Beating the Storms

Just barely beating the storms has been a theme over the last couple of rides. Last night, Curtis, Steve, and I went to Tanglewood for the weekly Paceline MTB ride. We headed out onto the trail with some rather ominous looking clouds off in the distance, but figured we could at least get in an hour of riding before it got nasty. Basically as soon as we got back to the cars, there was lightning seeminlgy everywhere. We threw the bikes back on the rack, commenting on the three people standing out in the middle of this huge field throwing the frisbee with lightning everywhere. Darwin awards contestants, apparently. On the ride back to the shop, the storm was pretty intense, knocked out power, had small limbs blowing everywhere.

Tonight was the weekly Wednesday Night Recovery "Race" that Paceline hosts. We did our two laps of casual pace and decided to head out for a third, faster loop. The pack split with some riders headed back to the shop, and some headed out for a third. The skies had been vaguely threatening the entire night, but basically, as we started our third lap, the skies started to open up and drop some rain. At that point, we made a key choice to turn around. From then on, it was on to get back to the shop before the storm. Making pulls of around 24-28mph we made it back to the shop in a serious hurry. The drive home was very sketchy. Crazy flash-flooding. One of the low points on Yadkinville I was thankful I no longer have the Crapalier, there's no way it would have made it across the water. When I got home, I was amazed to find that my backyard had become a stream...interesting...

Backyard Flooding from Barry Stevenson on Vimeo.