Nighttime and morning severe thunderstorms necessitated a TST meeting at 7am and resulted in a 2 hour delayed start this Sunday morning out of Austin. I didn’t mind too much as very wet stormy cycling isn’t my idea of fun, and it provided the chance to catch up on bookkeeping. However, Sunday mornings are typically a gorgeous cycling day, and the route was to take us on 20 miles of a gorgeous, but now notoriously busy, two lane road with no shoulders. The later the start, the more traffic.
In addition to the storms, the Cap10, the largest running event in Texas, was happening in downtown Austin with 25,000 runners! We spent quite a bit of time yesterday evaluating our planned route cycling out of town due to the event’s conflicting running route. But in the end Louise Joy, my college mate, assured us that taking the riverfront path west out of town would be no problem. And that’s how it went! Fun to see the miles and miles of runners/walkers but always slow navigating into and out of big cities.
The 50.0 miles, 3878’ was a very full, humid West Hills of Texas country kind of ride. We missed any serious rain; winds from south and east were mostly favorable; I did have to slow down quite a bit on downhills due to xwind; roads were mostly dry; drivers on the narrow, no shoulder roads abided by their TX motto of “friendly” except for one angry young man in a red pickup traveling the opposite direction who felt the need to slow down and yell at us to “get off the … road!” I just gave him my usual happy wave. Wildflowers are still beautiful and abundant, and many cacti are blooming. Going to try and dash out and visit LBJ’s home here in Johnson City.
TransAm Cycle 3.0 