Tour De Houston

Lunch on City Hall Mall

I'm not nearly as active and I use to be (comes with having kids). I started running after Eliza was born and it just was not working for me. So I picked up an old Trek on Craigslist in January for $100.00. A group of us started riding Saturday mornings. Houston is not a bike-friendly city, if fact riding on anything with two wheels is considered a suicide mission here.

This is the 4th year the City has hosted the "Tour de Houston". Its a ride through the city. You can choose the 20mile, 40 mile or 70 mile loop. My though was, if I'm paying $25.00, you better believe I am going to ride more than 20 miles, but I have a mountain bike so 70 is probably out of the question so I settled on the 4o mile ride.

My friend Jed and I got up early and headed downtown where we met 5,000 riders. I didn't even know that many people owned bikes in Houston. But out of them I probably had the crappiest bike there. The ride started at city hall, journeyed through a "historic neighborhood" which was more like the ghetto where we were the main attraction for the day. It was one of those place where the only thing that went through my mind for 20 minutes was "please don't let me get a flat tire". Then we got on the hardy toll road, which they shut down for several miles so we didn't have to compete with traffic, went east and ended up on a golf course in an upscale development. And then back again.

The last 3 miles I was feeling the burn as we have a very strong headwind. We ended up back at city hall, where they had lunch on the mall and an excellent live band. The weather was beautiful and it was great to see the city at a slower pace. The whole event was very well organized, we had a great time, maybe next year I'll shoot for the seventy.

Rest stop on the Hardy Toll Road

The Final stretch back into downtown

Bike shorts do look flattering on anyone, me included.

Downtown Houston