The Cool(er) Way Home

As the summer starts its slow slide towards fall, the days get shorter, but it's still pretty hot around North Texas. Surprisingly, as long as you don't mind a little sweat (lovely glistening for the Lovely Bicycle crowd), it's not bad riding home from work as long as you've been acclimatized.

When the thermometer gets in the 100F ballpark, however, I do make some route changes. One of those has been described here . I also mentioned that I do ride home past the guinea fowl's abode on hot days. Part of that route is shown at right. You can see that it's got REAL GOOD shade. The street is Oak Knoll in Colleyville. It's my regular "to work" route, but I take Hall Johnson home unless it's hot. Why? Silly question. Hot days lead to a Starbucks detour, complete with free, triple filtered ice water. Once I'm at Starbucks, this route becomes slightly quicker than Hall Johnson. If it's not so hot out, I dispense with the ice water detour.

Sometimes things other than pure distance influence our route choices.

For those not obsessed with checking out everything on Google Maps Streetview, Hall Johnson is a four lane road that's the main east-west route. Oak Knoll is, as pictured, a relaxed two laner that diagonally drifts in the direction I want to go and is nice & scenic. Hall Johnson is quicker and motorists pass me without even realizing they've changed lanes and gone around. In the morning, Cheek Sparger isn't clogged up so Oak Knoll is a slightly better choice. It's all about where the traffic clogs up...