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Houston, Texas
Words and photos by Jason Prince
Houston is hot, flat, congested and not especially bicycle friendly. This is not the snobbish, detached criticism of an outsider that has no connection to the city, but rather a matter of fact statement from a native son that has a healthy amount of Houston pride. Unfortunately, all the pride in the world can’t change the fact that for the most part, riding options in Houston are limited and can get well beyond a little repetitive. Like cyclists in other urban areas, we may not have a wealth of riding options, but there are a few morsels that we greedily re-use to get our fix.
For mountain bikers, Memorial Park has been the center of Houston off-road cycling, allowing riders to enjoy high quality trails in the middle of the crowded city. However, you can only ride the same small set of trails so often before they get old fast, and that place is crowded like Grand Central Station on the weekends. For road riding, the areas west of the city have long been popular for their low traffic roads, but most areas inside the city are flat and full of traffic. So what are riders to do when the trails have lost their luster and they’re not in the mood to battle with Houston’s drivers? Time to harness some Wild West spirit and blaze our own trail.
The ride actually started as a bit of a joke. Both my coworker (and riding buddy) Blaine and I commute just about every day and in order to avoid traffic, we often take roundabout, oddball ways to get to work. We were talking about some of the roads we’d started using and wondered why more cyclists didn’t take advantage of them since they had such little traffic. We figured that the reason was that the roads weren’t smooth enough. We also agreed that smooth roads are boring as hell. In contrast to some of the more popular road routes around Houston that make an effort to stay on silky smooth black top, we schemed that we should create a route that takes in some of the choppiest, crustiest pavement in Houston—just to see what suckers would actually show up.
We scoured up some old city street maps, along with new city parks maps. Google Earth became our new best friend. We interrogated long-time Houston riders, and conducted internet searches for ridiculous options like “Harris County brick roads.” Eventually, we tossed pavement out the window altogether. What we discovered was, maps be damned, rarely was a dead end street actually a dead end. Rather, we would usually find footpaths worn in the grass that would meander on, allowing us to continue. Sometimes these ended at tent cities or places for disaffected youth to party with little worry of getting busted. More often than not, however, we’d score a sweet piece of rolling single track to add to our ride. Any back road, park or abandoned railroad bed was fair game. At times, we explored a little too much, like when our favorite “hobo trail” turned out to be on Amtrak land and the kind police officers told us that next time we rode there we’d be ticketed for trespassing. It dredged up memories—and long-lost bursts of illicit adrenaline—from skating when I was younger; always on the lookout for the next “spot” and secretly enjoying getting busted for having fun in an abandoned parking lot.
Soon the disparate elements of the ride started to come together into a twisted, irrational route. We combined some of our favorite out of the way streets with existing bike lanes and bike paths to connect all the weird little nuggets that we had collected like crazy cat ladies. Some things that we were dead certain were going to be great ended up being underwhelming, and others were interesting but just too far out of the way to justify. We forged an urban escapade that incorporates pedestrian footbridges over freeways; quiet, twisty residential streets; abandoned, weed-strewn streets just wider than an alley; dirt and crushed gravel roads; off-camber singletrack along the bayou; and out of the way, short, steep climbs.
There’s no cue sheet for this ride. It will never grace a shiny bike shop map. But we guarantee that you’ll see some areas of Houston that many people never even know exist, like the remains of a drawbridge from the 1920’s, and smoke stacks that are nearing the century mark. Houston is development-driven and usually pretty quick to knock things down and pave them over, so for me, to see this evidence of Houston’s history is a special privilege. On a recent ride I heard a high school kid who joined us exclaim, “This doesn’t even look like Houston anymore.”
So if you’re in Houston and want to do something a little different, drop by the shop and ask Blaine or me about the ride; if we can’t ride with you, will give you the most lucid directions we can. It’s best ridden in the morning before Houston’s heat and pollution reach ridiculous levels, and although it is a road ride, be ready for a little grass, gravel, hard packed dirt, the occasional dog and of course, lots and lots of crappy roads. It can be ridden on any bike you’d like, but most folks that ride with us choose a cyclecross bike since it allows them to eat up the pavement and let it hang out on the rougher parts. Some of the neighborhoods that the ride goes though may be a little rough around the edges, but we’ve never had any problems. You may get a curious stare, but most people will offer a smile and return your wave. So bring an extra tube, a good attitude and come see Houston the way it’s meant to be seen.
