Day 27 – January 5th

Yesterday, after a tasty breakfast in a local Liberty, Texas diner, we rode with new fully inflated tubes in our tires all the way into the Houston Metropolitan Area. WOWZA! Talk about some traffic.

Ryan and I found ourselves on a literal 8 lane road amongst thousands of cars and no shoulder. We stuck out like sore thumbs!

We found that riding inside the car’s lane was safest. They saw you more as a vehicle and would go around rather than try to squeeze by, but I can’t help wondering how many Texas drivers we made very angry at the inconvenience.

After that madness you can imagine our relief to end up on a LONG bike path through the city completely secluded and free of any motorized vehicles. It was paradise. We also met many cool people who stopped to talk along the way!

Our destination was to stay with old family friends of mine in Spring, Texas just outside of Houston, Bruce, Jennifer, Alexia, and Blake Chidester.

We had a really nice time catching up and hearing about their insanely busy and inspiring lives. Lexi and Blake are both very talented smart and fun to talk to. I admire their confidence and gusto! Jennifer and Bruce gracefully run their family and work lives and were wonderful hosts making us comfortable and feeding us well 👍🏼

They treated us to the biggest plate of nachos I have ever seen at Tacos To Go. These “garbage nachos” arrive in a huge metal can that they shake out on your plate all gooey and smothered 😍 wow we were full but it was worth it.

Thank you so much to the Chidesters for feeding us, giving us a comfortable place to sleep, a glorious warm shower and clean clothes ❤️ Thank you also for the insightful conversations and letting us turn your house into a bike maintenance shop!

We are 150 miles from our long anticipated destination, Austin, Texas where we plan to take a couple of weeks off to live with Ryan’s close friends. Let’s ride!

Route info for interested readers:

We left Liberty, Texas on Highway 90 and then got onto 1960. This long stretched went from rural to crazy urban and busy. It took us all the way through Humble (pronounces “Umble”) and the we turned right onto Deerbrook Park Blvd, a very welcome quiet road up into Jesse H. Jones Park and Nature Center where we took an amazing bike path about 8 miles north. We got off the path at Pundt Park and turned left onto Spring Creek Drive. We turned right onto Cypresswood Dr. then right on Lexington Road and left on Louetta.