Cars, Bikes and Water

*** WARNING. THIS ONE'S LONG. ***

FRIDAY

The last few days have been kind of eventful. I'll start with Friday. The Daughter is up in Iowa City where the Iowa River was starting to flood parts of the city. She's hobbling around on crutches, working at the UI hospital, which happens to be on the other side of the river from her house. Her car, which isn't running reliably, was at the Jeep dealer, which would have been fine except that the Jeep dealer happens to be located on Riverside Drive, an as you might guess, that's right alongside the river. So after some debate, we decided maybe it would be prudent to move the car just in case the flooding was worse than expected. So, as the city is closing down bridges as the floodwaters rise, she somehow talked the dealer into sending a van to pick up her roommate so she could rescue the car. Anyway, she and the car finally made it back home, and by the next day the U. Iowa art complex, university center, and probably the basement of the library were swimming pools. Since she's "essential personnel" she'll be at work tomorrow, assuming she has a way to get there.

SATURDAY

So anyway, Friday afternoon I decided to join Mark, Ed, Jorge, Laura, Brian, Steve and a few others on Saturday morning for a couple of laps around the Tour de Louisiane road race course. A new junior rider, Dustin, was also coming along. So we loaded ourselves into Ed's van after meeting at Starbucks and headed for the northshore to pick up Steve and meet the rest of the group out at "cucumber corner." Along the way I learned that Dustin had just started riding and if he made two laps of the 15+ mile loop it would be a personal best. Fortunately, I was not harboring any intentions of doing a hard ride, so I figured I'd keep track of him since he'd surely come off the back once the pace ramped up.


So we start out on the ride and Dustin is immediately having trouble keeping up even though the speed is under 20 mph. I told Mark to go ahead and that I'd stay with Dustin. His legs look pretty strong and he runs track in high school, so I'm surprised he's having so much trouble, especially on the hills. Granted, he's riding a fairly heavy entry-level bike and I can see that the saddle is set way, way too low, but even with the hills I'm thinking something's wrong. So anyway, I ride alongside him for most of the loop dispensing sage wisdom and enjoying the scenery when we finally turn onto the last stretch of the first lap. Dropping behind him on a downhill, I notice his rear wheel is way out of true. He's also told me that he can't shift into the two largest cogs. So near the end of the lap I spot a convenient place where we can stop (in the shade). I go to check the wheel and discover it is hitting *solid* on *both* brake blocks. Working the pedals with my hand, I can't push hard enough to get the wheel all the way around! The front wheel is also rubbing a brake block. Sheesh! I'm amazed he's made it this far. So we limp the last mile to the corner and wait for the group to come around on it's second lap to borrow a multi-tool. After doing the best I can to true the wheel with an emergency spoke wrench, and readjusting the derailleur, I raised the seat at least an inch and a half. It's still a bit low, I think. Anyway, his next lap looked a lot easier! The rest of the group bailed out after three laps, and so we followed them in to the cars with two laps under our belts.


Then, on the way home as we're nearing Covington on Highway 21 Ed, who's driving, suddenly yells something like "holy s&!t!" A few cars ahead a shiny little convertible VW beetle is somersaulting across the road. We hit the brakes along with everyone else and rush down the road to see if everyone's OK. Amazingly a rather attractive girl opens the door of the VW, which had luckily landed upright, and steps out. She's dazed and frightened but otherwise fine. The passenger side of the car is crushed, another car is on the shoulder with its rear wheel ripped off, and there's a pile of crushed glass and CDs in the middle of the highway. Whew! One lucky girl.


SUNDAY

Saturday afternoon I'd gotten an email from Gabe, who is a student at Union College and is doing a summer internship in NOLA with Tulane's SAFER (Student Advocacy for Equitable Recovery) program. He's a Cat. 5 who's done some collegiate racing and is looking for somebody to give him the scoop on training routes in town. We agree to meet on the levee bike path at 7 am on Sunday.


When I woke up Sunday morning I thought I heard the rumble of distant thunder. I fired up the laptop to check the radar and although there were some big thunderstorms just to the east of the city, they looked like they were moving in the right direction and everything to the west looked OK. So I met Gabe and we headed up the river on the bike path. Half an hour later my phone rings. At first I thought it was Dustin who was also going to meet us. I'd figured he wouldn't be there because it was raining in Chalmette when we started. It turned out to be The Wife asking if we needed to be picked up because it was raining at the house. We looked up the road and the weather looked good, so we decided to keep going and hope that the rain would pass by the time we got back. Out near Ormond we saw a few of the Bicycle World guys on their way back and then we met up with Dave who lives out there. When we turned around and saw the menacing black sky over the city Dave suggested that we head over to his house and get a ride back. We decided to ride back anyway, and so Dave came with us for the first ten miles or so before turning back home. The whole time, as we changed direction with the bends in the river, we're reassessing our chances of getting wet. We were actually thinking we'd make it home dry until we came around the curve at the Country Club. The drizzle turned quickly into big stinging raindrops. The wind picked up. Then the lightning started. This was not good. We were maybe a quarter mile from the bridge when the lightning started striking dangerously closely so we bailed out onto one of the local roads in a heavily industrial area. The street was already starting to flood. We found a building with a big overhang over the front door and ran for cover. Well, we ended up stranded there for quite a while as one of the more severe thunder and lightning storms just pounded the area. The rain was coming down in Biblical proportion, and I knew there would be some serious street flooding. We were starting to get really cold and so I called The Wife to request emergency extraction. A little while later I called her back and found out that she had to abort the mission because the streets were flooding and she couldn't get though.


So we waited it out for another fifteen or twenty minutes until the lightning moved a bit further into the distance and mounted back up. By now I was shivering badly enough that I had to hold the bars near the stem to keep the front wheel from wobbling! After riding through a number of flooded streets we finally arrived at the house. The rain soon ended, so I put Gabe's bike into the car to drive him home. Fifteen minutes later we were back at the house because the streets we needed to use were still flooded and in a couple of spots there were residents blocking the road to keep people from driving their cars down them and making waves that would flood the houses. We tried again about half an hour later and although the water was fairly deep around Audubon Park, we made it through OK. It took me a good hour to get my body temperature back to normal after that little adventure!