Another Blood Donation At The Tracks

The Weather Underground (the collective weather station group, not the political anarchists) said there was a 20% chance of rain at 8 PM tonight. That seemed like pretty good odds to me, so I left from work tonight on a cloudy cool (63 F) evening at about 6 PM again. I wanted to try and get three hill climbs in this time (Monday I only managed two). I probably left too late; I have a habit of doing that when I ride alone. There is no immediate time constraint, so as I walk to the locker room to change, I am likely to stop and talk to people I run into, which tonight added about 45 minutes to the time it took me to get from my office to the locker room. With tonight's finish, I will see if I cannot be a little more diligent about starting earlier.

I took my rain jacket with me, so as not to tempt fate, secretly hoping that by bringing it that would somehow keep it from raining. However, at the top of the third climb, it started to sprinkle. I put the jacket on at that point, but it continued to rain, though not so hard as to make it uncomfortable, but hard enough that the road started getting a layer of water on it. By the time I was nearly back to work, the tires were throwing a steady rooster tail up my back. It did not get too cold. My thermometer said 57 F when I pulled into the parking lot. It worked out to be about 36 miles and 2200 feet of vertical.

Pretty uneventful, except for those damn railroad tracks. As I was coming up to the ones I had fallen on earlier this year, I slowed considerably and adjusted my angle of attack to be perpendicular to the rails. I popped over the first rail, and was just about to do the same on the second and the tire slid down the rail laying the bike down and me along with it onto my right side. I skinned my knee and have a nice big raspberry on my hip, but it looks much worse than it feels. Riding the rest of the way home (in the rain no less) actually helped to keep it from getting stiff. We'll see how I feel in the morning... I managed not to crack my helmet this time, though I remember it hitting the ground with a nice bang.