Last weekend was a study in flexibility with a bit of gambling thrown in for good measure. The forecast for Saturday morning turned out to be, unfortunately, spot on. Rain as predicted. Also as predicted, it was all gone by 10:00 am. After a flurry of text messages, a few of us settled on a Spillway ride starting around 11:00, by which time the streets were already practically dry. We ended up with four people, besides myself, each coming from a different direction. I rode out to "the pipes" where I saw Seattle Mike waiting. We were soon joined by Charles from the FQ, and Ben from uptown. Along the way we picked up Pirm, and for most of the 50+ mile out and back he and Ben sat on the front at a steady 20-22 mph talking continuously. The weather by then was practically perfect - low 70s with a moderate south wind. The only fly in the ointment in this case was that all but myself seemed to be having difficulty keeping as much air in their tires as they had started with. Ben and Mike punctured, while Charles and Pirm, both riding tubeless, sacrificed some sealant to the tire gods and had to stop only briefly. Back at home that evening I pulled a shard of rock out of my front tire that would have added me to the list if I'd ridden another ten miles. It was a very Zone 2 effort for me, sheltering as I was in Pirm's draft for 90% of the entire ride, but at least I hadn't gotten caught in the rain earlier in the morning, and hadn't missed a ride, which, it being a Jazz Fest weekend, probably happened to a few people who didn't have the time to ride later in the day like I did.
On Sunday there was a plan to do a 70 mile ride from Bay St. Louis. The forecast was again calling for some significant morning rain as a little front came through from the northwest, where all cool fronts come from. Checking the forecast the night before, it looked like the Giro would definitely get rained out, but the chance of rain over in Mississippi was a lot lower. I went to sleep confident that I had made the wise decision to do the Mississippi ride.
Well, by the time I was on the road to BSL, the forecast had flip-flopped. There were just a few of us on hand for the 8 am start, but it was abundantly clear that there would be a serious line of thunderstorms coming through the area around 9:30-10:00. So the 7 am Giro was probably mostly dry, but our own 8 am start turned out to be less well-timed. So once again, we rolled with the weather punches and decided instead to do a short 26 mile loop, getting back to the cars no more than ten minutes before the torrential rain started. It was actually a good ride, mostly in the 22-25 mph range with a few little efforts, but of course nothing like the full 70 miles would have been. The day before I had changed out the steel bolts on my stem for titanium ones, since the steel ones pretty much always start to rust a bit after a couple of seasons of sweat, and of course I could pretend I was making an upgrade, however cheaply. I was glad to see that nothing slipped, although I wasn't really expecting that to be a problem since I'd replaced them to the correct torque spec one at a time. After the ride I sat in my car for another twenty minutes or so until the worst of it passed before hitting the highway for home. Once again, by the time I got home, the sky was clear and the sun was shining like nothing had happened.
This morning's Mellow Monday ride had a good turnout, and it got fairly fast for a while, but that was thanks only to a handful of riders who were perhaps making up some missed efforts from last weekend.
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