Not Too Worried

It's 8:20 pm right now and outside it's raining cats and dogs. Thunder, lightning, torrential downpour - the whole thing. It has actually been raining in some form or another since around noon, I guess. Luckily, the Giro Ride wasn't affected.

I had awakened early this morning, and so I was kind of looking forward to a leisurely ride out to the lakefront to meet the Giro Ride. I wasn't too far along, though, when Rob rolled up alongside, so I stepped it up a notch to match his pace. The early departure meant that I made it all the way around to the parking lot in time for the start of the Giro. As I turned into the parking lot I felt something unusual. It was my rear tire going flat. So while everyone waited for me, I changed the tube. Right next to me was Tim who was doing the same thing. We ended up rolling out a few minutes behind schedule, but it was nice that the group waited.

The Giro was fairly fast today, I thought, not that I had anything to do with that. I spent most of the time tucked safely in the draft somewhere near the back of the group. A handful of riders split off of the main group on Hayne Blvd. and they were long gone by the time I even knew they were up the road, but the group was rolling pretty well itself, so it was good. Later, I saw Ed, who had been riding his track bike, on the side of the road with a couple other guys. I couldn't quite tell what the problem was, but as it turned out he'd flatted out of the lead group and then discovered he'd forgotten his peanut butter wrench, so he couldn't get the wheel off to fix the flat. Robin stopped to help and had one of those glueless patches, so once they found the puncture they were able to patch it with the wheel still on the bike.

When we turned onto Hayne Blvd. on the way back, VJ took off with Ed and me in tow, and although he eventually dropped back a bit, Ed and I put in a nice little effort all the way back to Lakeshore Drive.

Anyway, it was a nice ride under an overcast sky, and as I started on my way home a light rain began to fall. "Nice timing," I thought.

So anyway, even though the weather outside is pretty bad, I'm not too worried about tomorrow's ride on the northshore. The weather forecast has been right on track this time, and it's calling for the rain to stop well before morning.