Better Late Than Wetter

"It's sprinkling outside," said The Wife as I twisted around to look out the window.  I hate that.  "Sprinkling."  What exactly does that mean?  If it was truly "raining" then my decision would be easy, but "sprinkling" is an entirely different matter. Sometimes riding in that kind of stuff can perfectly fine.  Other times it can be perfectly miserable.  It all depends on how the temperature, wind, amount of rain, and wet streets all come together. 

Indeed, I could see that the street was kind of wet, but .... rain?  Sort of, but not quite.  I thought about it for a while.  The temperature was around 60° F, so I checked the radar which didn't really look all that bad.  Still, who wants to go out for a ride on wet roads and come back with soggy feet, a dirty bike, gritty teeth, and probably a flat tire?  Fortunately, I have a Rain Bike!  Unfortunately, it was at the moment only halfway through its transition from cyclocross bike to rain bike. I knew I'd be late if I got that bike ready for a ride in the rain, but I also figured the regular group wouldn't be up on the levee anyway, so being a few minutes late wouldn't be an issue. 

Down in the basement I swapped out the mountain bike pedals for my antique Shimano/Look pedals, tracked down the shoes with the almost-correct cleat, pumped up the tires, stuck my rain jacket into my pocket, and headed out the door.  Naturally the rain, what there was of it, had stopped by then.  I figured I'd get in twenty miles or so at an easy pace.  Better than nothing, right?  Shortly after I got up onto the levee a couple of Tulane riders came flying past.  They were in the middle of a 2-minute interval.  I shifted to the highest gear on the bike, which still had its cyclocross freewheel on it, and latched on.  My top gear of 52 x 16 wasn't likely to hold up too well for intervals, but I figured I could handle a minute or so of high-rpm spinning as long as I had a draft.  After a couple more of those, they turned around, but by then I'd learned that there were a couple more Tulane riders coming up from behind who would probably be going a little farther and weren't doing the intervals.  I looked back and could already see them, so I continued on until they caught me.  On the way back Landon said they were going to do a little short sprint workout, sort of mini-intervals.  Naturally, I couldn't stay on their wheels once the speed got up past 25 or so, but I'd catch up a bit between sprints, so once they were finished I caught back up to them, just in time for one of them to flat.  We were there long enough that I guess the Strava app that was running on my phone decided I was finished and stopped logging the ride.  Naturally I didn't realize it until later in the day when I looked at the data and wondered why it didn't show the extended stop.  Anyway, on the plus side, I arrived back home nice and dry, having missed the rain.  Thanks to the Pennine's full fenders my feet were pretty dry, although of course I did get a fair amount of wheel spray from the others.  Just to make me feel a little better about my decision to ride, it started raining shortly after I got back home.  I liked that.