The weather forecast let me down today. I got my new wind breaker jacket out of the closet where I expected it would stay until fall, silly me. I got dressed at started the bike ride at 12:17 PM with the temperature at 67 degrees. The forecast said the high would be 82 so that is what let me down. The new Voler Caliber Wind Jacket.

I selected the “Atascocita – Walden – Huffman” route and biked 32.92 miles. This pushed my April total to 323.36 miles, 54% of the way to my 600 mile goal.

Before the ride started I took these photos of the Knockout Roses beside our garage. The spring weather produced all of the red blooms.

With the cooler temperatures I dressed for warmth with shorts, a thermal long sleeve jersey, leg warmers, and the Voler wind jacket. Regular biking gloves were warm enough.

I didn’t get to bike yesterday (Thursday) because we got back later than I expected from the medical center. So I figured my legs had time to recover from Wednesday 48+ mile ride but I soon found out the wind overpowered my legs when I was exposed to a headwind. The hardest segment was riding east over Lake Houston on FM 1960. Up to that point I managed to keep my speed close to 15 mph but the wide open spaces over the water dropped that to below 12 mph. It wasn’t until I made the right turn onto Fairlake Drive that some relief allowed my legs to recover some.

Riding north on FM 2100 gave me time to recover some and the ride west on FM 1960 was much easier with the tailwind helping. Winding through Atascocita the streets moved me from tailwind to headwind but I was able to keep my speed at 15 mph or above.

Back in Kingwood the trees and buildings held the wind back some. I avoided the school traffic and finished the ride at 2:48 PM.

Saturday I planned on riding in Liberty, TX, but the weather looks very wet. I will check the forecast later tonight to see if it changes.

2017 leads 2019 miles while 2016 and 2018 trail 2019.