Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 12

Ok, I did this one a long long time ago.  I just came across the photos and realized I didn't do an update.

We didn't stray much from the proposed map.  I realize the map isn't updated, and hopefully I'll do it soon (if I can remember all the detours).

First of all, it was a pretty miserable day.  It was warm and drizzling almost the entire time.

I met David at Washington and Heights and we took a familiar route through downtown.  Passing through the area East of Downtown, we saw a photo op:

David showing off his muscles

We ate breakfast at a little Mexican place that I can't remember.  But it was good!

After going through the Eastwood area, we got to #65 Harrisburg/Manchester:

Still wet and Rainy

Then after going to an Apartment that I thought would say Park Place on it and playing with my nearly dead phone for a bit, we decided to head down main street and found #74 Park Place:

Park Place Apartments

Along the very long stretch of Highway 3, we got #75 Meadowbrook/Allendale:

One day, I'll be living it up here

Further down Hwy 3, we got #79 Edgebrook Area:

It was getting pretty hot and humid by now

After even more Highway 3, we got #80 South Belt / Ellington.  This was the entrance to Ellington Field, which is an air force base:

Then finally, at long last, marking the furthest I had ever ridden away from my house, #81 Clear Lake.  If I were to ride straight here, the distance would be 22.6 miles for the most direct route:

Unfortunately, we didn't see any local restaurants at all, so we settled for this old-style looking McDonalds (in Clear Lake) before the long trip back.:

It stopped raining, but it was still hot as heck

The marathon is in two weekends, and after that I'm going to get back into cycling.  I learned my lesson last year that riding bicycles long distances tightens up the worst possible muscles for distance running, so I decided to give cycling a rest while I was training.  Hopefully I'll be back on the bike pretty soon.

There are only two big trips left, the major Southwest Tour and the mother of all trips, the Lake Houston/Kingwood Tour.  16 more super neighborhoods to go!

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 11 (and 11b)

Ok, I actually did this trip back in mid-October, and I finished the map right after the ride, but I neglected to do the actual write-up. Since we're doing the big 50-mile Clear Lake trip 12 this weekend, I figured it would be prudent to finally get this written.

This ride was on an absolutely gorgeous day. We started out in the upper 40s and ended in the lower 60s. It may be chilly for just standing around, but it was just about perfect for cycling.

We took a path I've taken many times before when heading west. The first stop was actually a mistake stop in Spring Branch Central, not Spring Branch West:



And here is the picture from Trip 11b, completed in mid-January, which was a make-up trip solely to pick up the #10 Spring Branch West that I missed. It was completely uneventful and didn't deserve it's own writeup, but here is the photo:

[picture to be uploaded tonight]

We took a left on an extremely busy road (Gessner) and was looking for the Memorial Hermann Hospital to pick up #16 Memorial, but instead saw a sign for the Memorial City Mall across the way, which had a much better angle and light:



After taking a nice ride on a fairly fast road all the way through Memorial, past the beltway, we arrived at Highway 6, the furthest distance we've ever gone (as the crow flies). We crossed I-10 and found a giant duck. I took a photo to add to the "me and giant birds" collection:



Then just a block north was our furthest-point destination of #9 Addicks/Park Ten:



Went down highway 6 a bit (an extremely busy and scary road), and zig-zagged our way down a fairly large detour to pick up #17 Eldridge/West Oaks.



I scoured the internet for something that said Eldridge on it that was closer to our intended route, but couldn't find anything. Likewise, when we were at Eldridge and Briar Forest, two fairly large roads, there were shopping centers everywhere, and not a single peep of the word "Eldridge."

A quick jaunt down Briar Forest Drive got us to the Abbey in #18 Briarforest:



We took a quick breather at a convenience store nearby and crossed Westheimer into a very commercial area, and then at Wilcrest and Meadowglen we found #19 Westchase:



Then we barely clipped #20 Woodlake/Briar Meadow, but they were nice enough to put a sign up for us:



After zig-zagging through the Galleria area, avoiding major roads because it's one of the most traffic-ridden areas of Houston and it was getting to be Sunday afternoon (and so all the shoppers and post-church eaters were everywhere). Then, at the very far edge of the neighborhood, we got #21 Greater Uptown:



And after that it was a pleasant ride home on a pleasant day through Memorial Park, with the exception of the flight of stairs we had to carry our bikes up because of construction. Not the best thing when you've already gone 35 miles!

Stay tuned for next week, where we will be doing a very long and very straight ride down to Clear Lake. 66 down, 22 more to go!

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 10

It's been really hot in Houston. We generally are over - or at least flirt with - a 100+ degree heat-index every day. But even so, David kept bugging me to get out and do another bike ride. So we did a "short" 27 mile one and nabbed two Super Neighborhoods. See map.

David let me wear his cycling jersey just so I could check it out. I have to say, not having to wear a backpack definitely cooled things down.

We zipped through familiar neighborhoods and got a little turned around on the way to the first stop, so I decided to wing it. We came across this sign for #32 Braeswood Place:


Not my most attractive picture.

We again kind of winged it over to the Astrodome (which we could see almost all the way from where we stopped in Braeswood. We took a fun yet bumpy route along the bayou and then overshot our turn. We came to the back entrance of Reliant Center and the guard wouldn't let us cut through. So we went around to the Reliant Stadium side, hoping it would say "Astrodome" somewhere, but there was another guard station. So we rode allllll the way around to the east side of Reliant Center and the only sign we could see was actually on the Astrodome itself, way in the distance. We asked the guards if we could just go in to take a picture, and they said they couldn't let us, and even if they could, no photography was allowed (huh?). So we just took the best pic we could get using a cell phone camera:

Guards wouldn't let us get any closer

Even though it's blurry, you can just barely make out that it says Reliant Astrodome. Not to mention: I'm in front of the freaking Astrodome. So there you have it, #34 Astrodome.

So that was the last one for the day. Just for fun we rode back through downtown and along the Buffalo Bayou trail. It was getting pretty darn hot when we got back around 9:30am.

So my total is up to 270.1 miles and 58 out of 88 Super Neighborhoods.

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 9

Wow, it's hard to believe I've been on 9 trips now. Only 4 more to go after this one! Follow along on the map. Sorry it took so long for the update (the ride was on May 31st), but I had a lot of personal stuff I had to take care of.

I had a social gathering at my place the night before the trip, so Drew slept in our guest room rather than driving back to his place, then all the way back early in the morning. A new cyclist to these trips, David, also joined us, all dressed in his fancy MS150 gear.

The forecast was good, but still kind of hot. I made sure to bring sunscreen, and our first stop was at Kroger to stock up on Gatorade. After all, it was going to be around a 45-mile trip.

The first stop was not too far from home on Ella Blvd., to see this sign in #12 Oak Forest/Garden Oaks, saving us a trip to Oak Forest Elementary.



We continued on Ella straight north (which became Wheatley) until we came across the Acres Homes Center in #6 Acres Homes.



I was worried about the next super neighborhood, Hidden Valley. I spent a long time researching online and couldn't find anything bearing it's name. Even Hidden Valley Elementary School changed its name to Jones Elementary. There was a road that went through called "Hidden Valley Dr.," so I figured, worst case, I could get a shot of the street.

When we got there, we hit Hidden Valley Drive and I had an idea to go to the edge of the Super Neighborhood, on Hidden Valley Drive, to see if there was a "welcome" sign. We drove all the way down Hidden Valley to the freeway, and didn't see anything. Admitting defeat, I said we'll just go back and take a photo of the road sign. And wouldn't you know it, on the way back, completely covered by branches, was a sign for #7 Hidden Valley.



Greenspoint was our next stop, and it is (luckily) very oddly shaped. We crossed over to the other side of I-45 and went up the back road to Greenspoint Furniture in the very bottom skinny section of #2 Greater Greenspoint.



I think the next stretch was one of our longest (intentional) stretches without a single super neighborhood. We went along West Rd to Veteran's Highway, then crossed the beltway for the first time ever on these trips (Beltway 8 is about a 28 mile diameter loop around downtown Houston). 11.8 miles later, we were at Willowbrook Mall to grab #1 Willowbrook.



Willowbrook is one of the three disconnected areas of Houston; we were driving through unincorporated Harris County for nearly all of those 11.8 miles. The other two disconnected areas are the IAH Airport, and the Kingwood/Lake Houston area. I'll be doing both of the other two in the same, final trip.

By this point we were getting pretty hungry, so while on the way to the next one, we kept an eye out for donut shops. We drove south on Gessner. When we got back to the Beltway, we were stopped at a red light and Drew and David were behind me. I noticed it was clear (but still red) and so I went. They guys started yelling at me so I looked back and saw a cop car follow behind me through the red light. He looked at me through the window and gave me a "are you stupid?" look and kept on going. While I stopped and waited for Drew and David to catch up, the cop turned around twice, turned his loudspeaker on, and said (without stopping) in a heavy Texas accent: "Can y'all hear this?". We stopped and nodded as he was driving past. As he got close to us he said "Y'all don't be running red lights now!". We said "OK, sorry!" back to him even though it was obvious he couldn't hear us. It ended up being a running joke for the rest of the ride.

My guess for the reason he didn't write me a ticket is because he was an HPD officer and we were technically outside the city limits. So he would have had to stop us and call a Sheriff's Deputy over just to write us a ticket for running a light on a bicycle.

But moving on, after a few turns and two shut-down donut places, until we were on Antoine. Right after we turned on Antoine, I saw this:



It was not scheduled, and I still felt like we were out of the city limits (I later found out I was right), so I decided to keep an eye out for another Inwood.

After we stopped to take a photo, I found myself extremely fatigued and hungry. My chest was tight and I felt overheated. Before we took that photo, I sat on the ground for about 5 minutes to recover. It was very hot and humid at this point, and we had already gone 30 miles and I hadn't eaten, so I was not in a good place.

After the photo, we rode down to the next light and found another shut-down donut shop (I guess people in this area don't eat donuts?). I went to the convenience store instead and got some more gatorade and a snack. I told the guys I really needed to eat, and so we went over to a little taco trailer in the parking lot of the gas station across the way. The cashier didn't speak English, but we did the best we could. It was really great Mexican food, but not as good as the tacos I had on Trip 6.

After finishing eating, hydrating and applying another coat of sunscreen, we pressed on. I found my "backup" for #5 Greater Inwood at the Inwood Forest Golf and Country Club (which is really the one that counts).



We went all the way down Antoine to Hwy 290 and got even more Gatorade (did I mention it was hot?). We did a very quick jaunt the wrong way on the frontage to get to the Langwood Neighborhood (the one that we barely missed all the way back on Trip 4). This time we got this sign in front of Langwood Park to finally get #11 Langwood.



It was a pretty uneventful ride home after that. We stopped by Cedar Creek Cafe (since Onion Creek wasn't on the way) and had our traditional celebratory beer.

So 7 more Super Neighborhoods and 44.3 more miles down. That puts me at 56 out of 88 super neighborhoods and it looks like the number of miles is up to 243.4 total across all trips. Wow! After this trip, I'm past the original estimate to do all the super neighborhoods in one trip by car (210-220 miles). It's hard to believe that we still have about 210 more miles to go!

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 8

I haven't really been biking lately since my bicycle was stolen last month, but I fitted my wife's bike and decided to start the trips up again. Since it's been 6 weeks since I've done one of these, I decided this would be a good time to do a shorter trip to revisit the South Park Super Neighborhood that I missed last time.

Both Drew and I had late nights last night, we decided to start at 8am instead of the normal 6:30. I got up and checked the weather and found it was perfect for a bike ride. 69 degrees and a cloud cover that would keep it 70 degrees for hours. After waiting about 40 minutes for Drew, I decided not to waste the great weather and to head out by myself with the tripod. Here's the route I took.

If it looks like I made a lot of wrong turns, I did. My printer is out of ink so I was just winging it. Everywhere I was going I felt I knew pretty well, and I just took roads that looked good.

It didn't make sense to me to go all the way to South Park without getting a few other auxilliary SNs, so I rode through the Hermann Park area on the way. It was a straight shot south to Rice University in #28 University Place


The oldest university in Houston, established 1912

For some reason I thought Hermann Park (right across the street) was a Super Neighborhood, so I snapped this photo:


You can make out Mr. Hermann in the background

Just a block further down, I was in the Medical Center, and came across this sign for #33 Med Center


Houston has the best cancer treatment centers in the nation

Now that the easy part was over, I rode over to South Park. I decided to give the MacGregor bike trail a try and was greatly impressed. It was all freshly paved and there were not many road crossings. I was flying!

After going a little too far and backtracking to Cullen to get across I-610, I turned on Bellfort and saw a dead horse laying in the median... It really smelled too as I passed it; it must have been there a while.

Anyway, I continued on to my destination, the South Park Child Redevelopment Center. As I got closer, I saw a giant for lease sign and no others. I decided to ride up to the entrance and see what I could see, and luckily this sign was still outside, for #72 South Park


It looked like the vacated pretty abruptly, there were still notices to parents on the door

I saw a sign for South Park Baptist Church, and I thought it would make a better picture


I may look upset because I was having angle issues

I rode back up to the MacGregor path, then my plan was to go north on another new bike path until I got to Binz, which of course take me to the Binz Super Neighborhood. When I got to Alabama, I knew I was waaay off. So I cut over to Midtown and then went back south.

Binz was a super neighborhood that I could not find any businesses bearing its name online. Really no one calls this area Binz, it's considered the eastern edge of the Museum district (which is also not a super neighborhood). Binz also has the disadvantage of being very small. I figured if I was going to see anything, it would be along the tiny stretch of Binz Rd. that runs through the southern edge.

Normally I discourage myself from taking photograhps of street addresses, but I made an exception in this case because it was just so colorful and unique. Not to mention I couldn't find anything else. So here is #66 Binz:



I tried panoramic to get all the wording, but for some reason it didn't focus.

After Binz, it was a pretty uneventul ride home, basically taking the same route I took to get out there. So after these 4 new Super Neighborhoods, it puts me at 49 out of 88 Super Neighborhoods. It took me just over three hours and was 31.0 miles long.

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 7

Trip 7 went pretty well. We actually clocked in under the expected mileage by a tenth of a mile. The southern Super Neighborhoods (founded after WWII) were really good about having "Welcome to..." signs, which cut out a couple detours.

Mappy mappy

It was a little chilly and windy to start at around 43 degrees; I had to ride one-handed (with one hand warming in my pocket) until the sun really got out. We took a detour through Montrose, Fourth Ward, and Midtown (see Trip 1) so that Drew could catch up on those ones he missed before we started. After that, it wasn't long until we were in the predominantly poor and black neighborhood of #67 Greater Third Ward. It's 80% black, with the other 20% being poor white college students, since the University of Houston is in this neighborhood.


This was the "small" church, the big one was across the street.

An uneventful jog down the road got us to #83 MacGregor, named after the road that runs through it along Brays Bayou. This apartment complex was right on the bayou.


Keep a look at my attire, you'll notice me sheding layers as it gets sunnier

Continuing down Scott, we came across the first of many "Welcome to..." signs to smack us in the face in #68 OST/South Union, which is a much more appealing photo op than the South Union Place Apartments.



I love "Welcome to..." signs. Indisputable proof :)

Continuing on Scott street, which was a fairly busy road with 4 lanes, we again found another "Welcome to..." sign for #71 Sunnyside. This sign saved us about a mile because we didn't have to delve into the neighborhood, we just kept on going down Scott.


After this I had "Keep on the Sunny Side" from O Brother, Where Art Thou? stuck in my head.

Next we zig-zagged through another neighborhood to find South Park Inn, which I later found out was not in the South Park super neighborhood. In fact just on the other side of is the boundary. It was just like that damn church in Trip 4. I'm going to make a special trip back there myself to get it later; it's going to be too far out of the way to do on the Clear Lake trip (Trip 10), since it's right in the middle of the area we covered. It's only an 11 mile round trip from my school, so the next time I go up there to study on the weekend, I'll take my bike to school and do it on a study break.


Stupid South Park

Right after we turned on Airport to #76 South Acres/Crestmont Park was another sign! Luckily the back of the sign also said South Acres (don't ask me why) so we took the photo this way because the sun was pretty bright. (That story would have been a great pun for Sunnyside).


I was double checking the boundary on google maps to make sure it was in it.


"I took a picture of myself so you don't have to"


I'm not buying it :)

This next picture I took snapped because my wife went to a different Sterling High School in the Greater Houston area. Nothing special.


Not Baytown

The next sign I was really worried about. Google Maps showed no businesses at all bearing the Minnetex name. Through a little internet detectiving, I found there was a Minnitex Civic Club just west of Mykawa. When I checked it out on street view, it looked pretty abandoned. But having no other options, we checked it out anyway. I was worried when I pulled up because the sign that appeared on street view was not there. Luckily, it was propped up against the door. So here is the most rural Super Neighborhood in Houston, #77 Minnetex. Only 2,245 people live in the entire region, 5 times less than any other neighborhood I looked at.


I don't think they're meeting anymore.


Long shot of the former Civic Club (built in 1923 as a schoolhouse).

Next up was probably the scariest part of our trip, along Telephone Road. It's a very busy 6 lane divided road with intermittant sidewalks. After snapping this picture for #78 Greater Hobby Area and grabbing some breakfast, we spent about 30 minutes riding fast and praying we didn't get hit from behind. Don't worry, we didn't.


I was looking for Hobby Liquor, but this will do. There were many more signs as well.

After getting off telephone road, we went through a small neighborhood to get #73 Golfcrest.


We took a 5 minute break after this, my legs were really starting to hurt.

About 3 minutes later, we saw the giant sign for the Gulfgate Shopping Center in #69 Gulfgate.


Bad timing on the picture, I look like an idiot

Just for something different, we went through the area we went through during Trip 3, and found a really nice hike and bike trail that took us through most of it. We stopped for a beer again at Onion Creek in the Heights and then went home :)

Total time with breaks (minus Onion Creek) was about 4 1/2 hours and 40.3 miles. We picked up a whopping 9 Super Neighborhoods bringing us past the halfway point with 45 out of 88 Super Neighborhoods. We're going to do a short "make-up" trip this Sunday afternoon so Drew can at least ride through the Super Neighborhoods from Trip 6, then Trip 8 (Willowbrook/Greenspoint) is scheduled for April 19th with Trip 9 (Addicks) shortly after on the 25th.

Every Super Neighborhood in Houston - Trip 4

Well, it's a long time coming, but it's finally here. Trip 4. Now that marathon season is over, I'm hoping to do these at least every other week. Drew and I have all the way up to Trip 11 by the end of April scheduled.

I'm going to have to stop doing a regular google map, because there are too many points to fit all in one. You can still view the Super Neighborhood Map of the trip.

The day started off with Drew and I messaging each other that we both wanted to start about 30 minutes late, so that's what we did.

The first stop was an easy one, I drive by this sign almost every day. It's for #14 Lazy Brook/Timbergrove, right across from my grocery store.


Less than a mile from my house

The neighborhood was a lot nicer than our previous rides through impoverished Houston. The small two bedroom houses around here go for about $280k.

Our next stop was at Houseman Elementary, which is in the Spring Branch school district. We rode up and down and all around the school and didn't see a single sign that said Spring Branch ISD on it. Since it wasn't that far from my house, I wasn't going to freak out about having to pick it up later. We continued on down the route and came across the sign below practically smacking us in the face. I wasn't completely sure it was in #86 Spring Branch East, but when I got home, I verified that it was.


I hate deed restrictions almost as much as I hate zoning

We decided to take a shortcut on a busy road instead of taking the marked bike route. The shortcut saved us about a mile and a half, but we had to ride on a 40 mph road (where people go 50) with no sidewalk or shoulder. We survived, but I don't think I'll be doing that again unless I have to. In one of the detours from the main road, we went up to Langwood Baptist church, which was supposed to be in Langwood, but was actually a block away from Langwood. We're going to have to revisit this one in trip 6 when we go up to Willowbrook.


It took us a while to figure what the sign meant. Stupid church not being in Langwood.

Along the main fast road, I came to a screeching halt when I saw this place, since we were supposed to be looking for #4 Fairbanks/North Crossing. I wasn't sure if it was actually in Fairbanks, so we continued on to Dean Middle School, which had "Cypress Fairbanks" ISD in the title, like schools should have (stupid Spring Branch). So we got this one twice.


There was actually a guy hauling trash behind the fence, but he didn't seem to take notice of us


This is about the point where you can see me progressively getting more and more tired

After a serious wrong turn which added about a mile to our trip, we got to Carverdale Community Center in #3 Carverdale. We were starting to get really tired, because the 20mph winds were no longer at our backs, but we were going directly into it. You can tell from the next picture, I look a little more worn out.


"I can't believe we're only half way"


Drew pointed out this sign was more interesting, so I took a pic of him with it.

Back into the wind, we went south toward #8 Westbranch, intending to go into the subdivision and look for the Westbranch Recreation Center, but luckily found this sign early and saved a little bit of precious milage.


Is it over yet?

We definitely needed a break to recharge, so we rode down Gessner (on the sidewalk, because it was very very busy road) and looked for a place to eat. We found a little donut shop called Donut World, which had amazing donuts and good kolaches. The donuts were all warm and soft but not undercooked *drool*. Although we made the mistake of both of us getting orange juice, which was not a good choice with 12 miles into the wind to go.

We went back to kempwood, seeing Spring Shadows signs everywhere (but I didn't feel like stopping because I knew there was a school ahead and I knew it was in the superneighborhood). After getting nearly all the way through the super neighborhood, we came across Spring Shadows Elementary in #84 Spring Shadows.


Wildcats, rwar!

It was an uneventful quater mile to the next stop at #85 Spring Branch Central


Getting tired again.

And just for good measure, I got this one on the way back in Spring Branch East, just in case.

My sweat pattern looks like Kazakhstan

The ride home was brutal. We had a wrong turn which took us to Ikea (all in 20mph head winds). At some points it felt like if we stopped pedaling, we would roll backwards! But we finally made it, crashed on the couch with a lot of water, and that was it.

It took about 4 hours and 30.1 miles to pick up these 7 new Super Neighborhoods. Next trip is going to be roughly the same distance, but only 3 new Super Neighborhoods. It's also going to be back out in the east (low-income) area.