Who'll Stop The Rain

Hot delivery

Since the Victory Ride it has been a hodge-podge of weather related issues that has kept me out of the country. Thunderstorms, heat, and flooding. Yes.....flooding. After two years of severe drought we are back to flooding around here again. 

I did a delivery to the Collective again on Thursday when we had 90+ degree temperatures and high humidity. I haven't ridden in that for a while. First time this year, most likely, and it showed. 

I purposefully went slow to minimize the heat build up in my body, which I think I did well enough. The thing was that even with the easing on the pacing (loaded up, mind you, for a good portion of the ride), I still came home zapped by that heat. 

Look, I've drained the tank in hot weather while riding one two many times, times five. Maybe times ten. A LOT of times, okay?! So, heat isn't something I'm good at anymore. Not that I ever was good at that, but now? It's bad. 

Then the thunderstorms have been many and at random enough times that you only get these short, super-humid windows of time to race around the neighborhood to get in some testing or just to blow off some steam. Saturday it was the same. Only adding in tornadoes in the area. Then there is the flooding, and we're just getting started on that here, although compared to Northwestern Iowa, which has already suffered too much as it is now, we've gotten off easy.  

NOAA flood prediction for the Cedar River at Waterloo, Iowa.

We are not going to get slammed, but this will mess up the soft trails for quite some time, and make mosquito factories out of the backwaters in the area. That'll be nice. Anyway, gravel travel usually is not impacted too greatly by this, but there may be some damage out there, and the dirt roads will be gooey for a while. Best to stay off those for a bit until we get a stretch of drier weather. 

I hope to get out there soon to investigate. I bet this humidity has super-charged the corn growth!