It was a beautiful fall day here, and I rode a solo century from home, today. I am putting the finishing touches on a 161k (100 mile) permanent route, and decided to ride the route today (starting from home rather than the nearby designated start), taking notes and making final corrections for the cue sheet. Since I would be riding an easy pace and stopping often, I grabbed Rose’s camera, and took it along.

Mile 7: It doesn’t take long for the route to get out of Crowley and Burleson and onto tree lined Johnson County county roads.

Solo Century
10/24/09 at 18:57:39 Quote Modify Remove
It was a beautiful fall day here, and I rode a solo century from home, today. I am putting the finishing touches on a 161k (100 mile) permanent route, and decided to ride the route today (starting from home rather than the nearby designated start), taking notes and making final corrections for the cue sheet. Since I would be riding an easy pace and stopping often, I grabbed Rose’s camera, and took it along.

Mile 7: It doesn’t take long for the route to get out of Crowley and Burleson and onto tree lined Johnson County county roads.

Mile 10: Up the hill and around the curve.

Mile 12: Two weeks ago, I was dropped on this short, steep hill, by a man walking a dog (I smoked them on the downhill, though).

Mile 17: The Buel Cemetery has been there quite a while.

Mile 19: Curses, it’s a short stretch of genuine Texas boulderseal.

Mile 51: The halfway point of the route is the thriving populace of Blum, Texas.

Mile 56: The tentative name for the route is Crowley Cricket Crunch (bikely map here), and here’s the route namesake, although he did escape on this day.

Mile 57: Hilltop view south of Rio Vista.

Mile 70: My driveway is wider than this county road.

Mile 90: Nothing more fun that a good hill that pitches up steep at the top, at mile 90.

Mile 92: Ridgetop view looking east; that’s Burleson in the distance.

Mile 93: Northwest view from the same ridgetop.

I ended up with 101.4 miles (a bit extra since I started from home).

This morning at dark-thirty, I hopped on my SXP, and joined the ranks of those who bike to work. After moving to Crowley last month, I have been a lot closer to work, so this morning, I filled the Aerotrunk I just got from Nelson with a load that evblazer would be proud of (well, maybe not quite THAT much), and headed to work. The weatherman had predicted no rain today, so of course, it started misting before I got a mile from home, and misted all the way to work.

You can see the bikely map of the route I took here. I used side streets to get out of Crowley, then took Crowley Road all the way to Sycamore School Road, a little over half a mile down Sycamore School Road, then side streets the rest of the way to work. Crowley Road has a wide, paved shoulder on the stretch that I rode.

I had no issues at all. I think it’s a good route. Traffic this morning was very light. The only heavy traffic I got in was on the way home, riding down that stretch of Sycamore School Road. There are three lanes each direction, two traffic lights and a railroad track on that short stretch, so the traffic isn’t really high speed, and people had no problem getting around me.

I rode an easy pace on this new route in the dark going to work, averaging 13.2 mph for that stretch. It’s more uphill going home, but I averaged 14.1 mph on that part of the ride anyway, being confident in the route and more comfortable with riding in daylight. There are a couple of short, steep hills to climb on the return route, but it’s a fairly flat route. It was 12.6 miles to work, and 12.5 miles coming home.

I’ll be a fair weather commuter, skipping the really rainy or cold days. Hopefully, I can ride to work two or three days a week. Comments at work ranged from, “I should ride MY bike to work” to “You rode from Crowley, are you CRAZY?”