[Originally published in a newsletter I edit. They’re my words, I can use ’em as I wish. I’ll buy myself a beer as a royalty.]
Ah, these summer afternoon rains… I wrote a while back [in that newsletter I mentioned] that my clean-bike luck had run out. The other day I had a few errands to run…
As I donned my riding duds and loaded my pockets I checked the weather app for my planned route. It’s a good app. I had 38 minutes. That seemed tight but do-able. I might hit a little wet stuff, I thought. I hustled up, pulled the cruddiest bike from its chock, ran through the pre-ride checks with haste, and set off. I treated the limit signs more like suggestions, as the afternoon traffic permitted.
Well, at every stop things… took… a little… longer… than anticipated. I fumbled and dropped my tiny eyeglass case behind the candy rack at a register, it took a minute to find. (Glad for my flashlight!) A couple o’ traffic lights went red when they should have known better. An inept guy at the ATM had stepped out of his car to feed his card into the slot, over and over, without results, while the darkening clouds gathered overhead. Would I ever finish what I’d set out to do?
About a half-dozen miles from home the skies opened. It didn’t take long for visibility through my ridin’ glasses to become dangerously poor. The lightning was last bit of encouragement I needed to roll into a station. I took a moment to cover the exposed intake element before ducking under the convenience store’s overhang for some shelter.
Before long there were six other like-minded riders standing with me. The furthest was out of Titusville. We passed the time. One smoker must’ve lit about ten sticks in a row before giving up, his fingers drenched by the wind-blown rain.
Much sooner than the weather app was now predicting, the cell had passed. It was moving in the same direction I was headed. Of course it was. The drizzle of the back of the thing was my companion the rest of my ride, my speed quite a bit less than when I’d left home quite a bit more than 38 minutes earlier.
