Today (Wednesday) is supposed to be the big thump of this week’s storm session. That’s easily confirmed by the size of the puddle in the back yard, which is actually beginning to develop a wave pattern under the steadily increasing winds. However, the sump pump hadn’t gone off since I rose this morning, so I sloshed my way around to see what was up. Sure enough, the pump had slipped just a hair on it’s soaked mounting and the trigger rod had gotten jammed. It’s now happily thrumming away.
Last night, I decided to get the official forecast, and found my old NOAA link no longer worked. They had actually upgraded things significantly, with a cool little click-to-find-the-forecast mapping applet which I played with relentlessly for a while. It’s particularly fun to click out at the Pt. Reyes Lighthouse to see what will probably be the worst of things, as it’s the most exposed section of the SF Randonneurs 200K route scheduled for this Saturday.
It was forecasting 20-30 mph winds with gusts up to 48 mph. Today, they’ve updated those estimates to gusts to 65 mph. That’s a little staggering.
But, the important thing is really wind direction. It’s been a steady SW wind for the last 24 hours or so, which would mean a bit of a push out to the point, but probably more of a quartering headwind as we came back from Marshall on the return leg. Although, working the mouse around to Pt. Reyes Station and Marshall shows those winds are holding SSW, which puts them in one’s face.
Again, that’s today’s numbers, and whatever else I’m going to get done today, it’s pretty clear that riding won’t be one of those things. There’s no point other than making things rough on the equipment, both biological and mechanical. The plan had been to do little riding this week anyway so that the tank would be full for the weekend’s effort. I did manage to get myself up early, wrenching by bio-clock forward another hour so that the shock of the 4:45 AM alarm won’t be quite so shocking on Saturday.
And Saturday, it still seems, may be day of the slight break in this weather front. The forecast has been holding steady at 20% chance of showers and relatively mild conditions.
Took lunch yesterday down at the laundromat, re-TX-Direct-ing my rain jacket, wind vest, non-cycling rain jacket (the instructions did say up to three garments per bottle), new rain booties and toe covers. Today is wool washing day. Tonight I’ll swap to the new tires and get the hub fixed and new chain installed. Probably need to tweak the fenders slightly. Then I’ll just have to fret about packing and such. Find some zip-lock bags. Charge batteries. That sort of thing.
Yes, I have been compulsively making lists on little pieces of scratch paper for the last week or so - “Tech To Do”, “Clothing to Wear”, “Things to Check/Find”, “Food”. Last night I baked a batch of pumpkin sugar cookies.
Here’s the thing - the lightning is freaking me out.
Rain - yeah, ok, I’m not gonna melt. Wind - is what it is once you’re out there. Cold - layers and keep moving. However, this is not the place you want to get caught in a lightning storm:
The lighting came rumbling in Monday night, sounding like a passing freight train. Yesterday AM, we had a sub-second blast that light up the windows and gave the house a mighty thumping. Haven’t heard too much today, but every time it echoes, I think of that long open road out to the Lighthouse and back.
Hmmmm….that’s not too helpful, now, is it?
Fine. Back to the lists…
January 20th, 2010 at 12:08 pm Careful with those last-minute tire changes! Remember what happened last time? ;)
January 20th, 2010 at 3:42 pm Worse case scenario, you can hunker down here if need be. I’ll put coffee on.