ER & I had planned an after-work ride on Friday. It's that time of year
where the weather is iffy. All afternoon, I sat at my desk & watched the
sky grow blacker, as another friend west of me repeatedly IMed me to tell
me how hard it was raining at his place. :P
At 3pm it was steadily misting & we decided to go for it anyway. ER & I
arrived at the put-in at the same time, and she said "Hey, check out what
I found in my back tire" and showed me a truly monstrous thorn. The rain
stopped while she changed her tire and I kicked myself for leaving the Joe
Blow at home. We started up the road and the rain set back in, a little
harder this time. "What's that rubbing noise? Is that coming from your
back disk?" I have a strange paranoia about abnormal mechanical noises
from my vehicles. Sure enough, we'd seated the rear wheel wrong and part
of the disk mechanism was not where it was supposed to be. Again we were
granted a respite from the rain while we corrected the problem, and again
it started up a little harder when we got underway.
We stopped at the entrance to the second half of the trail. "Is that
it?" "Yeah." "Maybe we should just do this section & see what the
weather does." So up we went, and the rain kept coming.
We crested the hill & turned back to ride along the ridge. Clouds boiled
out of the gorge and into the valley below us, and swept up the ridge to
hide the trail. ER, 100 feet ahead of me, completely disappeared from
view. Then the wind hit us & I remembered the last time I rode this
trail: on the section of doubletrack we were quickly approaching, I had
been blown from one track into the other. I didn't have much more time to
think about that though, because at that moment the sideways rain
completely obscured my vision.
I could hear ER up ahead, "I love this! This is so excellent riding in
the clouds!" All I was thinking was "There's a hot tub at my house." We
continued to climb & wend our way across the ridge to the relative safety
of the trees. A couple of days ago I had read the posting for the Real
Ale Wobble, and thought "It might be fun to go to Wales to bike." Now I
was thinking "Sheesh, why leave?" We were completely soaked by the time
we got to the downhill stretch that marked the beginning of the end.
And a hair-raising ride it was...slicker than [a euphemism that is too
gross even for this ng]. There was no option to stop once we got going
down the final straightaway back to the vehicles. And the rain kept
coming harder. The people at the parking area looked at us like we were
nuts. We exchanged hurried goodbyes as we jumped in our vehicles & took
off for the nearest hot shower.
At this time of year, we take what we can get. 🙂
gabrielle