New Route Exploring to May Park
I was trying to think of a different route to ride today. A place I drove to but biked to is the May Park and Community Center north of Huffman. I biked past the road that takes you there so today I looked up the area on Google Maps to look at the roads. I knew there was a road from the park to Hargrave High School on Huffman – Eastgate Road but I wasn’t sure of the name and where it went to get there. The goal was to ride 40 miles or more but since this was a first time for this group of streets and roads the mileage was a guess. To help I added some extra streets in the early part of the ride and that was a good idea. I ended up biking 39.83 miles so the goal was almost reached.
Before leaving on the ride I installed my Father’s Day present DT Swiss RWS skewer. Removing the old skewer I inserted the DT Swiss one and turned the lever clockwise like the instructions said. The left chain stay got in the way of tightening as tight as it needed to be. Looking at the instructions I couldn’t see how to engage the ratchet so I went to Youtube. There were a couple of videos showing how to tighten the lever. I needed to pull the lever away from bike and then turn it clockwise. Silly me, why wasn’t this clear? After watching the videos the instruction graphic made sense. I tightened the lever and checked the wheel position between the chain stays. It was in the center. At the Huffman Chevron rest stop I checked the wheel again and it was right where it was supposed to be. Success!!! To loosen pull the lever away from the bike and turn counter clockwise.
It was hot again today. I left home (11:27) earlier than yesterday but I was delayed trying to figure out the skewer. My home weather station had it in the upper 90’s at the start and 94 when I got back home at 3:00. The wind was from the ESE at 13 mph. This made the headwind tough and slowed me. Until about the 25 mile point it was about all headwind. Once I got back on FM1960 near the Liberty County line the wind was from the left rear quarter. I picked up my speed at that point and my average speed started going up. I never did get it very high (15.2 mph was the highest average speed) maintaining it at 15.1 mph until the 37.6 mile point.
The weather forecast calls for 94 degrees and partly cloudy. Just like today. I hope to start earlier then.
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