The early part of today's ride was frustrating, but by the end everything was fine. Last night before I went to bed, I checked the hourly forecast for today on weather.com, and they were predicting morning thundershowers, so I planned to wait and ride in the afternoon. But then when I was up in the middle of the night (c. 3 a.m.) as always, I checked, and they had revised the forecast, eliminating the morning rain. So I figured I'd go ahead and ride very early in order to beat the intense heat that was moving in.
I began at 6:15 in 60° conditions, and all went splendidly for a while. But about 3 miles into the ride, I began to hear the rumble of approaching thunder, and then light rain began to fall. I was approaching Marsh Park by then, so I pulled under the roof of a shelter to wait it out and see what would develop. Intensely dark skies, as shown in the following picture, brought heavy rain for a time, while thunder continued overhead.
The storm was fast moving, though, and by about 15 minutes later the rain had stopped and the sky was beginning to clear.
So I was able to start up again with no problem whatsoever, and continued on to finish up three round trips to the park, completing 26.5 miles in 3:09. Because of the delays I experienced, I finished past 10:00, and by that time the temperature had risen to 70°.
I also augmented my wardrobe today, with a visibility vest that Christy kindly gave me, and took a selfie of it during my third time at the park.
I'm continuing to prepare for the upcoming PALM (Pedal Across Lower Michigan) tour. The riding actually begins Sunday, and Saturday I will travel to Saugatuck, on Lake Michigan, where we will have a group meeting to go over expectations and plans that night, and then we camp there. Yesterday I practiced setting up and taking down the 5x7 dome tent that I bought for this trip, and it went fine. Overall, I would agree with the manufacturer's boast that the tent's design promotes easy set-up ... but for this old man, getting down on the ground to do it and getting back up again were about all the challenge I needed. 😇
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