rain, unexpected

 

When I planned this ride, there was no sign of rain in the forecast. (Literature students will recognize this opening as foreshadowing of a particularly heavy-handed kind.) When I left the house, the skies were lowering, but off to the northeast, and the weather in these parts usually blows in from the southwest. An d the phone weather app was still calling for cloudy, but no rain.

A couple weeks ago, I went on a ride with Tom H and his Insane Bike Posse. You didn't see a blog post about that one, because it was gruesome for me: I was weak and slow, partly because I hadn't eaten enough (but only partly). On that ride, the deli where Tom planned to break wasn't open at the time we got there (ad wouldn't be open for another hour); we rode six more demanding miles to another spot, where I ate enough to make up the deficit, but it was too late: I was still exhausted, and couldn't keep up. I finished, but there was no joy or healing in that ride.

So for this one, I chose a shorter route, and included in the description, "I'm not as strong or fast as I used to be, so I've shortened the route a bit." 

We went out of Veterans Park in Skillman. I had nine signed up, and two hangers-on who just showed up at the start.

 We headed up towards that Italian Bakery in Raritan that Eric H likes so much. On the way, droplets started to fall... We had two riders with flats prior to the stop, and I impressed one of them with my tire-changing prowess at roadside. Following that, we headed to the bakery in increasing rain.

 At the bakery, Mike V checked his weather radar, and initially thought we might skirt the bottom of the rain pattern, and not get too wet... and then decided no, we were probably going to get wet anyway.

I'm blaming the DOGE fiasco for firing all the federal weather-wallahs for the inaccurate prediction.

Wet we got. We shortened the already-abbreviated route. One rider appeared to be having trouble with the headwind (of COURSE there was a headwind in an unpredicted rainstorm), so Mike led the rest of the group back, and I stayed with the slower rider. The rain got into my glasses to the point they were nearly opaque, so I finally just put them in my pocket and rode without.

A couple of riders went off home on the way, and the rest talked in the parking to prior to leaving as if they'd had a good enough time. And the best part for me was that I wasn't nearly as crippled as I had been on Tom's ride a couple of weeks ago. I had eaten better, and it was a shorter ride... but I may simply be in better shape than I was then. (I'm 70, and it may be that I simply need to face the fact that I can't always do what I can sometimes do.)

Ride page.