Rainy Restart

Most of the group at the Spillway. There was a second group a couple of minutes back.

The plan was to do a nice 50-mile ride out to the spillway to kick off the new year. The forecast was looking better than it had been for days, lots of people were interested, the temperature would be in the 60s, and we wouldn't be starting until 8:30 am. What more could you ask, right?

Shiny roads

I woke up a couple of times in the early morning to hear rain outside. Actually, what I mostly heard was the stream of water pouring down from the broken gutter just above my bedroom window, but at any rate, it was not what I'd been led to expect by the National Weather Service, aka weather.com. By 7 am the text messaging started. Looking at the radar, I was sure that the line of rain that was barely moving to the east would be past us by 9:30, so I sent out emails and FB posts pushing the start time back by an hour. Around 8:30 I found out that a number of people hadn't gotten the message before riding down to Z'otz on Oak Street where we were to meet. A little while later it started raining again and the radar started looking worse rather than better. Well, like me a lot of riders were determined to get in a ride on New Year's Day, come hell or high water. I left the house around 9:00 and when I got to Z'otz  few minutes later I was a little surprised to see a half-dozen riders huddled under the sidewalk awning waiting for the ride to start. I stuffed my raincoat into my pocket and went inside to get a cup of coffee, and then sat down in my usual spot outside to wait for whoever else might show up, which was basically Pat by that time. It was still raining and I wouldn't have been surprised if a number of riders had just called it a day at that point and headed home, but as it turned out everyone mounted up and headed out on Oak Street in the rain for what promised to be a rather soggy start to 2019.

We soon picked up Mignon and Mark and a few others up on the levee, and before long the pace started to pick up. Howard went to the front and upped the pace a couple mph, which split the group, and we didn't really all come back together until around the Big Dip, despite some slow-downs to negotiate the leftover piles fireworks that were littering the bike path.

Clean Slate

It was one of those rides where it was sometimes actually raining, sometimes not, but always wet because of the wheel spray. The pace was kind of erratic as there were a few riders determined to get in a workout, a few more determined not to get dropped, and a few others who didn't care one way or the other. In a way it was rather fun. If it had been colder I would have been absolutely miserable, but fortunately I'd over-dressed with the expectation of being wet. Over-dressing when the temperature is in the 60s means wearing an old jersey under your regular one and pulling on the arm-warmers. So I was never really cold except for a few minutes after we stopped to take a documentary photo at the spillway.

So once again I am re-starting with a clean slate. Last year's miles are just a matter of history now and a new year of riding has started. In the rain. With friends. I am taking it as an omen of a good 2019 that despite riding in the rain for three hours, nobody had a flat!