Day 6 - Gonzales to Columbus

The Route

Gonzales to Columbus is a very sparsely populated route. Today's route will cover approximately 70 miles and only pass through 3 towns. While it is the shortest leg of our trip, the lack of available support along the way will make it a little more difficult to pick up the necessary liquid and food supplies. The towns should provide some interesting contrast to the bustling cities of Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. We will also be traveling a different direction today, which will hopefully provide some relief from the constant head wind we have been experiencing.

Another great big thanks to John Bolmanski and Sharon Cooper of the Texas Lung Association for helping with today's route. The roads had very little traffic and provided some beautiful Texas countryside for our viewing pleasure.

The Ride

The wide open spaces of Texas was the theme of today's ride. We ride by ranch after ranch, pasture after pasture, and windmill after windmill. It was a pleasant relief from the traffic of yesterday's Alt-US90, as well as a return to smooth roads. The only towns we went through today were Moulton, Oakland, and then Columbus. Moulton had a population of 700, Oakland had 45, and Columbus is a town of 4000. Moulton provided a decent stop with a convenience store to buy the necessary liquids to continue, but Oakland didn't have a store of any kind. As you will notice below Oakland barely had enough people to have a post office.

Another incident plagued today's ride as one of the spokes on my rear wheel broke. With the weight of the panniers and all the gear we are carrying the racing wheels I usually ride aren't really set up for the continuous weight that needs to be carried for these rides. With a little bit of work we were able to take a spoke from the front wheel and use it to replace the broken spoke in the rear. Since the rear wheel is carrying almost all of the weight, the front wheel should be fine with 31 spokes instead of 32. When we get to Houston we should be able to find an appropriate bike shop to get the repair completed. Until then I will hope for the best and ride with a slightly wobbly front wheel.

Moulton

We stopped here to work on the wheel repair and to locate a place to buy liquid goods and food. They luckily had a convenience store that doubled as the local grocery. Moulton is twenty miles from Gonzales and we did not ride through another town in between. After a few minutes of repair we were back on the road and looking forward to our next stop. You will notice in the picture to the left that there is a larger space between spokes than usual. This is where we removed the spoke from the front wheel to make the rear wheel stronger.

Oakland

On our map it appeared that Oakland was big enough to have a convenience store, but in real life Oakland is very small. We had some good luck as we found a volunteer fire department with a pavilion that provided a shady place to eat a few power bars and drink some water. If you can see it on the picture to the left the one fire truck in Oakland is secured with a latch and a padlock. The people there were nice and got us some water from the fire department. They weren't quite sure why anyone would ride a bike 600 miles, but then there are a lot of people that fit into that category.

The post office in Oakland was very intriguing. The community was obviously much larger and robust in days past and filled with ranchers and farmers. The post office used to inhabit the entire building shown here, but now uses very little of it and is attended during very restricted hours.

Columbus

Our home for the evening was quite nice today. We actually got to spend a little more time resting than we have in previous days. The last couple of days we have gotten into our hotel very late and had to be back on the bike within 12 hours or so. We got into our hotel room about 3 pm today, which allowed us to eat an earlier dinner and allow our food to settle before turning in for bed. Hopefully this will translate into more refreshed legs for tomorrow's ride to Tomball.

We ate at a wonderful little restaurant in Columbus called Schobel's. They have the typical Texas fare with beef, pork chops the size of a porterhouse, and a salad bar. The pork chops are pictured below and were nearly larger than Paul. Throw in a baked potato and some Texas toast and you have a standard Texas dinner. We had to add a little dessert at Denny's at about 9 that night.

Riding Update

The ride today provided some rolling hills and some stiff cross winds. We never really headed into the wind, but the cross wind was enough at times to keep our pace slow. The ride was beautiful and we all enjoyed the scenery. Of course the only incident was the broken spoke, but that should not prevent us from getting to Tomball on Thursday.

Miles: 70.35
Average Speed: 14.41 mph
Total Trip: 333.93 Miles
Total Average Speed: 15.10 mph

Weather

The day's weather was near perfect. We had some overcast skies to keep us from burning, and some wind to keep us cool. At times we were under full sun and the temperature would rise quickly. Today's high temperature was 87*.