Rotten Rita

About the middle of last week, hurricane Rita was shambling along, picking up energy from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. By Wednesday, it was being reported to be a category 5 storm, and projections were that its path would bring it to the Dallas area with enough energy to still be a category 1 or 2. Meanwhile, we were supposed to be going to Lake Murray State Park (Oklahoma) to spend the weekend with the Dallas bike club.

I've never experienced a hurricane and didn't know what to expect or how to prepare. Lots of people just stock up with water and batteries and board up the windows to ride it out. I have experienced enough Texas thunderstorms with 40-60mph straight line winds to know how much damage they can do, and I had to figure a hurricane of any category had to be worse. Sweetie had experienced Hugo when she lived in North Carolina, and she was concerned about leaving the cats for the weekend. So we cancelled our room reservation at Lake Murray lodge, bought some extra water and batteries, and started redding up the garage to try and make room for the cars inside.

To make a long story short, Rita ended up making landfall around Port Arthur, Texas, as a category 2 or 3. By the time it got as far north as Dallas, it had dissipated to a tropical depression and swung out to the east of us, more toward Texarkana. We had very windy day, yesterday, but that was about it. We had been concerned about whether or not our house was on high enough ground to be safe from flooding, should we get the predicted 6-10" of rain, but was part of a narrow strip that didn't get a drop.

In the end, we missed out on a fun weekend, and the rain would have been good for my drought-stricken lawn; but we did get some work done on the garage, and we didn't have any wind or flood damage. Looking at the pictures coming out of Galveston, Houston, and the bayous of Louisana this morning... it was a good trade.

What I did on my Labor Day vacation

It started off a few months ago, when Sweetie convinced me that I really needed to get on the stick if I wanted to plan a bike ride with my 87-year-old granduncle. I called up my best man and long-time friend, Leadfoot, to get some ideas about rallies in northeast Ohio and to invite him along.

The short version is that we decided to do the STOMP Bicycle Adventure put on by Summit Co. Metroparks. Uncle Carl wasn't feeling up to it, but Leadfoot and I did the 30-mile route through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Unlike the roads I'm used to seeing on the local rally routes, these actually had nice, smooth, three-foot shoulders and drivers who don't go out of their way to run over cyclists. Add to that the temperatures ranging from about 60 at the start to maybe low 70s and no humidity, and it was a great day for a ride. Couple of nasty hills, but the organizers kindly placed them toward the beginning of the route rather than at the very last, as most of the local rallies do.

We had a great time pedaling around with a whole bunch of cyclists, just chatting and trying not to flinch every time the propane cannons—designed to keep the crows out of the corn, Leadfoot explained—shattered the quiet.

And what a variety of cyclists and bikes there were. Most of the rallies I've ridden around the Dallas area attract a fairly homogeneous crowd: the expert and intermediate riders mostly wear lycra and ride racing-style bikes, and the beginners and leisure riders ride a mix of racing bikes, hybrids, mountain bikes, and cruisers. At STOMP, in addition to the usual racing bikes, I saw an amazing assortment of inventive, cobbled-together contraptions being ridden by all sorts of people who don't typically come out for the rallies here.

I think my favorite was the older gentleman pedaling along in a striped long-sleeve shirt, black trousers with suspenders, black socks and work boots. His bushy gray beard blew back around his neck as he rode, bolt upright, on an odd-looking fat-tire bike that had been modified with a saddle almost as wide as a tractor seat, a tall stem, and drop handlebars. The bike was outfitted with at least five pounds' worth of lights, bells, horns, and baskets.

He looked like he was having the time of his life.

Bonus: the organizers fed us brautwursts, Subway sandwiches, potato chips, and cookies at the end of the route.

Of course, it wasn't all about the bike ride. It was about the stopovers at Mom and Dad's on the way up and back; hanging out with Leadfoot, his wife, and their two girls; and spending an afternoon with Uncle Carl and Aunt Mary, just chatting about whatever and drinking Carl's homebrew beer.

I became caretaker of another piece from Carl's clock collection, since I was driving on this trip and had a way to transport it. The new piece is an iron-case Ansonia with an eight-day movement and is one of Mary's favorites because of the exposed escapement wheel that's part of the face. It was another donation that Carl fixed up by repairing the broken headpiece with auto body filler and fabricating a new pendulum.

Great trip, except for the nasty traffic snarls on the way back through Memphis.