Day 52 - The day it decided to rain - and I mean hard!

We had a 65 mile day scheduled from Albany to Rhinebeck, New York but Mother Nature stepped in and made a relatively easy day into a bit of an adventure. By the end of the day, the team had accomplished a little more than 40 miles of the route (the first 20 and the last 20 miles give or take!).

So, let’s do a little explaining. We woke this morning knowing that the day would be extremely wet and that flooding was a real possibility but with little flexibility in our schedule in arriving back on Long Island we knew we just needed to suck it up and get wet! The team decided to sleep in a little to try to get warmer temperatures for our start as the rain was falling at half to one inch an hour. We actually started riding at around 10:15 and slogged through the first 20 or so miles - at times riding through water that coved our shoes up to the ankle. At one point I looked down at my front wheel and realized the water was about up to the center axle of the bike!

At around noon, the rain was falling down hard it was getting a bit dicey with visibility and we began getting really cold. Teeth chattering cold. We decided to stop at a diner to get some warm soup and sandwiches and to try to dry off. We ate and went and cranked the heat in our support vehicle for over an hour and the rain just wouldn’t let up. In fact near where we stopped riding there were road closures due to flooding nearby.

The team still wanted to get some miles in so we drove south to the intended end point of today’s ride. At around 3:30, we got back on the bikes since the storm was further north of us and we started riding back toward the beginning of the route. We made it about 20 miles before calling it a day. This was at about 5:30.

We got a lot of the plan done and ultimately stayed safe. I think there will be a lot of damage from this storm. It was really crazy. Locally there were rain totals as high as 8 inches in the area.

Off to Kingston and Poughkeepsie and parts south tomorrow. All of these routes are now rides that this team has made before. We are on our home turf and closing in on the prize!