Flexibility

Coming back over the Rigloets with Fort Pike off to the left.

This week's weather was beyond predictable. There was rain, and more rain, and torrential rain, and clear skies, but the only way to tell what was coming up was to look out the window. Tuesday's rain never really let up so I missed riding entirely that day. Then on Wednesday it was raining in the morning, but I was able to get out for a couple of hours in the evening without getting too wet. Thursday we lucked out and got in our usual levee ride before the rain started. Then on Friday I went out to the 6:00 am "Friendly Friday" ride, some of which strayed considerably outside of the friendly speed range. Just as we ended and were hanging around in front of the Museum of Art the first raindrops started to fall. I was pretty damp by the time I got home but not what you'd call soaked, so that was good. I even made it in to work and back without getting rained on, although I left work early just to be on the safe side and also because I was practically the only one on the entire floor all day. Lots of people are still working from home, although I would think things should be getting more or less back to normal next week. 

Still waiting.....

On the home front, the road work crew started putting in the forms for the new curbs all down Neron Place on Friday. That's somewhat encouraging, but it also means that nobody who lives on the three blocks can park their cars, or get into their driveways, so cars are parked all over the place. Complicating that is the fact that to date we have still had no garbage or trash pickup. 

Overflowing garbage bins are lined up on the corners next to bags of hurricane debris and large piles of tree limbs and stuff. The last time our garbage was picked up was some time in late August, well before Hurricane Ida. The cans are of course full of maggots and are pretty disgusting at this point.

So last weekend there was this century ride over in Mississippi that I was kind of thinking about doing, but the weather forecast was not promising for either Saturday or Sunday. There was an idea to do a northshore ride, but nobody really wanted to commit, considering the chance of being caught in thunderstorms out in the middle of nowhere. The best option seemed to be to stay close to home and be flexible. That meant doing the Saturday Giro Ride, which thankfully escaped the rain, and then on Sunday deciding to do a "long" Giro out to Fort Pike. That adds a few miles and for me makes for an 80 mile day. For that we ended up with just five - Charles, Rich, Bo, Pat, and me. It turned out to be a really nice morning with mostly clear skies until the clouds started developing as we made our way back, pushed along by a nice little tailwind. Somehow, thanks to being able to be flexible about when and where I rode, I managed a fairly normal weekly mileage 270.