Break in the weather

It had been months in the planning and weeks in the calendar. Sunday ride, 2 times up Arthurs Seat, the premier "mountain" for riding a bike up. Well it may not be that long at 3km and not even 300m of elevation for the main part of the climb, but it sure looks good. Standing steep and visible from most parts around Port Phillip bay. Switch back turns that look just like those in Le Tour and views for miles around.

So when the day finaly comes, everyone was woken by rain. The SMS's where comming in as thick as flies in an outdoor dunny asking "is the ride on". Calmly I swatted them all away and headed for the computer and the Bureau of Meteorology website for the rain radar. It looked perfect, heavy rain that would pass at 6:15 am and then a break in the weather before a cold front with thunderstorms, hail and snow on lower peaks.

We arrived at the start point just after 6 am and it was still raining. 6:20 we got the bikes setup and by 6:30 the rain had mostly cleared. Though the roads were wet, a light tail wind made for a good warmup heading out of Carrum and into the hills past Frankston.

The roads were almost empty. We did not see a single other cyclist. This was as if the quite before the storm. Every one congratulated me on reading the weather so well but I kept nervously looking to the west where clouds were brewing.

Finaly around 7:30am around Mt Martha, cyclists started to show on the roads. As if they were some special breed of beetle that had just found the perfect conditions for a hatch.

To Arthurs seat we did ride, the wind did howl and the weather was closing in so a second asscent was out of the question. We were also running late with 4 puncutres for the whole day, probably due to the wet weather getting all sort of gunk stick to the tires and slowly cut through them.

On our return trip the wind swung so we had a tail wind down and a side wind on the way back. Still my average barely made it over 25 km/h for the 80 km journey. The strom did come. Lots of rain. No hail or snow. We were safely in our cars heading home.