So it has been a while since posting anything, sorry to both of you who actually read this stuff to see what I have been up to since the move.

Weather has been nice and I have been riding, not writing junk on the internet. That said, time for some writing on the internet.

Today was nice. Front blew through and it rained about 12 drops this morning, then cleared out bringing clear skies and a shift in the wind. Yesterday it was roaring out of the southerly directions, 15-25 mph, with gusts 40+ according to the local weather sites.
Being the smart one I am, I decided to ride in that nonesense. I headed out into the wind down the Trinity River Trail. This slogfest went on for about 10 miles before I decided I would seek some shelter on the roads in the neighborhoods south of TCU, Westcliff, Overton Park etc. This did afford some shelter and I could actually make progress in the southerly direction at times. This area has some nice small climbs rising from the tributary that runs through Overton Park and into the Clear Fork. Nothing more than a couple tenths of a mile, but some steepness nonetheless. So I rode up and down some of these roads for a while...Ranch View, Sarita, Altura...I think I may make a hill repeat type training loop in this area, hit all of these hills in succession and repeat. That could add up over a while and leave the legs nice and heavy no doubt. There is little traffic which is a bonus.
After hitting this for a bit the setting sun prodded me to head back towards the TRT and venture home. Having a decent tailwind now I put my head down and cruised back, at one point almost getting blown over when encountering a ricochet wind off a building next to the path. It was like someone hit me with a 4x8 sheet of plywood. Luckily earth-body contact was avoided and a safe trip was completed.

Today, as stated, was nice. Temps were in the low 70s, maybe upper 60s when I headed out, with the wind coming out of the N/NW at a gentle 10-15 mph. I spent about 90 or so minutes cruising, hit some of the same hills as yesterday as I started to put together a potential training route, and had a generally nice time. The big negative was the major insect hatch in full effect along the Trinity River Trail. Major swarms of something, didn't get a good look which is incredible considering I probably hit about 214,000 of the things, about a third of which stuck to various parts of my body. I felt like a human flypaper. at one point I spent about a half mile trying not to inhale the damn things by attempting to breathe the the gap in my front teeth. This was not very effective. Good thing those things don't bite otherwise there would have been some walkers that were way more miserable than me.

In other random observations, I saw a group of about 20 to 30 riding back along Bellaire, looked pretty casual overall. Nice to see group rides going on, gotta get into a few of those here soon myself. Ok, enough excitement for one night.