Rainy Weather

As the weekend approaches I always pay attention to the forecast when deciding where and when to ride. Last weekend was a washout so I didn't get a ride in. This weekend the forecast was a little better but there was still the possibility of rain in the forecast. The forecast for Saturday was fog and clouds in the morning followed by heavy showers. The hourly forecast from the couple of sources I use showed only a 20% chance of rain until noon. 

Sunday's forecast was better but Jack had sent out an email wanting to get a ride in Saturday before his trip to Missouri so we took the chance and did an ad hoc ride in Saturday. Now I knew the forecast Saturday was not great and I did expect to get rained on a little but the weather we got was a lost worst than the prediction. 

I did do the blessing of the Holy Kickstand at the start as the insane posse had some health and family issues and I wanted to do something to ward off future problems and protect the posse. The Holy Kickstand does not control the weather so we had to leave that the other bike gods. 

The ride started off with a little fog but that lifted to a hazy cloud cover as we headed south. I was optimistic about our chances to stay mostly dry until it started to rain a little and then got harder. As the rain got harder we had to stop to change one of the four flats that we had on the ride. The rain let up for a little while then started and stopped a couple of time. The rain was harder than the light sprinkle that was predicted and eventually the number and force of the rain caused us to cut it short and head straight back. The only good thing about the weather was that it was warm so we were wet but not cold.

We got back with 36 of the planned 48 miles. One of us didn't make it back as they had a flat a few miles before the end but Jim went back and picked them up.

I know weather is not a precise science but I expected the forecast to be more accurate. I know that weather models use  "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow" (i.e. Chaos Theory) to predict the weather so there are a lot of conflicting factors in the model that can prevent it from converging to get an accurate result. I could blame the fact that we got caught in the rain on a bad forecast or the fact that Jim and I were on the same ride (which for some reason this year has been very rare) or the fact that I brought my hill bike to a flat ride but the truth is if you ride enough and push the envelope you are some times going to get wet.