Wheelspray Day

So yesterday we had a pretty typical Wednesday ride for this time of year. The weather was nice, the pace remained steady, and everyone seemed to be on the same page. It seems that on Wednesdays a lot of the guys like to indulge in taking long pulls at the front. Sometimes, they even do it while on the correct side of the road! Yesterday the pace was so steady and the wind so light on the way back that I wasn't really getting much exercise, so rather than go to the front and disrupt everyone's lives, I slipped off to the side a bit, shifted to a lower gear, and at least got my heart rate back up above couch-potato level. Some of the motivation for that, I admit, came from the forecast for today. The winter weekday ride zealots are always looking ahead a few days, and when the meteorological prognosticators start calling for disagreeable conditions you can be sure that a few of them will be trying to put a little extra training "in the bank," so to speak.

And so the moment I awoke this morning I listened intently for the sounds of car tires out on South Claiborne Avenue. After so many years of this, I can tell from the sound not only if it's raining, but also how much and how hard. Today I was surprised that it sounded dry. I reached over for my palm-pilot and brought up the weather channel page. "Uh oh," I mumbled. There was light rain heading my way at any moment, but behind that, maybe an hour away, was the big line of heavy rain ahead of a cold front. The Wife needed a ride in to work today because she's working a conference downtown all weekend and didn't want to have to park the car at the hotel, so things were going to be a little rushed anyway. It was still a few minutes before 6 am. I looked out the window again. Still dry. A plan began to form in my little brain. Why not go out for a quick low-gear spin, staying close to home so that when the inevitable rain started I would still be relatively close to shelter? So I got dressed, took the old Cervelo off its hook in the basement, and opened the door to find that a light drizzle had just begun. The temperature was in the 60s, though, and I wasn't going to be able to ride on Friday morning because of work, so I figured, "what the hell," and rode off toward St. Charles Avenue as the drizzle turned into a light rain.

I thought I'd ride up St. Charles under the protection of the Oak trees for a while and see how it went. The drizzle wasn't letting up, so I set my first goal as Napoleon Avenue. As I made my U-turn across the streetcar tracks in front of Sacred Heart, the drizzle started to ease up, so I changed the morning goal to "one loop around Audubon Park." By then the sky was a little brighter and although I knew it was temporary, things were definitely looking more encouraging. After one lap around the park I decided to hit the levee bike path at the Zoo, figuring that if it started raining again I could bail out at St. Charles Avenue or Oak Street. By then the wheelspray from the wet streets (why didn't I take the Pennine with its fenders??) was starting to soak through my shoes and into my socks, and as I rode past the Corps of Engineers building I could feel a little water starting to drip down my butt crack from the soaked backside of my shorts. Luckily it wasn't particularly cold today.

Up on the levee, the sky ahead to the southwest was looking really good, so I ended up riding all the way out to the country club before turning back. It was one of those rare mornings when I won my bet with the weather gods. I finally arrived back home with a nice hour's spin under my belt and just a couple of chilly feet to deal with. For the whole ride I had probably never strayed more than four or five miles from home. Not too bad. By the time I got back from dropping The Wife off downtown the real rain had started, so I drove to work in the car and finally got to try out the tiny little mini-umbrella that I'd bought while in the drug store checkout line last month when I was in DC.