Friday afternoon and night it just rained and rained. Saturday morning at 6:30 I called up Deborah Lefferts, who was supposed to give me a ride up to McKenzie Park, and told her I was cancelling the ride. It sounded like she would have come over if I hadn't called.
A half hour later, I went outside to check the weather, and it was still dark, but I could see a full moon. That meant that it wasn't all clouds and rain, so I finally decided that maybe we could drive up to Woodside and start from there. Luckily, I caught Deborah just before she went off to the gym, so she agreed to come pick me up.
Driving up to Woodside, we actually got into some blue sky and sunshine. This was going to work out after all. We were going to get a good ride in. We were a half hour early, so we waited in the car. Nobody else showed up, but we were both willing to ride.
Slowly the clouds came in and the sun disappeared. It even started sprinkling as Deborah and I started out. Deborah had her rain clothing so she was fine. I had a change of clothes in the car so I was ok too.
We ended up going up Old La Honda and north on Skyline to Kings Mountain Rd. Mostly a light rain the whole way. Near the scenic viewpoint before Kings Mountain it started snowing. The parking lot had about an inch of snow, which we rode through. In the open area at Skyline and Kings Mountain the snow was also covering the road.
We headed down Kings Mountain and back to Woodside. The sun came out and the rain stopped. Both Deb and I were pretty much frozen by this time, so the change of clothes came in handy. We had the car heater on full for the whole ride home.
After a cold downhill, we got some sunshine on the flats, going along Coleman and Santa Teresa. We were 45 minutes late for the Awareness Ride, but we figured it might have been cancelled anyway. Deborah hadn't seen the accident site, so I thought we'd just do our own Awareness Ride and I'd go show her the site.
We got down as far as Cottle Rd, then we saw flashing lights ahead and realized this this was the Awareness Ride coming back the other way. We crossed over and joined them. There were about 40 riders accompanied by two SAG vechiles and 4 police cars with lights flashing.
It felt very strange riding with the police escort. At each traffic light, a car would stop in the intersection to block traffic, and we would all ride through, not worrying if the light was red or green. One time we all even stopped at a light that was green and waited for the slower riders to catch back up before continuing, which of course was just after the light turned red.
So, as it turned out, I had a good two days worth of riding, when I had been afraid that I wouldn't be able to ride at all. And I have Deborah to thank for that. If she hadn't been willing to go out and ride, then I probably would have stayed home and been eating in front of the TV. Deborah told me she was addicted to riding, and I told her that I was glad to help feed her addiction. Thank you, Deb.
-Donny