For once the weather report had it pretty much right; they forecast a few periods of significant rain overnight, possibility of scattered thunderstorms, and clearing in the morning. I didn’t hear anything during the night, but woke up at 6am to a single very loud clap of thunder, followed shortly thereafter by the street outside my window looking like a very active creek, not something anybody would want to drive a car through. Didn’t seem to stop the garbage truck that makes its usual ruckus each Thursday morning about 6, but it’s not like the old days where big guys hoisted heavy garbage cans into the back; nowadays it’s robotic arms that reach out and grab your lighter-weight plastic cans and load them into the truck.

I managed to get back to sleep and woke up to the alarm at 6:55, greeted by wet streets and clearing skies. Just like the forecast. Well dang, it would have been fun to have ridden in that deluge… maybe next time. Kevin and I headed out over Jefferson, not too surprised to find nobody heading back from the 6am “morning” ride, but frankly a bit disappointed to see nobody on Canada. Nobody except Eric waiting for us at the start, Eric who usually finds something better to do when it’s not-so-nice-out (“better” meaning that he might shift his ride time to something more weather-friendly). But today he was with us, the only 3 cyclists anyone can document being out on the roads this morning, according to Strava.

Well, actually, you can’t even document that, because Kevin’s Garmin malfunctioned somehow and didn’t record the ride, and I can’t figure out where the memory card for the camera went, so I have no pictures showing that we were up on Skyline, as it started to rain again, at a balmy 39 degrees. The only official record we’ve got is from my own Strava account, and I’d love to claim that anything showing me climbing Kings that slowly must be fake, meaning there are clearly no records of the ride at all! But what wasn’t fake was that record showing us skipping the West Old LaHonda segment, because I had climbed Kings so slowly we didn’t have time for it. Too bad; it could have been spectacularly-beautiful out there! Then again, without pictures to prove it, all I would have had would be memories, and… well, what’s the point again?

Tomorrow I’ll hopefully run down the memory card so I can post some photos that lend credibility to the ride. Meantime, it’s hard to consider what it must be like for Kevin, who really did ride this morning, but has no record of it. He’s ok with that; me, well, it would drive me up the wall. My computer dare not screw me out of a ride!