Wash Out!

They were SO wrong. I went to bed with an 8 a.m. forecast of 30% chance of rain and 12 mph winds. When I woke up around 5:30 a.m. to head out to the Lakefront to help set up for the Rocktoberfest race, I could hear the rain falling and the wind blowing, and I knew we were in trouble. A quick check of the hourly forecast showed that the folks at weather.com had changed the 8 a.m. conditions to 100% chance of rain and 30 mph winds, leaving little room for optimism. As I was sitting there in the dark staring at the computer screen, eating a granola bar, I felt something odd in my mouth. I had lost one of the many old fillings in my teeth. It must have been an omen.

When I arrived on the lakefront, I was greeted by horizontal rain, waves occasionally coming over the seawall, and a screaming SE wind. This was not good riding weather. This was not even bad cycling weather. This was Andy Hampsten Giro d' Italia weather without the snow. For a while all the power went out and all the streetlights went out. I could already imagine the Cat. 5s tearing down Lakeshore Drive at 35 mph, the wind at their backs, and trying to make it around the wet, slippery traffic circle at the end of that stretch. It would have been a bloodbath. Then the survivors would have been blown apart by the headwind on the way back. It would have been ugly.

Soon the rest of the club's race workers showed up, and we kind of stared at the tropical storm that we were obviously right in the middle of and discussed our options. It was pretty clear that there was no chance of being able to put on any race until at least 9:30, and since we only had the road until noon, that would only allow us to do two races - assuming, of course, that the standing water covering much of the road drained off, and the weather did, in fact, improve. It was looking pretty bleak.

At 7:00 a Levee Board police officer rolled up and he and Robin had a brief conversation, the result, like I didn't already know it, was that the race would have to be cancelled. We needed to make a committment by 7 a.m. on the police, so that was it. Man, I hate it when races get cancelled. Especially ours! But I guess sometimes you just can't fight mother nature, and to have raced under those conditions would have been brutal at best and dangerous at worst. So we got on the cellphones and started calling the pre-registered riders. Soon, riders started to trickle in. They mostly knew we wouldn't be racing today, but they were there anyway, just in case. I was impressed, in a way. We considered giving any rider who showed up an automatic 2-year suspension for drug use. After all, you'd have to be on drugs to think we'd be racing that morning. A few had driven in from Alabama and Mississippi. A few of them said that they were glad that they had gone to the French Quarter last night and had a good time, figuring that the race would likely be a wash-out. I really hated to give them the bad news, but I don't think any of them were really looking forward to trying to race under those conditions, especially with the diminished turnout we were bound to have. Actually, I was pretty surprised at how many riders showed up. I mean, this weather wasn't just "iffy." There was apparently a news crew down on the other end of Lakeshore Drive filming the water flooding over the seawall, and there were sections where the water covered the two lanes closest to the lake.

So anyway, we will try and reschedule in a couple of weeks if we can get the OK from the Levee Board. By the time I got home, I was soaking wet and freezing cold. It's almost 4 p.m. now and the strets are finally mostly dry and the sun is starting to come out. Good thing, because I don't think I could take any more rain.

One good thing, though. I won an Ebay auction for a new (old) pair of Sidi shoes for The Wife! $40 seems pretty good for shoes that are normally $110. Sometimes it pays to have small feet!