Summer Weekend

All the ingredients were present this weekend.  Heat, humidity, and of course, rain.  With the days getting longer and longer, lights were hardly an afterthought as I rode out to the Giro Ride on Saturday. The weather forecasts this time of year are mostly the same - always a chance of scattered thunderstorms, more in the afternoon. Saturday morning we headed out under a sunny sky with the temperature already above 80F and the humidity pretty much off the scale. A little while after we got onto Chef Highway, though, it started to rain, so most of that stretch, both out and back, was a compromise between having a nice draft and having water sprayed into your face from the wheels ahead. Apparently it had rained only out on the far end of the route, though, because once we were back onto the service road it was bone dry again. The ride itself didn't seem unusually fast, but without much of a delay out at the turnaround it seemed more consistent than usual. Indeed, we were back to Lakeshore Drive a good ten minutes earlier than usual.

As I rode back home with Quentin and Ben I suggested maybe doing a ride on the northshore on Sunday. Some time that night it came down to just three of us, but it was looking like it would be a good day and I was really feeling the need to get out in the country for a change.

With only three people you'd thing things would go smoothly for a quick little drive across the lake, but by the time we actually got onto the bikes over there I guess we were a good half hour later than we'd planned. We rode mostly the standard training ride route, including both Tullos Road and South Choctaw, which made for a pretty hilly ride. When I pulled my bike out of the car over at Lee Road Junior High I immediately realized I'd left both waterbottles at home.  Digging around in my bag, though I came up with a small bottle of Coke, so I stuck it into my pocket and we headed out around 8:00. I was planning on a moderate but steady pace with maybe a few efforts on some of the hills. That plan was going OK, but about halfway through the ride I could tell that David was starting to have trouble. When I pushed the pace a little bit on a hill on the back side of the course he came off the back. That was repeated a few more times during the ride, but by the time we were at 50 miles or so the heat, and maybe lack of water, was starting to get to me a bit. We stopped at the closed gas station on Lee Road where I filled up my Coke bottle with metallic tasting water from the faucet.

By the time we got back to the car my Garmin's notoriously inaccurate thermometer was showing 100-102F, but whatever, it was definitely in the 90s by then. For a ride of only 67 miles, I was feeling pretty toasted by the end.

That evening I enjoyed watching the live feed from Tulsa Tough, although the video quality on my end made it nearly impossible to find the Palmer guys.

Monday morning I went out early for an easy ride on the river levee. Sadly, there was still absolutely no sign of progress on any of the torn up and/or closed off sections. This is getting ridiculous. That work was supposed to be completed months ago. Seems like the contractors, rather than the Corps of Engineers, are in charge here, no doubt preoccupied trying to figure out how to get more money out of the government than what they originally agreed to.