100% Chance

Last night's weather forecast was showing a 100% chance of rain for today. I thought it rather odd that they wouldn't have allowed themselves a little wiggle room on that. Fortunately, the hour-by-hour detail looked fine for the early morning training ride, so my sore legs and I rode out to the levee as usual. It was a dark and humid morning that featured a strong southeast breeze. As has happened repeatedly lately a gap opened right away, thanks mainly to the reluctance of some riders to risk their lives in the dark. While it's relatively easy to see what's going on when you're near the front, if you happen to be seven or eight riders back in the paceline you can't see much except the butt of the rider in front of you, so hauling ass down a narrow bike path that features the occasional unlit oncoming cyclist or walker gets pretty old pretty fast. So we watched the blinking lights of the usual suspects ride off down the road. The rest of the group was still going plenty fast enough, however. At one point John swung a bit to the left and nearly nailed one of those aforementioned walkers. As usual the number of people in the rotation started to drop the closer we got to the turnaround. The ride back was both slower and harder thanks to the wind. No surprise there.

So I got back home and checked the radar, assuming I'd have to rush in order to get to work dry. Surprisingly, it was all clear. I had a bunch of awards I had to put in the mail from the 2-person time trial, so instead of going straight to work I loaded up the commuter and headed off to the post office. I had 14 identical plaques, each in identical padded mailers. At the post office, after waiting in line for fifteen minutes in what seemed like some sort of slow-motion time warp I finally got to the counter. Apparently the only way they could handle this situation was to weigh each and every one, one at a time, type in the zip codes, one at a time, and print out a postage sticker, one at a time. This took another fifteen minutes, after which I was handed a receipt that was literally over two feet long. The variation in weight among all of those identical items was nearly a full ounce, so the postage varied from $2.53 to $2.70. If you've ever wondered why you never seem to get those prizes that the promoter promised to mail to you, now you know the reason.

The rest of the day I was waiting for the severe thunderstorms we'd been promised, but they never materialized. I think there was one very light spot of drizzle, but otherwise it was just cloudy and humid. It looks like we may finally be getting a little shower tonight, but it looks like tomorrow morning should be fine.