Sunday Wandering bike ride

The summer weather is upon us and the bike riding is no longer easy. Today was 92 degrees, 80% humidity and 15 mph winds in my face a lot of the time. I am riding solo since Marni is off Woman's Touring so I was pretty much able to pick my own ride route as well as speed and stopping places. When I'm riding with her, it seems that we are always in training and I find it nice sometimes to just wander and explore with no speed or distance goals in mind.

Today there were a lot of new wild flowers in bloom that I had not seen before, this year at least. I am in the process of taking photos of all the wldflowers we see along the road and may put together a biker's guide to wildflowers in Southeast Texas. The idea is to make is small and light so a road biker could take it along as he / she rides. A selection of my photos for the day are shown below. I haven't determined their names yet but that comes later.

I stopped as usual at our favorite Sunday coffee shop, Fill Your Cup at rt 90A and Rt 356. They are very friendly and genuinely happy to see us. They have good coffee, smoothies and brown sugar scones so what more could a biker want. Here's a picture of the co owner and barrista with a typical big grin.

I purposely routed the end of my ride to go by the Cricket pitch. There are an amazing number of Indians, Pakistanis and a few Brits who play in an 18 team league here in Houston. They even compete with other leagues in Dallas and beyond. Its a bit surreal to see cricket being played in the middle of a cow pasture in cowboy land. See below.

In all I made over 39 miles, got a lot of good pictures, and most important, didn't let myself get overheated, dehydrated or otherwise bonked out. A good ride with lots to see and enough to stretch me out and put a good ache in the leg muscles.