There was a day last week that I really wanted to go on a ride, but it looked bad out. A lot of times I will fool myself into riding on a day like this by convincing myself that it's only sprinkling and the rain is about to stop. That way if I leave before the real rain hits I can say that it wasn't pouring when I left and it was a perfectly sensible decision to continue on.
This was one of those days. It had started to sprinkle while I was getting ready. Once I was all ready I went into the garage and was going to get on my bike when I realized I had forgotten my mobile phone and my keys. I knocked on the door until my wife let me in to get them. I hadn't realized it, but she had just asked the kids to come in off the swing set because it was thundering.
As I grabbed my keys and phone my daughter said to me, "You can't go on a bike ride, it's thundering!" She was right, but I didn't want to admit it. I told her that I would be fine, went out to the garage, hopped on my bike and rode off. By this time the rain had risen to a steady drizzle and seemed to be increasing. For some reason I still thought that I could beat out the storm. I kept going, in fact I got about three to four miles into my 13 mile ride before the rain really started pouring down. Then came the lightening and the thunder.
It was raining hard, but I had ridden through worse. I really don't like to ride with lightening, so I wasn't happy about this. I decided to cut my ride short by about 5 miles. I turned off at one of the alternate routes that I use in such cases. The rain let up a little and I made for home as fast as I safely could given that my brakes do now work as well in the rain.
When I was coming around the final turn to my house I looked up and saw the darkest thunderhead that I had seen in a long time. I sprinted for my house and got there about two minutes before the skies really opened up. There was some really close lightening with this storm too. I was soaked, my bike needed to be cleaned and re-greased, in general I wasn't angry (I had brought this upon myself), but I wasn't happy either.
Right after I got changed and was dried off, the rain cleared and the sun came out. It would have been a beautiful time to get out for a ride. The skies were clear, the humidity was low, and everything was generally calm. At that moment I suddenly thought back to what my daughter said, thought that I should have listened to her all along.
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