride stats vary slightly on Garmin Connect and RideWithGPS.com. The last slide below shows the November summary fom RideWithGPS.com.

The next two days could be several degrees warmer than today. A good start for December. We still need rain.

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