Ride Home 7/14: Wentworth

I rode home and it was ridiculous. I should've waited, but I didn't. The rain wasn't the bad part, at least as far as bad parts go, but the lightning was fairly terrifying and that's why I should've waited. Luckily, I had a few things going for me and some of these few things include disc brakes and others of these few things include tires that are 2+ inches wide. I never felt unsure on the bike and that's a pleasant change from previous rain storms on other bikes. I went through the puddles (puddles which were more like lakes) with relative ease and I'm grateful that everything went more or less ok. But, nevertheless, don't ride in lightning. It's not so much the lightning that's bad but the potential for the lightning to get the tree branches and those tree branches to get you. Also, the lightning, I guess, could get you and as much as I'd like an eBike, I'd prefer not to have that kind of eBike.

I stopped at 15th and L and waited for 10 minutes for the remnants of the storm to pass and then the storm passed and I rode home. I wrung out of my hat and while I waited for the storm to run its course, my front light (a USB charged blinky light) ran out of juice and I felt irresponsible about not having a working light for the second half of my trip. Luckily, it lived through the very bad rainy part and I'm sure that was vaguely useful.

Flowers bloom after rainstorms, but so do runners. Runners running everywhere. Run, runners, run! You will never see as many runner running as you'll see after rain. Post-rain is their catnip. Actual catnip, however, isn't really their thing and they really didn't seem to like it when I kept trying to shove sachets in their faces. Here's more info than you ever might want to know about catnip. You're welcome, America.

Sometimes, I guess, traffic signals fall over and it looks like this:

I'd like to imagine that it was felled by a bolt of lightning, but more likely than not, it was just wind and rain. A bus driver asked me if it was lightning that did it and I was like "uh. well, it was a bike" and this is the kind of wit that ensures that strangers continue to talk to me. I mean, I didn't see a car crash into it, but I also didn't have any more insight than he did. All I did was tweet a picture of it because #millennial.

Easy going after the hill and then on the Hill. It almost started to get hot again, which is the saddest part of all summer rainstorms around here. It's not so much a thermometer as a boomerang. Knock the heat down and it just gets back up. Which isn't exactly how a boomerang works at all. So, yeah. [whistles nonchalantly and steps back from blog slowly hoping no one really notices]