I’ve frequently said that to be a cyclist in Houston, you have to REALLY like cycling.  Pretty much everything is stacked against you.

First there’s the weather.  It’s hot.  It’s humid.  Air so damp and thick you can almost chew it.  They may have covered the ground with concrete and manicured lawns but the air betrays what’s really going on.  You’re living in a swamp.   And it’s that way for eight or nine months of the year.

I used to join in on a standing Saturday morning group ride out the west side of Houston.  The ride was 95 miles and it was a bunch of racer types so it was lively.  During the summer we’d roll at 6:30 a.m. to beat as much of the heat as possible but I still remember going through six full-sized bottles of Gatorade/water mix and at least one coke and dragging myself home after four hours and being so dehydrated that I didn’t pee until bedtime.

And let’s just say Houston is not the most bike-friendly city.  Despite improvements over the past couple of years, if you ride a bike on the road in Houston you’re pretty much viewed as a freak or a nuisance by most of the population.  In 20+ years of riding there I’ve been honked at and flipped off more times than I can count.  I’ve had half-empty beer cans thrown at me, been clipped by pickup mirrors, and run off the road by careless right turns.  Once, one of my buddies and I were actually chased up on a front lawn by a car because the unhinged driver thought our riding in the bike lane was impeding her latte run in some way.

The only other option is to load the bikes on the car and drive for an hour or more out to trails and less vehicle-infested roads.  While we did that plenty of times, it gets old.

In my newly adopted stomping grounds, I jump on my bike, roll out of my driveway, cross the road and I’m on my neighborhood feeder trail.   In less than a quarter of mile I’m at the local trailhead.

And the trails go on for what seems like forever.  Miles of magical bench cut, with swooping turns, fast downhills and heart pounding uphills.  And all the in-town trails are rated using a green/blue/black ski-style rating so you can pic your gnar level based on your mood.

This week’s ride stats:

Average temperature at start:            68 F

Number of cars encountered:            0

Number of times flipped off:              0

I’ve clearly died and gone to heaven.