Steve, Peggy, and I took off at 8:00 am this morning from Sonora Park in Kennedale, to ride my 86 mile Briaroaks route. It was a beautiful, cloudy morning, with a good south wind that picked up more later. We didn’t encounter as many dogs as last time, but there did seem to be a bit more traffic than usual. That’s to be expected on a holiday weekend, I guess. It was a very fun ride, but we do need to fire our navigator (that would be me). We wandered off course no less than three times. The first two times, we added bonus miles, but we more than made up for them when the third wrong turn ended up being a big shortcut.

We kept encountering the Honey Tour de Burleson ride route. This ride had people manning every turn, and they would try to keep us on course, even where we wanted to leave the course. I did not know this ride did as much of my Briaroaks route as it does; I guess I need to do this ride next year. All the people at the turns and rest stops seemed very friendly.

I was still pretty slow getting myself up the many hills on this route, but I rode much better than last time, and my exercise induced asthma never made a real appearance. The first half of the ride, mostly south from Kennedale to Grandview, is both an elevation rise and mostly against a south wind. By the time we left the store at our first stop, mile 22 south of Briaroaks, I was definitely feeling the work my legs were doing. But a lot of the roads on this stretch of the ride are completely covered by a canopy of treetops, and it helps a lot against a wind. Steve was the king of the city limit sign sprints this time. My sneaking ahead just before them only seems to work on a ride with Steve once. After that, he smokes me in the sprints.

At the ride turnaround point, a store in Grandview, we met a guy visiting from out of state, who seemed interested in our bikes. He asked us if we had mountain bikes, told us that was the riding he liked to do, then reached into his car and pulled out a photo album from a ride from his triathlon days. He paged through shirtless photo after shirtless photo, saying, “let me find the GOOD photo.” I was thinking, “Rut roh, is this a thingy photo or what?” But not, it was a photo of him on hands and knees, puking. Ah, the joys of competitive riding. We also did our good deed of the day at this stop, letting a young driver know that his rear tire was almost flat.

After heading back north, and getting lost one more time, we were on an especially scenic little road when it was mentioned that this was what riding was all about. We all had to agree. We ended up on CR401. This road took us into Alvarado, and we shortcutted from there to get back on the route. Once again, we encountered Honey Tour folks, who were trying to get us lined out after it appeared we had taken a wrong turn. By now, the clouds were thinner, and while riding with the wind at our backs was definitely faster, it was also much hotter. This is the time of year when none of us is used to the heat yet, but we all felt good as we rode on.

At the last stop at a store near Rendon, we were a hot crew sitting munching and drinking inside the store at a picnic table. It had already gotten so late that I knew Steve and Peggy were going to be way late for their afternoon commitment, so I shortcutted the route from there. At the FM1187 traffic light, we had our only mechanical incident of the day when I popped my Corsa’s seat out of its bracket while having trouble unclipping (you really do need to lube those Bebop cleats every once in a while). It made my seat slide back so far my fastback bag was dragging my rear wheel. But, it was fixed in short order, and we finished the ride in great spirits.

This is really a scenic route that more rbenters need to see. The 33 mile route really doesn’t reach the most scenic part of the route, but the 53 mile version does travel some of it. We ended up with 80.8 miles today. My average speed was 15.0 mph. The route had 3,000 feet of climbing. I am definitely toast, and weighed a full 8 pounds less after the ride than when I got up this morning (guess I need to do less talking and more drinking on these rides).