Days away from closing on our first house, so 10 miles into tonight's post work ride and really not feeling it, I thought I'd turn around and run by the house to try out one of the routes I was considering for the daily commute.

In a word: awesome.

This is on the north side of Denton, Texas. I first got into road bikes back when I lived in Denton, so a lot of the roads are familiar. But Denton as a whole has really changed. They've made some good headway into putting really well thought out bike lanes and sharrows when needed.

The first part coming out of the neighborhood is awesome because it includes some older, narrow roads with lots of trees and basically no traffic. Then it runs into a major road, but it has a nice dedicated lane for the majority of the high traffic areas. It does go by two schools, but we'll just see how that shakes down in the Fall.

The major road leads into some older, peaceful neighborhoods and finally to the sketchiest intersection of the whole route. It's not ideal, but it's less dangerous the opposite way and I should be going through before peak traffic in the mornings.

So all in all, it's just under 6 miles and mostly downhill on the way in. And better yet, it's very connected to some of my favorite longer routes, so I can always mix it up if I wanted to get some morning miles in during the winter. It's gonna be great!