Riding in the Rain in May

"Let the rain kiss you.  Let the rain

beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.

Let the rain sing you a lullaby."

Langston Hughes

I wake up to overcast skies and wind.   I conclude that it would be ridiculous in the extreme to drive to the club ride, a flat, 50 miler through the city that a friend told me was "ugly."  Why, I reason, would I do this when earth is awakening.  There are wild flowers to be seen and green leaves emerging.  

My only hesitation is the wind.  I know it will be a tough ride out, but I also know the ride home should be glorious.  While rain is not expected, I throw in a dollar plastic poncho.  It is small and easily portable and I carry one in my bike bag almost the entire spring/summer/fall season.  I get two miles from home and find I don't remember unplugging the coffee pot, so  I return and find I am correct.  I had turned it off but I had not unplugged it.  Then I am off to Salem to get a donut.

The ride along Eden Park and Delaney Park roads are some of my favorites.  The road is not terrible, there is little traffic, and it is mostly woods or farm land.   Recently two Amish families have built alongside the road, and I will enjoy seeing their slow but steady progress.  I pass the first home and a baby girl sits in the gravel wearing a  baby blue bonnet.  She does not appear to be big enough to toddle.  The mother and two sons are doing something in the field next to her, farther away from me.  The smile of the baby brings a grin to my face.  I don't know if I will ever be a grandmother, but if so it will be bittersweet because I will be sad that my husband is missing it. There is nothing like the softness of an infant, the way they melt into your arms as if trying to merge their way back to the womb, the sweet smell of youth.  I miss having children around, the laughter of the little ones, the intensiveness of their feelings as they get a tad older.  Children laugh from the heart, their whole body writhing with enjoyment, but their sorrows are just as deep.  I will miss the children when I retire, but I will not miss the sadness I have seen and have tried to ease.  Hard enough to do for your own children, no less those of another.  

The second Amish farm has put up a gate, or I assume it is a gate of some type since it is carved to fit into another log,  that I find interesting so I stop to take a photo since the house is not right there and I won't be intruding.  So often I pass photo opportunities I would love to take because it would be rude.  Meanwhile, the sky begins to darken ominously.  At the beginning of the large hill into Salem, the rain begins in earnest.  I stop to put on my poncho, make sure my phone and camera are encased in plastic, and turn on my lights.  Because the rain is heavy and visibility is little, I decide to walk the hill facing traffic to be sure I am seen and because I don't relish riding up the hill encased in plastic. Perhaps, I think, it will diminish by the time I reach the top of the hill.  As if to mock me, almost immediately after I think at least there is no lightening and thunder, the thunder booms as lightening flashes across the sky.  At the top of the hill, I decide to ride and discover that I have lost my rear view mirror.  Briefly I debate retracing my steps to try to find it, but I decide that is probably a lesson in futility, so I get on my bike and ride.  The plastic does nothing to help, billowing out like a sail to impeded my forward progress, but it beats the heck out of getting soaked.  It is warm, but not that warm yet.

The rain does let up before I get to the bakery, but it does not stop.  At some point, I realize I am enjoying it now that it is not so driving and hard. The above words by Langston Hughes come to mind.  I try to remember the name of the professor who showed me his poetry, his magic, but while I can see him in my mind, a slight, dark haired man, Harvard graduate, loved marathons, I can't remember.  Arriving at the bakery,  I apologize for dripping on their floor and display case, but the girls are nice about it.  I sit outside under the awning against the bakery eating my donut while people going into the shop stare.  Some look curious, some look hostile, and some look friendly, but they all look at the crazy woman sitting under the awning in the rain eating her carmel iced roll.  

I head back out truly missing my rear view mirror as this is the part of the route where there actually is some traffic.  The rain stops at the top of Salem Hill on Old 56, a descent I was a bit concerned about due to wet roads.  We have had so much rain lately, however, that the roads do not appear to have built up a slick upper coat of oil.  I find myself singing Joni Mitchell songs that I have not really sang much since college and I realize that I am happy.  Winters may be a  problem when I retire, but I do not think I will ever tire of my bicycle and roads he takes me on.  Even if it rains.  Somewhere along the line, I had forgotten what a joy riding in the rain can be.  And then, the biggest miracle of all.  I am across the street from my home, look down, and the lost mirror that fell off my helmet is there, hooked on the cables above my front wheel.  49 miles and just another day on the bike.

Solo vs. Club

[F]lowers... adorn our lanes, fields and fells, 

and... smile upon us and cheer and 

 bless us in our country rambles.... 

the lovely blossoms... kiss the clear brooks

 and mountain wells... ~

James Rigg, "Preface,"  

Wild Flower Lyrics and Other Poems, 1897

Oh, the blessings of vacation free from normal life demands.  Sunday there is no club ride of any length, my heart and legs long for a far-reaching ride, and I do not have to go to work on Monday.  I debate and debate and finally decide on the Christy Century despite knowing first store is not open on Sundays and there will be nothing until I have 55 miles in the saddle.  That is a problem with many of my routes: they rely on small country stores that normally are closed on Sundays.  I rearrange my bike bag and stick a banana in there doing my best to ensure that it will not get squashed and yucky.  Daylight is long this time of year and so I can take my time, important since I don't expect to ride a fast pace.  A "country ramble" seems just what I need.  And the weather, while a tad on the cool side in the morning, is perfect.

I head out by myself on a route that, while familiar, I have not ridden for a number of months, and I find my rhythm.  Everything seems so fresh and new.  The trees are not yet fully leafed out, green seems to seep from their bark, slowly, so slowly.  The daffodils, other than some late blooming varieties, are about gone.  But I see so many wildflowers, the majority of which I can't name.  I hope to see the field of Trillium outside of Vernon, but despite the fact they were in full bloom in Mitchell yesterday, I am too early or too late.  I pass Mayapples and grin thinking of how my children came up with the name of "Umbrella Trees," and thus, in the Hall household, Mayapples remain known as Umbrella trees.  They seem enormous and plentiful this year, but I see none in bloom.  I see phlox and some dainty red flowers that I have seen many times before but whose name I don't know. Redwood trees are in full bloom.  Streams, while dryer than a week or so ago, still run though not with the same fervor. 

I think about how I recently told a friend, Steve Rice, that part of the problem I am running into picking up the household chores my husband used to do, is the language of tools.  Often, I don't know their names.  Recently, however, I was able to fix a broken light switch and take apart the bathroom sink to clear a slow running drain.   I am learning and can accomplish at least these basic things, but the lack of the basic language is frustrating and hampers my efforts.  It is just hard to go into a store and ask for something like channel locks when you don't know that they are named channel locks.   Still, I think, these minor accomplishments leave me with a feeling of satisfaction, of having mastered a new skill however minor it might seem.  I struggle with retaining the names the roll across my tongue like a foreign language, but occasionally they stick. While I often would sneak basic tools from the basement when I was a child, hammer, nails, hatchet, my father, very handy with tools but very much a traditionalist, did not believe in women using tools. 

I think of other things during this ride, but mostly I am appreciative of the life I appear to have built and the blessings that have been bestowed upon me and of the beauty of the road and the passing scenery.  I arrive at the first store only to find it is either permanently closed, being completely renovated, or being changed into something else.  Pressing my eye to the window, I see the concrete floor is now pea gravel.  The counter, kitchen, and shelving is all gone.  I decide to move on a bit to somewhere more scenic to eat my banana and to grieve the apparent closing of yet another store.   Few people appreciate the importance of these small country stores to the bicycle rider that enjoys low traffic country roads to more heavily traveled roads. To them it is pearls before swine.  And as a friend pointed out, you often get the chance to meet "characters" there.

This leads to thoughts of all the changes.  So few people in the area ride distance anymore, and if they do it is only if the ride is a club ride AND a tour stage.  Sad.  Or perhaps it is sad that I continue rather than tiring of the bike and finding new pursuits as others before me have done.  That day will surely come, but I hope it is later rather than sooner.  I remember Grasshopper asking about brevets a few years ago and how he said, "You're still doing that?"  But I am in love with bicycles still, with the places they can take me, the things that I see, the demands they place on my body, the friends they have brought me.


I decide during the ride to do the club ride on Tuesday.  It is a hilly ride, only 50 miles, but it is a beautiful ride though I suspect it will not have the wild flower display.  Unlike my solo century, the club ride is well attended.  I am disappointed that Amelia is not there, but I get to see Paul and Lynn and Bill and Lucky and catch up. The scenery on this ride is spectacular though you pay for it with long climbs that stress the lungs and the legs, but I never appreciate it as I do the scenery on a solo ride.  But the ride delights in other ways.  The joys of conversation.  I truly miss having my husband to bounce things off of and tell about things.  I am sure the other riders are thinking, "Doesn't she ever shut up?"  But they are friends, or some of them are.  Others on the ride I don't know.


At one time, it would have bothered me not being in or near the front group, but now it only occasionally causes a twinge of envy and/or regret.  Now it is more about the camaraderie I find nearer the back of the pack.  I see the changes in my friends as well as myself, particularly if I have not seen someone for a long while or they have had a rough patch.  You know how you see someone you have not seen for awhile and think, "Oh, my, when did they get old? How could someone change so much so very quickly?"  Like when I look in the mirror and remember I am not forty or even fifty anymore.  


Both of these rides filled a need in me, at least temporarily, and I am glad I did them.  They left me tired, but temporarily sated.  But I have more vacation and there are roads that need traveling.  Perhaps tomorrow.  Club or solo?  Well, whichever way my fancy swings when I wake up.