Uncontrolled Variables

The cool mornings are still with us for the time being. The weather for yesterday's Wednesday morning levee ride was nearly perfect and it was looking like it would be a nice ride until the crash.  As the group approached one of the access roads a car turned onto it off of River Road at full speed and it was anybody's guess whether he would slow down in time.  I was near the back and yelled "Car!" as the riders in front hit the brakes. Whenever that happens it's hard to know if the guys in front are just slowing down a little bit or braking hard. In this case it was the latter.  Brian was somewhere in the middle and was caught off-guard, crossing wheels with someone in front of him and going down.  He didn't seem to be hurt too badly and did the rest of the ride with us, but even though his shorts didn't tear, he reportedly had a nice bit of road rash under there.

So I went out in the dark this morning expecting similar conditions to the day before.  I was therefore surprised to find the levee covered in a fairly thick fog. Once the pace got going and the fog got thicker things started getting pretty sketchy, especially toward the back.  You couldn't see the pedestrians or other bikes until the last minute, which resulted in a lot of panic braking toward the end of the paceline.  After the third time someone hit the brakes in front of me I sat up and dropped out of the paceline.  There were just too many uncontrolled variables for comfort.  I waited for Jeff and Mignon who had done the same a bit earlier and we had a nice steady ride all the way out to the Luling bridge where we turned back with the group.  The ride back was much nicer since the fog had mostly lifted by then.