2:08:55

That's how long the computer says I rode my bike today.

It was a perfect day for a ride. I started off with the foolish notion of riding down to my office & back, just to see how long it would take and determine whether the roads were relatively bike-friendly. My normal driving route is 13 miles and definitely *not* bike-friendly: skinny, two lane roads with no shoulder & lots of trucks. So I had this plan to go a different way.

I actually started off going that way, but I went to mom & dad's instead, a little 6-mile jaunt. There, I sat on the couch, blabbed with mom (who was fixin' to go play golf) & sucked down a bottle of water. When I left, I meant to loop around by the new Wal*Mart and back home, but it was a nice day. So I did the stupid thing & rode all the way to the office :)

The relatively bike-friendly one-way route is just shy of 15 miles, which is pretty much an hour in each direction. Or, according to the bike computer, one hour and one minute there & one hour and not quite eight minutes home. Aside from being tired on the ride home, there was a headwind for the last seven-ish painful miles. (whine whine whine)

The headwind is one of those 'matter of perspective' things. The trees aren't moving, so it's hard to say "oh yes, it's windy." But the weather page says we have a 10 mph wind. When you are on a bike, pedaling your brains out to achieve an average speed of 15 mph, that 10 mph wind is a brick wall. The nice thing about a good wind is that The Woodlands has lots of big fountains in ponds alongside the road. When it's windy, the fountains spray water all over hot, sweaty, tired cyclists, making them smile. (The fact that the water in those ponds is sort of yucky is another matter entirely.)

The other thing that is a 'matter of perspective' on a bike is the definition of 'hill.' For example, when I left my house, my street was flat. When I got home, after 2 hours on the bike, it was entirely uphill, including the driveway. Go ahead and laugh if you are from NJ or upstate NY or any other place with real hills, but for those who think of southeast Texas as flat, you may see it differently from a skinny, hard bicycle seat.

Parts that are going to be complaining tomorrow: butt (already complaining), neck (already complaining), hands (a little whiny), thighs (not complaining yet, but extremely likely tomorrow).