A 200k was on the schedule for Saturday. The weather forecast called for a 30% chance of rain in the morning then clearing with SW winds and warm temperatures.
So I planned an early start to avoid the high temps and catch a tailwind after the turnaround.
The weather forecast was wrong. The forecast rain materialized but then kept reappearing. There was no SW tailwind at the halfway point.
After hauling myself out of bed around 3AM I got on the road around 3:40. It was quite warm and humid and there was almost no traffic as I headed out to the first control in Newark.
At around 5:15 as I made the turn up Pavilion to avoid the Fox Rd construction the skies opened up. I stopped to put on a vest but it didn't help much, I quickly got soaked.
After nearly going off the shoulder on the short stretch of IL-71 I missed my turn as I could barely see the road. After backtracking I made my way to Newark where I did a quick stop for water at the BP.
Back on the road I could see and hear a lot more weather to the south in the direction of Ottawa which was my next stop. So I holed up at the Sheridan library.
While in Sheridan I got a bit chilled so put on my ShakeDry jacket but didn't want to lay on the concrete and damage the fabric, so I had to sit up and try and nap a little.
After 50 minutes, I decided it was OK to proceed, so off I went. I got to the turnaround in Ottawa and saw a lot of debris from the wind, and also a phone/cable line in the road because a pole had snapped.
So I guess it was good that I waited a bit in Sheridan.
I stopped at a BP and a woman said "you're getting a nice early start". Wait did she recognize me from my many rides down to Ottawa? I should have told her yeah I left the house at 3:45.
Leaving Ottawa I encountered a snapping east headwind instead of the anticipated SW tailwind. Oh well. Then the rain resumed, so back on with rain jacket which I had removed in Ottawa.
After a while let up then stopped so I took it off again.
Literally one minute later it started pouring again so back on it went. Heading north, this rain was much harder than before, coming in sideways from the east wind, and relentless.
It didn't last too long, maybe 10-15 minutes, but I kept the jacket on as there were still sprinkles. All around there were dramatic cloud skyscapes.
I rolled through Plano, stopping only at the Amtrak station for a quick break to eat something, then it was on to Sugar Grove. I think somewhere along this stretch I started to sense a south wind. Too little too late.
After a brief stop in Sugar Grove, I was quickly back on the road with less than 20 miles to go. After passing through Aurora I hit stoplight after stoplight and finally got back to Naperville around 1:30PM.
I saw quite a few huge puddles on this stretch so this area must have really been hammered with rain.
My goal was to minimize stops and I would have achieved that aside from the weather-related stops which added over an hour to my stopped time.
But I was happy to get back in under 10 hours without getting hit by any really severe weather.
Only disappoint is that on the last stop when I removed my rain jackat I seemed to have dropped my GoreTex cycling cap. It was time for a new one anyway, got the last one at REI on closeout.