pRAIN STORM

By John Bassett

When I wrote a blog post about last year’s pre-RAIN ride (pRAIN) I titled it “PRAIN in the Rain”.  Unfortunately, as it turns out, I should have reserved that title for this year.  So, for lack of a better title let me call this “pRAIN STORM” (Pre-RAIN Same Thing only Rain More).

A nice group of BCC and affiliated riders arrived in Terre Haute last Friday evening in preparation for an early Saturday start to the one-day one-way 160 mile bicycle adventure that is the RAIN route.  Well, that is not exactly true.  Dave, who had ridden a touring bicycle to pRAIN from Kansas City, did not arrive in Terre Haute until 4:30 AM, having completed a 225 mile ride through most of the night to get there.  This was after spending the previous week at the Tour of Colorado!  After changing a tacoed wheel with a replacement Dana had brought over and loading up on some caffeine, he was sort of ready to go.

Assessing the weather early Saturday morning, we realized there was going to be little chance of staying dry.  The best we hoped for was to get started before the rain hit.  We did not get all our ducks in a row very early and got off to a rather late start.  Here we are all lined up at the RAIN starting line at St Mary’s Road and US 150 (left to right - John, Jen, Zack, Stan, Ron, Eugene, Mike, Cissy, Dana, and Dave).

We managed to roll out promptly at 7:30AM, and were able to get all the way over to the east side of Terre Haute before the first wave of rain hit.  We got thoroughly drenched for an hour or so and spent the rest of the morning in and out of passing showers.

We took our first break at Putnamville / US 231 where our cadre of SAG support vehicles had assembled.  We very much appreciated the services of Cissy’s sister, Sasha, Jen’s sister, Lynnae, Eugene’s wife, Teresa, my wife, Susan, and Ron’s wife, Janet (my sister-in-law) in supporting this event.  We sincerely appreciate their efforts.

For the remainder of the day, we rode Jim Schroeder’s 2013 RAIN route exactly, following the trail of yellow raindrops that the BBC had placed earlier in the week.  I can attest to the fact that those yellow raindrops show up very well on wet pavement!  The 2013 route is slightly different than 2012.  As shown on the map below, a loop is added south to Mooresville and basically the entire length of Edgewood Avenue is used in lieu of Thompson Road along the south side of Indianapolis.  There are also a couple of other minor changes, but the entire route remains 160 miles (160.2 miles if you prefer that level of detail).

We rested a moment at the city park south of the Plainfield Middle School which serves as Rest Stop 2 of RAIN.  We had a leisurely lunch at the Subway at the intersection Southport Road and Bluff Road (Mile 81.5) almost exactly half way along the route.

At lunch, Stan noted that every time he cleaned off his glasses it would rain.  He cleaned his glasses, and I cleaned mine.  We soon found ourselves in a genuine downpour heading north on Bluff Road.  We decided it would be best if we did not clean our glasses again. 

Eugene took a small break to put on dry cloths and warm up after lunch.  He came back at Greenfield with a vengeance, taking on a couple of massive 10 miles pulls heading east on US 40 from Greenfield.  His efforts along with a very nice tail wind, particularly during surges of rain, allowed a group of five of us to average 22 to 26 mph over long stretches of US 40 east of Greenfield.  This was delightfully pleasant riding, when it was not raining.

We regrouped for a final time at SR 1 near Cambridge City about 13 miles from the finish, allowing Mike and Cissy, who had flatted, time to catch up.  Most of us arrived in Richmond within a few minutes of each other.  Here are Cissy and her brother Mike doing a little celebration thing at the soon-to-be RAIN finish line at Earlham College.  These guys, along Cissy’s twin sister Sasha, are a real dynamic trio.

It was fun to have all of them along.

Dave and Dana arrived only a short time later with Dave expressing his gratitude for Dana’s strong pulls in the latter part of the ride.  It was a remarkable achievement on Dave’s part.  He seemed to get stronger throughout the day, and Dana was there every pedal stroke. 

Initially, I was very pleased with my best-ever moving average speed of 18.2 mph.  That was until Eugene told me he was well over 19 mph!  I also had a personal best total time, which could have been even better had I not spent so much time off the bike socializing.  But, that is what happens when you ride with such a great group of people.

We concluded the day by loading up and driving back to the east side of Indianapolis where most of us enjoyed a very fine Mexican dinner.

This weekend is the real RAIN.  By doing the pRAIN thing, I have both the satisfaction of both doing this great ride and helping the BCC on event day.  It really is the best of both worlds.  The rain was pretty miserable at times, but I concentrated on enjoying that first-ever tailwind!  It was a great day.

Good luck to all you RAIN riders!