I chose to stay home Friday from work to accomplish a few chores around the house that needed a typical weekday for completion. Although the weather was a little rough (sporadic showers throughout the day) it didn’t scare me away from getting on the bike and logging some needed miles for the week.
Normally I am smiling during the ride. But Friday's rain made that a little tough.
Before the ride, I had to take care of a problem. Although my front wheel seemed to hold air for the duration of a ride, by morning it would become flat indicating that there was something wrong. After recently replacing tires and tubes, I was hoping for some stability with the tire problems. I have been plagued with tire-related issues in the few short weeks of this cycling season, and thought they would all be resolved with new equipment. But the Minnesota roads are still in rough shape and in desperate need of a heavy rain to wash away the small pebbles that lead to bike tire failure.
I cracked open the front tire and sure enough – a very small (but sharp) rock had penetrated through the casing just enough to poke a small hole into the tube. It was not enough for an aggressive leak, so it was pretty slow to actually impact the tire. With most small holes, they tend to grow into much larger holes, so it needed repair especially before another extended ride.
Up to this point, I had been replacing tubes with holes versus repairing them. But, at $7 per tube, it was getting expensive. So I dug out the patch-n-repair kit and rejuvenated the tube for reuse. When running my tire between 110 and 120 psi, I have always been concerned of the integrity of a patch. But, sometimes a lack of funds wins over the “optimum” solution and I was sick of using up my spare tubes.
We’ll need to see if the patch holds or if I will find myself AGAIN on the side of the road making another repair.
With the repair successful and needing to deal with adverse weather conditions on Friday (lots of rain, but minimal winds), I was able to have an OK ride. I only averaged 17.7 mph, but was able to get nearly 34 miles into the bike before returning to the house. Here are the details regarding the ride at my Garmin Connect site:
In my youth, I never did much riding in the rain and generally avoided it all-together. Riding while wet is all about equipment and apparel, which I never had the right stuff for anything other than the warmest and perfect of conditions. The nearest, well-equipment bike shop was in St. Cloud so any access to cycling-specific stuff was generally via the Bike Nashbar catalog. Plus, in the mid-80s, there weren’t the assorted “engineered fabrics” that both shed water and enabled proper breathing. It was best to avoid wet conditions, versus suffer through elements that made the ride a miserable experience.
Even though it is wet, it's hard to find anything worth complaining when on a bike
But now that I have a bike that cannot rust (thank you, carbon fiber) and a few key pieces of cycling apparel, riding in the rain is really no big deal. It’s a little annoying to have the water drip down from your helmet onto your face or get sprayed by passing vehicles. But, in general, it’s a good (nearly enjoyable) experience. All except for the various worms that I encounter which get thrown up against the various tubes of my bike.
Friday’s rain was sporadic throughout the ride and I never had to deal with a major downpour. The clouds that were moving through were the type that would generate some really large rain drops, but would soon give up and only produce the intermittent rain that doesn’t need steady wiper blades in the car. Heading out into Medina, the roads were mostly just wet and the rain very tolerable. Once I made my way south along Lake Minnetonka, the rain picked up and it was coming down pretty hard for a good 20 minutes of the ride.
Between all the aluminum and carbon, there are very few things on the New Steed that are negatively affected by the wet conditions.
One of my primary concerns of riding in the rain has mostly to do with other motorists on the shared roads. Most people in cars would not expect to encounter a cyclist under these conditions, so I’m always worried that I will be missed and get run down. To prevent that on Friday, I added my flashing red light to my saddle bag and left it on for the entire ride. Since the dark rain clouds produced low-light conditions and the rain made visibility become even lower, anything I can add to the bike to increase awareness is a good thing. I usually don’t run with any lights, but Friday was a good set of circumstances that led to the exception.
I kept myself entertained with the recent episode of the Two Johns Podcast – which is a favorite of mine. The Two Johns are a pair of seasoned “roadies” who share a lot of the passion and opinion I have about the bike. If you are not a cyclist, their podcast makes absolutely no sense. If you are, it’s like a shared conversation with old friends.
I am slowly changing my mind about riding with some music (or, in Friday’s case, spoken word) to help pass the time. I still only ride with one ear containing a Apple earbud headphone, which still allows me to hear cars coming from behind me. For Friday’s ride, I’m sure I looked rather crazy cracking up in fits of laughter as one of the Johns made a silly comment. With my rides nearing two hours in length, it becomes nice to have something with variety in my ear instead of only listening to my own thoughts. It also avoids getting a single song stuck in my head, that normally haunts me for the full duration of the ride.
