Day 13: Navasota to Cleveland

This year’s tour includes thirty-two riders.  Twenty-four of these came as pairs, either couples or friends who often ride tours together.  The remaining eight came alone.

It’s a big deal to come on a tour alone because everyday you have to either ride alone or glom onto a couple who rides about your speed and doesn’t mind you being a tick on the back of their wheel. 

If the terrain is hilly and there’s no wind, it doesn’t matter if you ride alone because climbing hills often separates people anyway.  On a day like today, however, it’s a great thing to find a train to glom onto.

In a group, you feel safer, more enthusiastic, and you zoom along as something greater than yourself -- a super-organism humming down the road faster and farther than its parts could go by themselves. 

Today was one of those good group ride days.  Flat.  63 miles.  Wide shoulder, but heavy traffic.  There’s power in numbers, so many people grouped up just to make sure all those cars knew we were there.

From Navasota we crossed north of Houston from fields of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush into the beginning of the east Texas woods.  These are thick evergreen forests of verdant green.  It feels like we’re in the east now (at least to a westerner).  The fields are green because of rainfall rather than irrigation, there is moss on some of the trees, and the humidity and pollen counts are up.

Texas bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush along the road

The east Texas woods line a sandy river

At the end of the day, it felt like the tour was almost done with only one short (i.e., 53 mile) day to go.  Why, we can whip that out before breakfast with these watermelon thighs we’ve massed in the last two weeks.  So people sat by the pool, snoozed, read, ate, and played Carol’s famous “left-right-and center”, which means that we handed our money over to Deb and Rich. 

Ron, Rachel & Carol (both hidden), Deb, Emily, Ruth, Kathleen, Pat, Rich, Patty, and Andy play “left-right-center”.