excellent spring ride

[marni]

Did an excellent spring ride yesterday with a couple of riding buddies. We rode out of Columbus, Texas, about an hour to the west of houston and into the start of the Texas Hill Country. Most of the hills were short and not to terrible except for one stretch of "tennessee" tye hills, the kind tht are a short sharp shock and tend to hide behind curves so that they can leap at you and yell surprise! Never had to resort to the granny granny gear but got pretty close a couple of times. At best my hill speed is just short of tipping over but there were a couple of nice long downhills where we got up to the mid 30 mph just coasting.

We saw lots of bluebonnets which are out, in spite of the drought, not as tall or heavy as some previous years but not quite as sparse as the last two years. Also pink and lavendar wild dianthus, yellow goat weed, red and burgundy wine cups, pale pink and white evening primrose and lots of orange indian paintbrush. The temperature was a nice mid 70's a low humidity, the wind was its usual 15-20 mph in your face and hills were challenging but all in all it was a great ride. Since I usually ride alone it was especially nice to have a couple of other people along including a male friend of Lens who seemed content to ride with us at our sedate pace.

42 miles 3:15 average speed 13.7

The photo: from left to right are riding buddies Maria, Len and myself.