Lakefront Storming

Five to go - before the storm hit

The forecast didn't seem too much out of the ordinary for Wednesday. Then again, weather forecasts in July around here are not particularly reliable. It can be clear and sunny in one place, and five miles away some pop-up summer thunderstorm can be flooding the streets. Regardless, I was optimistic about the last race of the Wednesday evening series out on Lakeshore Drive as I loaded up the car before heading to work in the morning. I rushed out of the office at 4:30 that afternoon, headed for Lakeshore Drive. The sky was overcast, and radar was showing some storms scattered about, mostly north of the lake. Problem was, they were drifting in our direction. I arrived at the race site, got out of the car, and pondered the situation. The wind was already picking up, and the sky to the north was dark and grey. I backed the car up to the windward side of the finish line so we could tie off the tent to it like we'd done the week before. Then we got the camera and computer and clock and everything set up and were ready to go in time for the first race at 6:10, which we intentionally started a few minutes early with the idea of keeping on schedule by the end of the night so it wouldn't be too dark. I already had the linescan camera's fps setting dialed way down because the cloud cover was already blocking a lot of the sunlight.

One of the earlier races

The first race went off pretty nicely. For some reason there weren't too many riders who were lapped, so we got those results done quickly as riders lined up for the second race. I checked the radar.  Yikes! It was not looking good. The wind was already starting to increase as the weather closed in from the north. We calculated the number of laps very conservatively for that race, so that the winners finished a few minutes short of their scheduled 30 minutes. Fortunately, most of this race had stayed together, so results again were relatively uncomplicated. The finish line camera was still working fine, despite the darkening sky, but it wasn't really needed except to confirm a couple of bib numbers.

The third race, however, was going to be a different story. As we lined up the riders along the unprotected Lakeshore Drive, it was clear that we were going to get hit by a pretty good squall. The only questions were when and how badly. We told the riders that if the weather got bad we would be ringing the bell early. A lap or so later the weather got bad. A wind gust blew the new LAMBRA laptop off the table (miraculously, is survived) and spectators rushed over to hold down the tent as the rain started getting worse. The waves started crashing over the seawall. I gathered up the computer and put it, still connected to the camera and power supply, into the open back of the station wagon. It was not the first time I'd had to do that. Luckily, the camera itself was holding steady thanks to the big sandbag weight I had hanging from one if the tripod's legs. The rain got worse, the sky got darker, the wind got windier. A lap or two later I made the call. We'd be ringing the 1-to-go bell on the next lap. The 40-minute race was now more like a 25-minute race. Lance and Sam had been off the front almost from the start, but this time Sam came by alone. Lance must have gone down somewhere, but after a few more riders passed, he appeared in full chase mode. A few riders dropped out. Then the power quit - apparently the generator ran out of gas?  My antique tape recorder had already failed during the prior race so I grabbed the little Sony digital one that I always seem to screw up with. I hit the 'record' button and started calling out numbers as the riders finished. There was a big gap, so I hit the 'pause' button, or that's what I thought. Actually, I'd hit the 'play' button by mistake and missed the next few riders entirely. Fortunately, Michelle and Angela were doing great with scoring, so results were pretty clear and the only real problem was that the paper was pretty wet and a few numbers were hard to read. There hadn't been enough time for anyone to get lapped. Volunteers had already stripped off the top of the tent and stuffed it and the frame into my car. It was still raining pretty heavily as I disassembled the camera and packed everything up as best I could and crammed everything into the car for the drive home. I called ahead and got Candy to order a pizza. Back at home I unloaded everything in the rain and set it out in the basement with the box fan blowing on it. The tent top went into the dryer (on air-dry), and I went upstairs and opened a bottle of pinot noir, and waited for the pizza to arrive before firing up the computer and wait for Townsend to send me the final results to post to the LAMBRA website.