I waited until 11:19 AM to start today’s bike ride giving the rain clouds time to move out and the streets to dry. Since I wasn’t planning on riding today based on yesterday’s forecast I chose a shorter route: “Kingwood to FM1960”. I wanted to ride far enough to get June’s total over 500 miles. The 28.29 miles did that moving June to 512.32 miles, 64% of the way to my goal.

The title for today’s post comes from the flat tire I experienced as I rode through Woodridge Forest on a street with houses under construction. About 4.7 miles into the ride I heard this loud noise from my rear tire and quickly stopped to see what happened. Rotating the tire the long rusty nail stood out from the tire. No problem finding where the hole was.

Walking over to a house under construction I made my way up the sidewalk to the front porch where I could lean the Canyon and have a place to sit. I tugged on the nail to position so I could get the tire bead loose without damaging the carbon rim, got my tire levers out, patch kit out, and my pump. The nail was hard to pull out of the tire because it rings on it but I got it loose. Pulling the tube out of the tire I found the pair of holes, roughed up the tube surface, applied some glue from a new patch kit, and waited for it to dry. After the glue was ready I applied the patch over both holes pressing firmly and pushed the tube back in the tire without testing my work. Remounting the tire I pumped up the tire until it felt hard enough, inserted the wheel back in the frame and put all of my tools back where they belonged. During my work I looked up and saw a pole in the front yard with two cameras aimed at the house so someone will be able to watch my repair. Maybe that is why this patching went smoothly and worked the first time. When I got home I used my floor pump to top off both tires to 100 PSI.

I resumed the ride without any problems from the patched tire. As I rode I thought of the streets I would ride on to get the miles I wanted and decided to ride all of the new Atascocita Hike & Bike trail to see where it went north of Kings Park Way.

Riding to the southern trailhead of the trail I start riding north. Ahead of me were two bikers wearing bright orange tops. As we approached Kings Park Way I saw they were two women. The walked across Kings Park Way while I went left to follow the trail to a crossing. It didn’t take me too long to catch up with them as we passed some walkers on the trail. Not long after that I learned where the trail went; as it passed west of Life Time Fitness parking lot it made a u-turn around the end of the drainage ditch and back to Kings Park Way. At the crossing the two ladies waited for traffic as I pulled up behind them and we talked about the trail making a loop and that it would have been nice if it connected to the Life Time Fitness parking lot or Upper Lake Drive and other trails.

The street beside the crossing went the direction I wanted to go and I headed back to Kingwood riding the greenbelt along W. Lake Houston Parkway from Upper Lake Drive to north of Pollo Loco where I crossed W. Lake Houston Parkway and rode the last 2 miles to finish at 1:43 PM.

Tuesday’s weather will be drier and hotter. I plan on biking to take advantage of that.