Impossible Forecasting

Thursday morning's sky. Practically every morning's sky lately.

It's mid-summer in New Orleans and means that just about every day it might, or might not rain, and that rain might be a brief shower or a sustained torrential downpour. If that constitutes a weather forecast, well then I guess your standards are lower than mine. The problem is that it is virtually impossible to predict where it will rain, or how much it will rain, or how long it will rain. It's just a matter of whether or not you happen to be under whichever cloud unleashes the rain at the time it does so, and in the location in which it does. Basically, it's a roll of the dice. So rather than pay any attention at all to the weather forecast, we just check the radar and make our decisions based on that. We don't generally bring along rain jackets even when we know we'll probably get wet because the rain will probably be brief and the temperature will still be warm which means that wearing a rain jacket will leave you just as wet from your own sweat as would the rain.

Tuesday morning on the levee ended up with just Charles and me. Maybe it looked like it might rain and people bailed? We pushed the pace all the way out to Ormond, which was actually a lot more effort than it would have been if there had been a group. By then we were both kind of cooked and took it pretty easy all the way back.

On Thursday it rained hard early in the morning and although it was easing up by 6 am I waited another half hour or so and went out for a short solo ride after things had dried off a little bit.

A big Friendly Friday ride that of course turned out to be more fast than friendly.

The Friendly Friday ride had an unusually large group, probably because people had been skipping rides all week because of the rain. Naturally, the big group meant that the ride was a little more fast than friendly. Likewise, the Saturday Giro was well-attended. In fact, Frank Moak had even driven down from Brookhaven where I presume he usually rides alone. Then, after the turnaround at Venetian Isles, I looked up and saw Kenny Bellau. I think he's putting in some saddle time ahead of a planned cycling trip somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic. Predictably it was a pretty fast Giro.

Saturday Giro

Sunday morning the radar looked fine when I headed out around 6 am. There was a smaller Giro group than Saturday, which was not unexpected. What was unexpected, however, was the rain that started when we were halfway down Hayne Boulevard. For some reason I was staying reasonably close to the front dealing with the water spraying in my eyes and thinking the unexpected rain would probably be brief. When we made the turn at the end of Hayne I was surprised to find that most of the group had turned back and we were left with maybe 7 riders. Oh well, we were already wet, so we continued on as the rain slacked off. Of course the roads were still wet most of the way out to Venetian Isles so it was hard to tell when the rain actually stopped because the wheel spray didn't. Somewhere behind us it turned out there was another small group of four or five that had been gapped off on Hayne when people started turning back but hadn't themselves turned back, so we had a bigger group for the ride back. I got home and for about the 4th time that week had to rinse off the bike and lube the chain. The forecast for the coming week wasn't looking better, either.

It was not my finest training week, mostly thanks to Mother Nature, but I did manage to get in 260 miles, which was pretty good under the circumstances, even if most of those miles were pretty easy.

Monday morning on the relatively dry lakefront.

On Monday I went out to meet the Mellow Monday ride but almost nobody was there, apparently because they had consulted the radar which I hadn't. As I came to a stop at the ugly sculpture fountain in front of the museum of art I could see the raindrops starting to fall. There was one other person who showed up but he turned off quickly to head home. I went ahead an rode the route anyway, running into Mark on Lakeshore Drive for a while. I was feeling like I needed an easy day, so the solo ride was fine even if I did end up soaking wet once again.

Tuesday's morning ride didn't happen, at least for me. I was standing next to the dresser at 5:30 am pulling on my jersey when I heard the rain coming down outside. The radar was just a big glob of greens and reds all over south Louisiana and I was thinking I might not be able to ride at all that day. I'd already been drenched riding home from work the day before, so I decided it would be a good day to work from  home. Since I was already up, I at least got a jump on the day by a couple of hours. By early afternoon, despite the pessimistic weather forecasts, the sky and the radar were looking a light brighter and decided to try and get in some miles on the levee while I had a chance. Given the impossibility of knowing where and when it would rain, and wanting to do something to improve my chances of not getting rained on, I put my rain jacket in my pocket. I knew that if I left it at home it would definitely rain but if I took it along it probably wouldn't. It's kind of the same thing as talking about how long it's been since you've had a flat tire, which will reliably and promptly result is a flat tire. So I had a nice solo ride on mostly dry roads, but as often  happens after riding after rainstorms I ended up with a flat tire out by Williams Blvd. It was still worth it.