It's astonishing that water continues to fall after 3 days of pouring rain. Just a deluge! Weather guys are talking 12 + plus inches since Friday!
My front yard has been transformed from a grassy field to a four foot deep canal and my basement has a river running through it!
Gus seems to like it.
Thankfully we have a walk-out basement the the water is seeking lower ground out the garage door. Many of our neighbors are totally screwed with a foot or more in their basements with no where for it to escape.
Jeff arrived bright and early for the CWE with trailbike ready to rip but first we made a trip to HD to grab a pump. Like fools we accually thought there would be a supply of sumps waiting to be purchased...nope! People were scrambling around the plumbing dept like ants in a colony buying up every last means to a drier cellar. "lets get outta here and go ride."
Lots of detours on the way home. The mighty Ipswich river had over-flowed its banks in Topsfield and rt 97 was closed...accually just about any road near any river was flooded. We returned to my little piece of hell to discover the river was taking care of it self, draining out the garage. Thankfully Lesli and I thought ahead last week and removed the rugs and all our possessions to higher ground.
Now on to the CWE!
dude! pull up your pants!
We suited up like never before. Four layers starting with my 1mm neoprene scuba dive vest w hood. Never did I think I'd be wearing the chicken suit riding but just made sense considering it was 45 degrees and pouring.
Jeff was clad in four or five layers of pada-gucci and ready to take on mother nature on mother's day.
Would have been great to bring the digi cam, but way too wet for any electronics today. We decided to start close and peddled to Bradley Palmer. Water crossings were ridiculously deep. I knew immediately that the VT would need a total rebuild after today. We were like little kids playing in the water.
BP and Willowdale are a maze of fast fireroads., all about big speed and careening into three and four foot deep rivers. Wish I had a movie camera for one particular crossing...no idea how deep this pond in the middle of the trail was going to be, just held on and crashed it to the water. I was soon up to my handlebars and still peddling...A wave developed in front of my bike and I was still pushing the pedals, the water swelled in front of me and created a wall of water pushing for me. Up to the bars in water still moving toward the other side of the pond! Made it to the other side to stop and watch Jeff splash in and through.
I will not soon forget our CWE...even though turned out to be just over two hours of spinning before I tore off my derailuer hanger. Oh well, didn't make it too far from home but it sure did feel like an epic.
4 comments:
sure wish I was your bike shop. But atleast it aint salt water. you dun good. Your bike is gonna sound like Macallany's, and jeff might as well give jamie access to his bank account.
am broke, had/have to learn own maintenance. bikes are gonna be fallin' apart all ovah. rockshox fork is going under the knife this wk. scary.
you should come-down for a ride. it's great down here.
Your front yard is ridiculous. I guess I shouldn't mention that we're in a "heat wave" over here in Seattle :-)
Of course you guys were in the 60-70's while we were still in the mid-40's a while back so it all balances out!
Good results so far this season, it's cool to see you break out and throw down. Rock on!
nice Macallany reference! right on.
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