There are times you look forward to riding your rain bike. Big storm coming in; you go to bed the night before to the sound of wind driving the rain against the windows, and the gutters dumping large amounts of water from your roof. There’s no thinking involved; this is why you have the rain bike, with disc brakes and wider tires. This is why you have the clothes that keep you warm even when soaking wet. This is why you get street cred from being out on the roads at a time when even the cars have been scared away.

This morning was not one of those times. It had rained a bit the evening before, but had stopped by the time I went to bed. But the weather report said we were supposed to get a couple hours or rain that would end just before staring our ride. Unfortunately, the weather report nailed it. No rain, but wet roads. No choice but to ride the rain bikes, on messy roads but no rain.

We got a bit of a late start; not exactly sure why. Kevin and I showed up at the start 3 minutes late… nobody there. We rode towards Kings, looking for tracks in the wet pavement, but found nothing conclusive. I mean, why would anybody be out, now, in the muck, when the roads should be clearing up nicely in just a couple of hours? But one person, older Kevin (pilot) was out there. We spotted him off in the distance, just after turning onto Kings. Don’t know if we would have caught him if he hadn’t stopped to take off his jacket just before the climb. But we did, and proceeded to have a conversational pace up Kings.

It was actually quite pretty out there, with the sun occasionally breaking through the clouds. It’s almost a cliché to say that West Old LaHonda, in particular, was beautiful. At the relatively-slow speeds we were riding, it was easier than most days to pay attention to it. And a bit easier to rationalize stopping to clear the road of debris, as seen in the photo above.