Drenched

We've had a bit of everything over the last few days! Thursday morning was chilly, but there were a lot of riders out on the levee. One new rider was in the group. He recently moved here from France (he's Dutch) where he was an active bike racer. His wife works for the French Cousulate here in New Orleans. He was asking about getting his USCF license and, not yet knowing his racing experience, I assured him that he would certainly not be assigned to Cat. 5, and that even if he were to be assigned to Cat. 4 we could probably get him upgraded right away to Cat.3. After listening him discuss his racing experience with Kenny (who raced in Belgium for a while) it was clear that he is more likely to be Cat. 2 or Cat. 1. Anyway, we had a great Thanksgiving morning ride. I spent the next 12 hours eating and drinking wine in the finest Thanksgiving tradition, and ended the day over at Kenny's house with Gina and her friend watching a DVD of Conan O'Brein show segments of the "insult dog." Funny stuff!

My brother and his family was in town from Orlando (and Tallahassee and Jackson) Thursday and Friday. On friday, after a nice easy training ride, we ended up having to drive The WIfe's mom back to Baton Rouge, which as usual ended up including lunch and a trip to Wal-Mart. At least I got a new $10 hair dryer, since our old one has burned out one of its heading circuits and wasn't drying too well.

So this morning I got up a little early and checked the weather radar. It looked bad. A big line of strong thunderstorms ahead of a cold front was about 80 miles West of us and heading this way fast. I seriously considered bagging it and heading back to bet. It was still pretty warm here, though, so I put on shoe-covers and an extra jersey, stuffed a pair of arm-warmers into my pocket, and headed out to the lakefront. There was a group of about 25 there as we headed out. I was figuring we'd turn around early, and I was absolutely sure I'd be riding home in the rain. We made it down to the end of Hayne Blvd. before the first raindrops started to fall. A group of riders turned around right away. We went another mile or so and a couple of us split off to head back by way of the service road. The remaining 10 riders or so kept going, and I wonder if they did the whole ride. As we rode back the raindrops got larger and we were soon in a steady light rain. It wasn't too cold though, and traffic was very light, so it wasn't too bad. About a mile before we got back to where the ride starts my friend flatted, but since it was raining pretty heavily, he just rode it in. I still had a 6-mile ride back home and within a couple of minutes the rain really started to come down hard. I was glad I had stopped to put on my arm warmers and to zip up my jerseys as I navigated my way through the flooding streets. I was absolutely soaked to the skin by the time I got home, but since the temperature never got much below 70F, it wasn't too bad. I wiped the bike down and pulled the seatopost out to check for water in the frame, but it was nice and dry.

Tomorrow I'll do a training ride across the lake and I'm expecting the weather to be rather nice.