caught in the storm

Today I parked in Callingwood and rode 13.7 km to work instead of only 9. It was great; the first two or three kilometers are on a multi-use path that doesn't see much multi-use (I saw maybe 3 pedestrians the whole way.) The path does have a few branch-offs and of course I managed to take one of those. Instead of coming out across from WEM's Target, I found myself in a nice quiet neighbourhood, with no obvious way out. So I had to backtrack and find the right path. Other than that, it was an uneventful ride to the 100 Avenue shared sidewalk. From there I followed my normal route through the River Valley to downtown. It took me about half an hour, which wasn't bad at all.

The trip back to my car was another story altogether. When the afternoon class ended, I looked out the window and saw dark sky. Hmm, I thought: Looks like rain. I got packed up and ready to ride, and by the time I stepped outside, it was not raining, it was pouring. My two Ukrainian students stood on the steps with me and told me that if you can see bubbles in the puddles, it means the rain is going to last. I laughed. But they were right. We stood there, waiting for the rain to stop, but that didn't happen. There was thunder and lightening. Some of those thunder claps were nothing short of terrifying.

Finally, there was a bit of a lull and I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. I unlocked my bike and brought it close to the steps, carried my panniers down, hitched them on and took off. By the time I reached the corner of 102 Avenue and 124 Street, in front of MEC, it was coming down harder than ever.

I exchanged a few words with a fellow cyclist. He was enviously eyeing my fenders; I was lusting after his rain jacket. But, he assured me, the rain jacket wasn't doing him any good. I believed it.

As I continued west along 102 Avenue, I could see flooding on all the side streets, with water flowing south onto 102 Ave. Riding as fast as I could, I skirted the bigger puddles, rode through the smaller puddles and kept going until I reached the crosswalk to the pedestrian bridge at Crestwood. It was still pretty wet there, but by the time I got to 100 Avenue and the shared sidewalk, the rain had lessened considerably. And by the time I reached 163 Street, there was no rain. The road was dry and the rest of the route looked like it had never seen the rain.

When I reached my car, my shoes were soaked, but my pants were already somewhat dry, so I simply slipped off my jersey (worn on top of my regular top) substituted my sandals for my riding shoes, and all was well. I even stopped in at Safeway to do some shopping before stopping to get Little Granddaughter's laundry.

Yet another day to be glad I rode my bike instead of driving!