During the day it seemed to get more and more ominous-looking outside, and seemed to be raining most of the day. The forecast had changed from "19 C and cloudy" for the afternoon to "13 C and rain" - but the rain was supposedly going to stop in the late afternoon or evening, so I delayed leaving for home a bit. Finally by 5 pm (clinic closes at 4 pm since May 1) I really had no more work left to possibly do, so I left for home.
As it was really the first time I'd ridden my road bike in wet rainy conditions, I was really quite cautious. Particularly down the switchbacks on the Keillor Road trail (lots of dirt/mud/dead leaves there too - good potential for slipping and falling I figured and I had done that enough last year). It was a good ride in the sense that it was good for my confidence to get more experience riding in unfavourable conditions (and to realize that it's really no big deal). But it was kind of miserable, even if it really wasn't raining all that hard.
Then, as I reached Patricia Heights school (about 2/3 of the way home), my cell phone rang. Normally I would likely have forgotten to turn it on, but that day I was hoping that a surgeon would call me back to answer a question I had about a patient ... pulled over to the side of the road and answered, it was Ed. He asked where I was, and sounded quite relieved - told me to turn left not right after crossing the upcoming ravine, and said "what are the chances of having two punctures in the same ride?". So, he'd already changed his back tire once in the rain, and punctured again (actually it turned out the valve broke) but only had brought one spare tube so he needed mine.
I met up with him, watched him change his tube (he figured afterwards he should have had me do it for practice - but by that time the rain was getting heavier and heavier so he would have been a lot quicker at it that I would have been), then we set off for the last bit home. About 6 blocks to go and he punctured again ... the rain was so hard by then I just kept going (he said he'd be ok to walk). In the end it turned out there was a really sharp tiny piece of gravel embedded in his tire that he'd missed (hence the multiple punctures on the same back wheel).
It was a good test of our new rain jackets. And we both wondered, was this the kind of weather that they kept mentioning was more common for the Spring Classics than the hot dry weather they actually had this April in Northern Europe???
(we should have taken the photo about 10-15 minutes earlier when there was torrential rain - it had slowed down considerably by this point and the flash makes it look much brighter than it really was).
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