Yesterday I brought the Boone Cross bike down to the shop to get checked over and make sure it would be ready for the rain forecast for today; didn’t need much, just tire change and fender installation. Spent a bit of time last night with Kevin making sure we had all of our wet weather gear ready to go (it’s been a while since we’ve needed it), and looked forward to something a bit more than mere drizzle this morning. Even though the weather forecast showed not much likelihood of rain until 10am, the clouds obscuring Skyline this morning made it appear riding the rain bikes would be a wise decision.
Of course, being the first Tuesday/Thursday-morning “rain” ride, it took just a little bit longer to get out the door (ok, garage actually) than normal, and rain bikes being just a bit slower than our regular bikes, we committed the cardinal (and annual) sin of showing up at the start about 52 seconds late. Not that anybody’s counting. Joining us were “pilot” Kevin and JR, both on “regular” bikes without even fenders. Obviously, the fact that they rode away from me was their lighter bikes, and obviously they’d be paying for that choice soon, right? At least this time Kevin (my son, not the pilot) stayed with me on the climb up Kings.
Once up on Skyline we learned the truth; the pilot and JR weren’t intending to do the full ride. Something about pilot having to pick up a tie at his house and then ride back down Kings to his car so he could go to work. Up until that point it had been reasonably-dry, but after the two of them left us on Skyline, our luck changed… it got colder and damper. Strange to think this is what we had hoped for!
With just the two of us left to fight the headwinds going towards West Old LaHonda it was a bit of a battle, but on the positive side, that kept us warm. Best of all, the further we went, the worse the weather got! Kevin and I were on a roll. We started picking up some light rain descending 84 into Woodside, and by the time we climbed over Jefferson on our way home, we finally hit some real rain.
Ride complete.
