On Sunday I woke up groggy after a pretty late night out but I was excited because I was supposed to go biking on the Don Valley trail with some friends from work. I got a couple of text messages around 10am from two of the guys who were going to bail because it was raining. Raining! What’s a little rain going to do to you?
Ben thought about calling it off as well, which left me kinda bummed out because I still wanted to do it – otherwise I was looking at a lazy morning of sitting on the couch and being hungover. Ben reconsidered and we figured we’d take our chances with the rain. How bad could it be right? Wrong!
It wasn’t raining very much when I first left my apartment, but about halfway to Mt. Pleasant it started pouring. By the time we met up at the trailhead we were both pretty soaked, and the few guys I saw coming off the trail were pretty much completely covered in mud.
What the hell, we were already there, might as well give it a try anyway… We spent about 15 brutal minutes on the trail before calling it quits. The mud acted like glue on my tires, picking up all sorts of leaves, branches, grass, etc and piling up into a nice big ball of crap behind my fork. For some reason (which we’re attributing to width/tread differences), Ben’s tires didn’t get nearly as caked with mud. Mud on my tires wasn’t the only problem though. My shoes and pedals also got completely covered, which made it really hard to clip in and led to some painful sudden stops. On top of all that, my brakes became totally ineffective after a few minutes and that’s what really made me give up.
Ben had driven part of the way to the trail (cheater), so I had to bike back alone and dejected. With no brakes. Now I had to worry about cleaning my bike (and myself), and I didn’t have access to a hose at my place so I figured I’d head down to a coin-op car wash and use that, which was going to be a bit of a pain in the ass. Luckily I biked past another friend’s place and ended up hanging out there for a while. I dried off, washed my clothes and my bike and then went out for breakfast with them :). I’d love to try the trail again this weekend, but I have a wedding to go to, so it’ll have to wait. Hopefully the weather will be nicer, because I sure as hell won’t be attempting it in the rain again.
