2020

New Year Day ride out to the Spillway

I started 2020 with a ride on the levee out to the Spillway. We'd done the same for the past couple of years, and when someone reminded me of it I figured it would be a nice change from yet another Giro Ride. I also figured it would be a nice smooth easy 50 miles to start the new year. I figured wrong.

Yeah, I was there too.

So I was up at around 4 a.m. on New Year's day to bring Danielle and Shannon to the airport for their flight back to Seattle and then their drive down to Olympia. I guess I kind of napped for an hour or so when I got back home, but it wasn't really worth going back to bed, even though the NYD ride wouldn't be starting until 7:00. Arriving at the starting point, near the Jefferson Playground, I was happy to see a nice group of a dozen or so that was basically just waiting for me to show up. Heading upriver we had to negotiate a lot of areas where the bike path was covered in fireworks debris, but pretty soon Jeff rode past us, commenting that we were going too slowly for him to warm up. We had a bit of a tailwind and a couple of riders keeping the pace fast at the front, so our average speed on the way out was nearly 24 mph. The ride back was fairly fast as well, despite a bit of a cross-headwind, so I was pretty happy with the 51 miles I logged for the first day of the new decade. The only problem was that the wind we were dealing with was pulling in a lot of moisture from the Gulf and the forecast for the next couple of days was not looking good.

On Thursday morning I looked at the radar and it looked like I might be able to get in a few miles before the inevitable rain started. Just as I arrived at the levee, where I met up with Charles, a very light drizzle started. I thought maybe it was just a really brief thing, so we headed out anyway, but within a couple of miles it because obvious that we were going to be getting pretty wet. We pulled the plug at the bridge and turned around - a decision I did not regret. The light rain continued, and just as I got a few blocks from home it got heavier. While I made it back inside before getting really soaked, I knew Charles wouldn't be so lucky. He wasn't. The extra few miles he had to ride were done in a steady rain.

Heading back home early on Oak Street trying to beat the worst of the rain

Friday was non-stop rain from morning until night. I didn't even get out of bed to look out the window when I awoke, since I could hear the rain falling already. I ended up taking the car to work. My brother's son James and family were staying at the house, but I needed to be at work, so I missed the trip to the Aquarium.

This morning I was up around 5:30 to ride and to say goodbye to the family that was driving back to Austin. I headed out to Starbucks as they hit the road to Texas. A cold front had come through and it was a little chilly with a 15 mph wind blowing, so I over-dressed as usual, which made my ride to Starbucks quite comfortable. The ride itself was marked by at least three flats and one mechanical that resulted in the group splitting up into two or three parts, but otherwise it was a decent enough ride. Tomorrow we start our NOBC winter ride series on the northshore. It will be chilly but we aren't starting until 8:30 so the sun should be out by then and I'm not expecting it to be too cold or windy. It will be nice to be out in the rolling countryside for a change. Hopefully we will have a nice group. I'm not expecting this ride to be particularly fast, and we'll be re-grouping at intersections, so that's good. It will probably get fast for a couple of short stretches if everyone's on the same page. We'll see.