20km in the rain
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
I was at Yonge and Sheppard and had to get home at Queen and Woodbine. I was on my bike. It began to drizzle almost immediately.
It looked like it might blow over, though, so I pressed on. But by the time I'd gone only a kilometre or two it was real rain. By then I was off the subway line, though, and it seemed to me that turning around might not help matters much. I was wrong. Turning around is exactly what I should have done.
(I made a map about the event here. I'm not sure that I can share the link this way, Google maps works in strange ways.)
This Spring, we're having unusually strong rain storms. I don't know why, but it was just sheeting down. Also, it was about 12ºC. By the time I got to Victoria Park (a little too far east, but that far up the city there aren't too many through streets that go to where I live) I knew I was in for a difficult ride. By the time I got to Sheppard and Lawrence I was soaked from head to toe. It didn't help that the cars were throwing up sheets of puddle water.
I think that Lawrence in particular stood out because I know that it's still a long way from home. It was also at about that point that the rain was hard enough that it was getting difficult to see. But I pressed on.
Along the whole length of Victoria Park, I saw people slumped on the benches of the bus stops. I'd not seen one bus the whole route (probably ten kilometres or more) and it looked like everyone had been waiting a good long while. Some were even standing about in the rain, having presumably given up on keeping dry.
I don't know how long it took any of them to finally get where they were going, but I finally got home at about 80 minutes after I'd left. At least 60 minutes of which was spent under steady to hard rain. I was weary enough when I got home that I couldn't lift the bike up the final sets of stairs to the shed at the top of the yard: the poor undeserving thing spent the night in the rain (which turned into an electrical storm).
All's well that ends, though. If it hadn't been raining it would have been quite an adventure.
I've decided that not only is my fifteen year old modified mountain bike just about perfect for this city (it's more rugged and able to deal with Toronto's rough roads), it actually has some distinct advantages over the one I left in Tokyo: for one thing the fat wheels have surprisingly good rolling capability, it's a much better "glider" than you'd expect from looking at it; also, the frame's shape suits me quite well, with a low top tube, a long handlebar stem, and 26" wheels that provide more agility than the 700c wheels I had on the other bike. I was very glad that I was riding something with 1.5"+ tires!