Wet and Wild Thursday Ride

Thursday very wet ride.
The important stuff:
35 miles and 1800 ft. elev. gain

Nitty-Gritty Details if you’re so inclined:
Despite these sunny looking pictures, ’twas not always sunny. A few drops of rain and one flat at the start should have given us pause to turn around. Angry black clouds might have been another clue to give it up. But no. We valiantly forged forward.

On Mt. Hope Sandy had a cable malfunction that will turn out to be fortuitous. She returned to her car before the worst of the weather appeared. We continued on to Mt. Pleasant. Such a nice sounding name for so much pain. It is a fun downhill if you make it up.
Barbi, Greg, and Bish on Mt. Hope
It’s when we turned onto Bellinger Scale that things began to look bad. Cheerful fluffy clouds turned black and featureless. Gale winds began to blow. This is not looking good. I was wishing I had tucked my camera into it’s plastic bag. I was wishing I was home.
Mt Pleasant
This was no sprinkle. It was a deluge. It probably didn’t matter that I had no rain jacket. It would have soaked through too. We valiantly pedaled on while our shoes became flooded. I took smug comfort that some riders would hide away during a rain storm, but we powered through. It was over by the time we reached the other end of Bellinger Scale Rd.
Soaking wet and gritty face
The skies calmed as we returned to the cars and all was well until my bike suddenly acquired that soft squishy feel. Damn a flat! Al change the tire for me and as is so often the case with this bunch, the conversation went south. The vid will give you some idea, though the full impact was not caught on tape. The day was not done yet though. Another storm rolled in to soak us one more time before reaching the cars. That we would have avoided this one if somebody hadn’t flatted is not lost on any of the other riders.

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