Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Today was supposed to be a 95 mile day. Mother Nature, however, had other plans in mind…
Mile 0: We are at Lenore’s dream house (she wants to buy it but doesn’t want to live in Louisville – it’s a dilemma). The skies look incredibly ominous.
Mile 0.1: The rain starts. Most of us stop to put on our rain jackets. Then we continue on our way.
Mile 3.2: Pretty sure this is about the point where we saw our first strike of lightening. At this point, however, the rain was coming down so hard that we couldn’t see well enough to read our bike computers.
Mile 4.98: We desperately seek shelter under an overpass.
The rain is completely pouring down and lightening is striking a few times every minute. Pretty scary. In our attempt to pass the time while we were waiting for the storm to pass, we took some pictures. They were interpretive “thunderstorm” pictures. Very funny. 
After waiting for about 20 minutes, we got back on the road again. It was pretty wet and continued to drizzle for a while, until…
Miles 14-18: Crazy lightening flashes freak us out as we race down a country road with absolutely NOTHING else in sight.
Mile 19.72: Crazier lightening flashes strongly encourage us to pull over (again) to wait out the oncoming storm.
We just happened to be near a BP station, so we took up residence there. 
It’s actually the perfect place to wait out a storm. They had warm drinks, tasty snacks, and even a television where we could watch the radar. 
The rain continued to completely POUR and lightening was literally flashing all around us. The vans came to save us. We decided to rack the bikes and try driving ahead for a while and then reassessing the weather. We had to wait for the storm to die down a bit, though. It’s a bad idea to try to load bikes on to the top of vans in the middle of a lightening storm. Metal racks + tall heights + metal on the bottom of our shoes + terrifying lightening = bad combination.
We drove up about 30 miles, took naps in the van (while Tim was creeping us out from outside…), and had lunch.
Mile 19.72 (of cycling, but with 30 more miles of driving): We waited out another storm from and then headed out to finish the ride. It turned out to be a completely gorgeous ride – rolling hills, lots of trees, riding right by babbling brooks. Awesome.
Mile 65.14: Arrival at our final destination for the day – The Aurora First Baptist Church. Because of the bad weather, we all had a bike washing party. We were then fed an incredibly delicious lasagna dinner. Yum. Literally, the best veggie lasagna I have ever had (it was actually vegan). Amazing.
End of the forty-second day. And it was stormy.
Today was supposed to be a 95 mile day. Mother Nature, however, had other plans in mind…
Mile 0: We are at Lenore’s dream house (she wants to buy it but doesn’t want to live in Louisville – it’s a dilemma). The skies look incredibly ominous.
Mile 0.1: The rain starts. Most of us stop to put on our rain jackets. Then we continue on our way.
Mile 3.2: Pretty sure this is about the point where we saw our first strike of lightening. At this point, however, the rain was coming down so hard that we couldn’t see well enough to read our bike computers.
Mile 4.98: We desperately seek shelter under an overpass.
The rain is completely pouring down and lightening is striking a few times every minute. Pretty scary. In our attempt to pass the time while we were waiting for the storm to pass, we took some pictures. They were interpretive “thunderstorm” pictures. Very funny. After waiting for about 20 minutes, we got back on the road again. It was pretty wet and continued to drizzle for a while, until…
Miles 14-18: Crazy lightening flashes freak us out as we race down a country road with absolutely NOTHING else in sight.
Mile 19.72: Crazier lightening flashes strongly encourage us to pull over (again) to wait out the oncoming storm.
We just happened to be near a BP station, so we took up residence there. It’s actually the perfect place to wait out a storm. They had warm drinks, tasty snacks, and even a television where we could watch the radar. The rain continued to completely POUR and lightening was literally flashing all around us. The vans came to save us. We decided to rack the bikes and try driving ahead for a while and then reassessing the weather. We had to wait for the storm to die down a bit, though. It’s a bad idea to try to load bikes on to the top of vans in the middle of a lightening storm. Metal racks + tall heights + metal on the bottom of our shoes + terrifying lightening = bad combination.
We drove up about 30 miles, took naps in the van (while Tim was creeping us out from outside…), and had lunch.
Mile 19.72 (of cycling, but with 30 more miles of driving): We waited out another storm from and then headed out to finish the ride. It turned out to be a completely gorgeous ride – rolling hills, lots of trees, riding right by babbling brooks. Awesome.
Mile 65.14: Arrival at our final destination for the day – The Aurora First Baptist Church. Because of the bad weather, we all had a bike washing party. We were then fed an incredibly delicious lasagna dinner. Yum. Literally, the best veggie lasagna I have ever had (it was actually vegan). Amazing.
End of the forty-second day. And it was stormy.
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