When the Rain Falls

The great weather of last weekend was abruptly replaced with a full day of cold mist and intermittent rain.  I didn't even consider riding that morning, but luckily the rain had stopped briefly in time for me to ride to work.  I even made it out around lunchtime and rode down to Apolline to pick up a gift card for Mario and his family.

Mario

Mario, one of my NOBC teammates, suffered a brain aneurysm a couple of weeks ago, and although he is no longer on the critical list, it's going to be a long rehab. We're putting together a little gift basket, which of course just had to be a wicker bicycle basket, and I'm hoping to pay him a visit this weekend.  The flower shop is swamped because of Valentine's day, so they won't get to it until Saturday anyway.  By the end of the day I felt lucky to find another lapse in the rain so I could ride back home without getting wet, although by then the temperature was dropping.

The rain bike

So late last night I put a little air in the tires of the old Pennine, which is still sporting its cyclocross tires but now has its fenders too.  By 6:30 am it looked like most of the rain had passed through, so I headed out toward the lakefront under the still-dripping oak trees to try and get in a few miles.  As frustrating as it is dealing with traffic and stop lights, it was still better than looking out the window wishing I'd ridden.  I decided to ride to the lakefront bike path in Jefferson, which is probably about seven miles away, to see what that was like. The streets were still wet and full of puddles, so I was really glad to have the full fenders.  I admit there were a few times when I rode right through the puddles just for fun.  My feet didn't start to feel wet until I was halfway home, and since the temperature was only in the mid-40s, it would have been miserable if I had been riding my regular bike. I think it was around where I turned off of the street and onto the bike path over the levee that I rode through what looked like a little puddle but was in reality a big old pothole.  I hit pretty hard, but everything seemed OK so I didn't think about it until after I'd turned around at the 12 mile point and the rear tire started to feel mushy.  It was a really slow pinch-flat leak, so I was able to nurse it along until I got to Causeway Blvd. where the bike path goes behind the levee and underneath the road.  There, I was protected from the north wind which made changing the tube a lot less miserable.  Anyway, although the temperature was stuck at about 44F and it was rather gloomy and wet, I was glad to have logged a few miles today.