You’d think after all these years I’d learn how important it is to pay homage to the Weather Gods. But Nooooooooooo....
The sad thing is that I really do know better. Being an AMC member for many years had drummed into me the importance of being prepared. Putting the boy scouts to shame, AMCers would not venture across the street without a whistle and flashlight so they could be found by the rescue party after their special accident. I learned that one must never wear cotton, which is hypothermia’s handmaiden (Mrs. D. however has still to learn this lesson, and continually dices with death with her cotton ensemble). So I really should be ready for anything the Weather Gods choose to throw my way.
Case in point was last year’s Velo Vermont. Now I’ve had many encounters with soaking 40 degree rain, and always carry raingear. But for some reason, this weekend I was feeling lucky. I was packing up the tandem with the usual foul weather gear, when I heard someone in the group say that today was to be the better of the two days. So, throwing caution to the wind (literally) I decided I really didn’t need to carry that heavy rain jacket (which probably weighed about 2 oz). I rationalized that we were riding the tandem and there’s not that much room in the rack bag. I wanted to leave plenty of room to rip off layers when the sweltering heat began. so we started out on the Bristol ride, which is a beautiful ride through the valley west of the mountains and east of Lake Champlain. All was going well, until we got about as far out on the ride as we could, when it got cold and started to rain (funny how these two phenomena often go hand in hand). We took refuge under the awning of a convenience store where I got into a major funk over how stupid I was and was waiting for a miracle, deus ex machina showing up with two Goretex jackets, when I remembered the #1 rain survival item, plastic garbage bags. So I sent Susan into the shop to see if she could score some (I was busy staring at the rain and frowning). She came out and said that they indeed had plastic garbage bags but that we would have to buy a box of 12. My legendary thriftiness kicked in and I actually contemplated pushing on in search of a store that sold individual garbage bags. Let’s see, hypothermia or buying ten extra garbage bags, a no brainer for most people, but moi... Anyway sanity prevailed and we purchased 600% of our minimum daily requirement of garbage bags (which probably weighed considerably more than the original rain jacket). Punched arm holes, head hole, and off we went. They worked remarkably well, in fact Susan declared them her favorite rain gear ever (lots of protection from the elements, but plenty of ventilation at the same time). We became known as team Glad.
By now you would have thought I’d learned my lesson. The spring century proved this was not the case. By the day of the century it had been raining fairly continuously for two days. So when loading the car, I of course threw in my rain jacket, and contemplated gloves of some sort. But it was supposed to get up into the 60’s (positively balmy for this time of year), so I decided they were not necessary. The forecast (aka farcast as in far from the truth) was for it to be dry in the PM. They didn’t explain they meant Monday PM. So, at the start I opted for my The Ride windbreaker, which I doffed before starting since it wasn’t actually raining and it was only supposed to get better. As I was riding along, I was thinking of shedding my tights at the first water stop. Well, of course you can tell what happened. Wasn’t actually raining at the first water stop, but I decided that maybe I could hang onto the tights a bit longer. Again, at the furthest point, the temperature dropped like a rocket and it started to pour. Out came The Ride windbreaker, which really wasn’t designed to be rain gear and had nicely ventilated armpits which is usually a feature but in this case gave the driving rain another avenue of attack. So I’m riding along marveling at how I could be so consistently stupid. Even with Ride windbreaker I was barely able to stay warm. But then the rain let up. After a mile or so of dryness, off came Ride windbreaker, since I reasoned the layers beneath would never dry out with the windbreaker. But the gods were just toying with me. Just as soon as I was mostly dry it started raining again. But now it was merely raining and not pouring, so I was able to maintain body heat. Another close brush with death.
So, from now on, I’m never, ever going to go anywhere without raingear (and my whistle and flashlight).
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