riders on the storm

It was a dark and stormy night. As I crossed the river, I glanced over my right shoulder and was nearly entranced by the darkening sky. The thunderstorm that had been hanging in the air all day was coming. And soon. I could see the front, and guessed that it was just over Bethesda, which I had left three-quarters of an hour before. In the time it took to cross the Potomac, the winds increased dramatically. They were from the north, and I remember thinking: with that wind at my back, I'll be home in no time. Or something to that effect. If I hadn't got a flat, I would have made it.

I figured I would be racing the weather, as I figured both this morning and yesterday. But so far my luck had held out. It started to rain yesterday morning as I made my last turn onto Edgemoor, and on the way home I never even felt the threat. So despite the heavy sky, I decided to press my luck - in more ways than one.

The path by the Kennedy Center is especially jarring (it's an old sidewalk in need of much repair), and the route through the volleyball courts and past the Lincoln Memorial is not much better. So you'll excuse me, I hope, for not thinking anything of my bumpy ride until I got back on the road at East Potomac Park. It was there I noticed I was still knocking rhythmically, and I quickly discerned it was my rear wheel. I pulled off to the side and turned my bike over. It didn't take long - any time at all, as a matter of fact - to discover the problem, though I was confused as to what may be causing it. There appeared to be a knot in the tire: I could see no external damage, but the tube was obviously doing... well, something wacky. I'd never seen anything quite like it before and honestly wasn't sure what to do. The thought crossed my mind to deflate and reinflate the tire, but other than that, I was out of ideas. Besides, the frame pump is a pain in the ass; better to just get moving - it's looking pretty dark to the north - and deal with it at home.

It's kind of funny, actually: when I made the turn off the bridge, the storm had advanced such that its leading edge was directly over me. My world got darker, but I knew it was temporary. Once I completed the U and was once again heading south, I would quickly be under lighter skies. And again: with a strong wind at my back. Then the tire blew.

Somehow, I wasn't surprised, actually, or even dismayed. It was as if I almost expected it. And at least, in this kind of situation, it occured in the best possible location. I dismounted and walked my bike to the shelter of the 14th Street Bridge (which I recently discovered, much to my delight, is officially named the Rochambeau Bridge), where I began replacing the tube. Given my new-found mad tube-changing skillz, it took little time to remove the tire from the rim, but when I did I noticed that the tire itself had a sizable hole in it. This complicated matters. You see, if I had simply replaced the tube, when I began to inflate it, it would have protruded through the hole, eventually bursting, wasting a tube, and leaving me no closer to Old Town. Fortunately, I knew that I could fix the problem by placing a substantial barrier of some sort - an empty power bar wrapper, for example - between the tube and the tire before inflating. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of anything I had on me that would serve the purpose. I had all but resolved to giving an old dollar bill a try when another cyclist happened to pass. After explaining the problem, he gave me a bit of flexible plastic with an adhesive on one side that is sold just for this purpose. Needless to say, when I visit the bike shop tomorrow to purchase my new tire, I'll be buying a few of these too.

And then the rain started. By this time there were ten of us under the Rochambeau Bridge, and I'd like to tell you it was a Breakfast Club-type situation and we are all now fast friends, but... well, it just wasn't . A father held his young daughter, but the rest of us maintained a somewhat awkward silence. I feel fortunate to have been stopped where I had, with some shelter. The rain was fierce, and I could barely see Rosslyn - only two miles away - through the haze. After a half-hour, the ghost of the Cathedral began to emerge from the gloom over the Memorials, and the torrential downpour had subsided to the point that I decided to try my luck. It was still raining, but a person can only get so wet, and frankly, my jersey had been rather well soaked through with sweat for some time. While I was stuck, I'd been concerned about the tire - flats seems to come in pairs, and I certainly didn't feel like changing one again in the rain - moreso than getting wet, but mostly about the lightning.

We don't tend to think about - at least I don't, anyway - the possibility of a lightning strike as a natural disaster that may happen to us, but I gotta tell you, I was a little nervous at Gravelly Point (where I was most definitely the tallest thing around for a couple hundred yards as I crossed the field) and the Airport (where the Mount Vernon Trail bridges the roads) and the marina (where I once actually saw lightning strike a tree). Truth be told, I was nervous about that lightning for pretty much all of my last five-plus miles, but after almost two hours, was anxious to be home. And as if to hammer home the point, after I crossed the Parkway, an Alexandria police officer was clearing the road I take to Bashford Lane where a tree had been hit by lightning.

I feel as if I've crossed - as a bicycle commuter - a threshold of some sort: I had my first mechanical incident and my first weather incident. If I'd had my druthers, they might have been on separate days, but what are you gonna do? I am happy to be riding, and though my legs are sore, I am going to regret tomorrow not being able to ride in. And besides, the ride home was not without its small wonders: King Street had that "it's just rained" look and feel by nine o'clock. I like that one almost as much as when they put the lights in the trees for the holidays.