Getting Dirty

It's Bike Week! I didn't put a lot of focus into riding this fall but it's time to really ramp up the bike miles now that the marathon and double roughwater swim are over... I would normally be way more excited about biking more except for the fact that Bike Week also happens to fall at the same time as Crap Weather Crazy Wind and Lots of Rain Week. I guess I should have anticipated this more when I signed up for a March Ironman. Winter riding in Hawaii always involves lots of rain and grit yet somehow every summer I conveniently forget this fact.

Anyway, today was Day 3 of riding in pelting sideways rain and 20+mph winds. Beautiful, eh? Aren't you jealous??

I will say, at least it's not 40 degrees. It's wet, but it's not that cold. So we've got that going for us.

After yesterday's ride I did actually wipe down my bike, mostly b/c it was too dirty to even think about bringing inside... yet somehow halfway into our ride today I was hearing gritty sounds coming from somewhere around my gearing. The problem with all this rain and wind is that it leaves so much grit and sand and dirt and other debris on the sides of the roads and it all gets caught up in every nook and crevice of our bikes and it sort of makes me cringe to hear sand grinding away at my gears every time I take a pedal stroke. I'm sure any bike mechanics out there (if there are any reading this??) are cringing at the mere thought!

So when we got to our turnaround point I checked it out and there was SO.MUCH.GUNK around those little cogs near the rear derailleur I just really felt like I wanted to clean it off at least just a little before we started heading back... I grabbed some toilet paper from one of the bathroom stalls and went to work but you can imagine how well that worked. Lol.

Then I found something else... Nalani thought my choice of bike cleaning equipment was funny enough to take a picture.

Yes. Those are jeans. Someone threw them in the trash can. No- I don't know why someone would throw away jeans at a public beach park and Nalani suggested I not even really think about it further. I just fished them out of the trash to clean my gears mid ride. True story. It worked for the most part... it definitely sounded less gritty down there on the way home.

The funniest part of the ride came right near the end... Patrick and I were finishing up together and finally were riding side by side vs single file... I had to laugh looking at his face because it was covered with mud/dirt. He looked like he'd been mountain biking on muddy trails... I was guessing if his face looked like that, then mine must be even worse b/c I drafted him a whole hell of a lot more than he drafted me today (imagine the rooster tail that comes off the back wheel of a bike on very wet roads then imagine a 25mph headwind at the end of a 75 mile ride and you'll be able to figure out why my face must have looked the way it did- call me wheelsucker even if it means I'm getting a face full of gritty water off the wheel in front of me)... anyway, I laughed at with Patrick and said we would definitely need a picture of our faces b/c it was just classic. But then wouldn't you know it in the last mile of the ride the sky just opened up and DUMPED buckets of rain on us. Nice of mother nature to give us a shower like that to clean us all up before we got home. :)

I think I saw that it might not rain tomorrow? Not sure I'll remember how to ride a bike on dry roads... What a welcome change that will be!