Thursday, 10/30/2025; 31 miles, 1018 feet of climb
Today was another great day for biking. It started at a friend’s house, ended at my son’s house, and in between was perfect weather for big city biking with all its conveniences.
——
My Apple Watch gave me my best sleep score of the trip: 94%! I think it’s because the guest room at De Konings’ house got down to 62°F. I haven’t seen sleeping temperatures that good since I left Wisconsin.
I’m getting spoiled by great breakfasts. Today, Amanda made pancakes, eggs, bacon, and coffee. I was not in a hurry to leave, because it was only 49°F outside when I woke up. I waited until it got to 58° around 10 AM before leaving so I wouldn’t have to wear my cold weather gear.
——
The shortest route to David’s house was only 22 miles, but he was working today, and it was a beautiful day with hardly any wind. That is rare for Texas.
So I followed Google Maps to the Alamo and the Riverwalk downtown. For those who don’t know, the Alamo was built as a Spanish mission in 1718. But it’s most famous for a battle in 1836 when a small band of stubborn Texans held out in it for 13 days against a much larger Mexican army.
It was fun to come see downtown San Antonio again. I first came here in 2017 when I stayed with Nate and Amanda to buy a car and to attend the international midwinter Barbershop Quartet convention.
——
After hanging around downtown for a while, I looked at Google maps to get to David’s house. The default plan was to go on a diagonal along the I-35 corridor, probably all service roads.
That did not sound very appealing, so I took the second option, and meandered through Alamo Heights. That was a great choice –– I went through beautiful neighborhood after beautiful neighborhood on quiet tree-lined streets with no cars.
I even found a Panda Express! It was great to have a place to sit, use the bathroom, and fill my water bottles. Oh, and I ate food, too.
The riding got a little more sketchy as I got further from downtown. I had to keep updating my ETA to David, because I ended up riding a lot of sidewalks to avoid high-traffic roads with no shoulders. Riding sidewalks is way slower.
——
When I finally made it to David’s house at 4:30, he greeted me a couple of blocks away on his skateboard!
His wife and baby stayed a few extra days in Iowa after a wedding, so I didn’t get to see them. But because David was batchin’ it, his next-door neighbors Gary & Tracy invited us over for dinner! It was fun to get a tour of Gary’s shop. He is a woodworker and metal worker and has lots of cool lathes and engraving instruments.
Gary cooked up some hamburgers with toasted buns. We also had broccoli and some ginger cream cookies for dessert that were sent by my wife with David from Iowa.
Then for the first time on this trip, I vegged out instead of updating my blog. David and I watched the DVD “Office Space” from 1999. This was on my list of movies to see. I noticed on my Google spreadsheet that it was recommended many years ago by my old boss, Tim Helvey. I’ll be working with him again next week, so now we’ll have something to talk about.
Tomorrow will be my last long day! I was originally going to ride halfway to Austin tomorrow, then the other half on Saturday. But since Friday will be crosswinds and Saturday will be direct headwinds, I’m going to try to push further tomorrow to give me a shorter day Saturday.
—————————————————-
TRANSLATIONS/BACKGROUND: “TEXBIRD” = Texas Bike Ride, my own nickname for the 800 miles in the middle of Southern Tier Bicycle Route, from El Paso to Austin, using maps from ACA (Adventure Cycling Association). This will complete my ride of the Southern Tier from the Pacific Ocean (San Diego) to the Atlantic Ocean (Jacksonville). (I biked the 1500 miles from Austin to Jacksonville in March 2024, and the 1000 miles from San Diego to El Paso in February 2025.)
—————————————————-
LINKS:
Old-fashioned BLOG if you have friends who don’t use Facebook:
“Old Scouter” Facebook page if you want to follow big adventures with more pictures and video clips (but not unrelated personal posts):
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066334039590
“Old Scouter” YouTube page (when I get time to edit after the trip):