Best Bike Path

Would you believe Houston has more than 200 miles of bikeways? Well, it's true. And the West White Oak Bayou Trail comprises five of the best. Just a year old, the 12-foot-wide concrete path follows its namesake bayou from T.C. Jester at 11th Street in the Heights up to Pinemont, north of Loop 610. Plenty wide and plenty smooth, on a recent holiday morning the trail was sprinkled with families and singles on ten-speeds, Rollerblades, with strollers and on foot. You don't need to be Lance Armstrong out here; just dust off your old beater and join the folks enjoying the virtually uninterrupted ribbon of pavement, complete with bike/ped bridges and special underpasses. And if you dig it as much as we did, you'll be thrilled to learn that the White Oak Bayou Trail is just a small part of a planned bikeway network for Houston that will consist of bike lanes, shared bike routes and hike/bike trails, which we hope will encourage people to get out of their cars and take traveling into their own hands. Or rather, their own feet.