Rain Rain, Go Away

There have been few blog entries lately because I was on a week of not much riding. When you’re alone out on the roads for hours on end, your mind tends to wander, which ultimately leads to excellent blog fodder. Similarly, no riding = no blogs. Well I'm back baby!

First: Big ups for my main man Robert Charles King for winning the NH cyclocross championships last weekend! This is no small feat, my friends, because current cross powerhouses Tim Johnson and Jonathan Page are both locals to New Hampshire. …now I’m not sure if they were at the race, but the fact that they could be out there vying for the title makes Robbie’s achievement all the more noteworthy.

Keeping the winning tradition in the family, the following day I took home my cross first victory in the Dave Panella Cyclocross Race in Binghamton, NY. That’s my first win out of six attempts, which makes for a 16.6667% winning percentage. Eddy Merckx’s winning percentage was a hefty 35%, so to even have half that is pretty flattering.

I decided to add some culture to my life by attending some local art galleries. The first one on my list was the Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, which is conveniently located about a 4 minute car drive from the apartment. What sparked my interest was a flier I saw at the library advertising for a Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit. I didn’t know a single thing about Ms. O’Keeffe, so I figured this would be an ideal way to figure her out.

My favorite part of the museum trip came about 20 minutes into the exhibit. Upon entering, everyone is offered a handheld device that resembles a big, cordless telephone, very similar to the one you might see Zack Morris and his Saved By the Bell cronies using. Next to most of the art pieces are numbers, which the holder of the device will punch into the “telephone.” Then there is a recorded voice on the “telephone” that tells interesting short anecdotes about the piece. So my entertainment came when I pretended that it was an actual telephone, where I had a one-way conversation with no one. I received lots of bizarre looks from the very crowded museum goers all around me, but I just shrugged them off as being rude and plugged my other ear so that I could have a legitimate fake conversation.

(Bare in mind that I went to the museum alone, so I don’t have a friend to say, “Teddy, stop being an idiot.” Nope, I just had to let my entertainment die off slowly. Hardy har har.)

I tend to gripe about the weather in my blogs …and today will be no exception! I made a rather obvious conclusion recently on a ride through the ran and cold and it goes something like this: it’s fall in New England if…

a) it’s dark by 2pm. Yup, when you can’t tell the difference between 2pm and 8pm because the sky is the same darkness at either hour – or any hour in between – then it must be the fall (or winter) in New England.
b) your fingers and toes are agonizingly painful just 15 minutes into a ride. This situation is indescribably demoralizing when you know that there are 3 hours of riding still ahead of you, yet all you can think of is the excruciating pain. This is generally exacerbated by the wet roads. Wet roads, huh? What a perfect segue…

It rained yesterday. Actually no, it POURED yesterday. It’s rained most of the week, though, so that’s nothing new. The excitement came when the rain significantly picked up in pace and the leaves were torn off the trees because of the rain. Next the leaves clogged the drains all around the roads, so there was flooding all over the city! How exciting is that? It wasn’t bad out of town where most of my ride took place, but when I rolled back into town I knew something was awry when I went through puddles deeper than my hubs! This means that the puddle was at least one foot deep. Crazy. Here are some pictures of smaller puddles.

Things to point out here:
-The maroon car on the right has stalled out in a deep puddle.
-There is a guy sitting in the back of his SUV with a rake trying futily to clear the drain holes of leaves.
-The Hummer has not even noticed that it's raining out, let alone that there's flooding.
-Gas is crazy expensive. The red sign reads $2.42 for regular, but just two days before the prices were $0.20 more per gallon
I particularly liked this gentleman who didn't miss a beat with all the rain. Notice how his left foot is entirely submerged in water. It's also important to point out that I am standing on the sidewalk, which is free of puddles. This guy apparently scoffs at sidewalks and puddles and just plows along as if everything is normal. He's kind of like the Hummer in the picture above. Flooding? What flooding?