Back in Kingwood after a trip to Lancaster, OH, to see my youngest grandson graduate from high school. With 3 days already gone in June I needed a longer than usual Saturday bike ride to make up for not riding two days. My goal for June is 800 miles or 27 miles per day. The route to add miles above the 27 was Kingwood – Stroker Road – Kingwood. I changed up some streets and added a couple before leaving Kingwood riding south on W. Lake Houston Parkway. The ride started at 8:43 AM on my Cervelo Caledonia bike hoping to see other cyclists like many Saturdays. I did see cyclists but I didn’t capture all of them in the video. By the time I finished at 12:12 PM I biked 44.9 miles, or 1.68 days towards my goal.

It wasn’t smooth biking though. I stopped in Town Center to adjust the GoPro mount. While getting off the bike I lost my balance getting my right foot high enough to clear the rear tire, danced around for a couple of seconds and ended up on the concrete. No damages to me or the Cervelo other than looking uncoordinated if anyone was watching.

Last Tuesday while getting the Cervelo rear brake fixed I looked at the rear cassette and chain and realized they long overdue to be replaced. Last night I replaced the rear cassette, chain, and the 35T chain ring. They were all the original parts from when I bought the Cervelo and had almost 7900 miles on them. The mechanic at the Rusty Spoke Bike Shop said he couldn’t remember seeing a chain with that much wear on the gauge. The cassette teeth were thin from the wear. Below is the new drive train.

Shifting gears now is smooth like a knife through hot butter. I promise to not wait so long the next time. The problem is the slow wear is not dramatic and easy to forget.

Getting used to the high humidity on today’s ride took some time. On my 2 rides in Lancaster the humidity was around 20% to 40%, rare for Houston. Today’s weather for the ride: Start 76 degrees, humidity 81%, dew point 70.1, mostly cloudy, wind W 7 mph; Finish 86 degrees, humidity 57%, dew point 69.4, mostly cloudy, wind calm. Light wind was good.