Wednesday and Thursday are getting to be weather change days. Last week a front moved through on those days and this week repeated. Yesterday afternoon the weather start to turn great but too late to get a ride in. Today though the weather was super. A clear sky, light 9 mph east breeze (calm most of the time) and temperature ranging from 75 to 81 at the finish. I don’t how I could ask for a better riding day for April. In a month or so the weather will be heating up. I did wear a short sleeve jersey over a long sleeve one in case the wind was cooler than the thermometer said. This was a fitting choice and I was comfortable no matter if I was with or riding into the wind.

Because of the two days off I decided I could ride a long ride so I tackled the “grass farm” route. This takes me to south of Huffman and then onto back roads to US90 and then Crosby. From Crosby I rode to Sheldon, Deussen Park and then I took a break in Summerwood at the Shell station before going north on W. Lake Houston Parkway.  When I was on Old Atascocita Road at the railroad crossing I caught up with two other riders waiting for the slow train to clear the crossing. They were from Kingwood and planned to ride about 40 miles on part of the route I was taking. After the train left I rode ahead of them and waited at FM2100 to give them two Texbiker.net business cards. Their names were Evan and Kristen. I wished them a good ride and rode on ahead of them. The route ended up at 54.46 miles. To show how great the weather was and my rested legs I averaged 16.1 mph on the route. I was very surprised.

At Crosby I stopped at McDonald’s for some ice water and a restroom break. The road surface on Old Beaumont Highway was recently replaced. The white edge lines had little  bumps to cause some noise when vehicles drive over them but they are not so bike friendly when the shoulder has stuff in it and I needed to move to the left of the white line. Thankfully the shoulder widened once i got past the Sheldon Industrial Park entrance.

After I left the Shell station in Summerwood I rode on W. Lake Houston Parkway to Will Clayton Parkway. Normally the traffic is not too heavy but my timing was not very good since it was after 4 PM on a Friday afternoon. I did not have any problems and all the vehicles gave me space when they passed. Once I was on Will Clayton the traffic decreased some. The next time I got into heavy traffic was when I returned to W. Lake Houston Parkway after riding on some back streets.

I started riding at 1:01 PM and got back home at 5:14.

April miles total 286.95 and year to date is 1601.59 miles. Links to Garmin Connect and RideWithGPS.com stats and maps.

In my April 6th ride report I went over my tire usage. The April 11th Texbiker.net Daily News Roundup lead article was The Great Tire Rotation Debate from RoadBikeRider.com. So yesterday I decided it was time to rotate my tires. The debate centers around which rotation method do bicyclists use. I use two depending on the mileage of the tires. My choice yesterday was to remove the front tire, move the rear tire to the front and install a new tire on the rear. I chose this method so that these tires wear out I will replace both with new tires. The front tire I removed had over 6500 miles on it and the rear tire I moved to the front had about 2500. If I get the same wear again the newly moved and installed tires both should wear out at the same time later this year.

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