day four

When I woke up this morning, my spirits sank. I could hear the rain beating down on the tent. I wanted to go back to sleep and wake up and have the rain stop. My morale just tanked. This was not the trip that I had in mind. Last year’s ride from New York to Boston had been sunny and warm. This trip had been rainy and cold. I thought of why I was riding, and that hardened me against the weather and made me want to ride.

I also knew that I was prepared for it, unlike many on the ride. Because I had commuted to work on my bicycle in the winter, I had already bought some warmer clothing than most had. And even though I didn’t expect to use it, I had brought some warmer items with me, just in case. I knew that Sha didn’t have the right clothing for this. She was prepared for cold or for wet, but not both. I knew she wanted to ride, but I encouraged her to sit this one out and take the bus. It would give her knee a chance to heal and hopefully the weather would break and the rest of the ride would be clearer. She agreed.

I was wearing a cycling jersey, arm warmers, a fleece jersey, a hooded water-proof wind breaker, a Lycra hood (under the windbreaker), glove liners under my cycling gloves, cycling shorts, cycling leg warmers, and neoprene booties over my shoes to keep my feet warm and keep the water out. It felt like a lot of clothes. I knew that I could only focus on riding and I couldn’t deal with carrying the camera as well. That was unfortunate, because in spite of the rain, I found this to be the most beautiful day with the best scenery. Ah well. Perhaps we’ll have to go back to Belgium.

The rain was relentless. Very soon, I was soaked. The windbreaker did a good job of keeping my head and torso dry, but my legs, butt, and feet were drenched. Periodically, I would stop on the side of the road, under an overpass or some other cover, to take off my booties, shoes, and socks and wring them out. It wouldn’t be long before my toes would be sloshing in my shoes, but at least it was a brief respite.

Once while doing this under an overpass, a few of the buses with riders drove by. I waved and they enthusiastically waved and cheered as they went by. In the second bus, I saw Sha waving both arms and cheering loudly right at the front of the bus. Seeing her gave me so much strength.

Even better than that was that her bus had stopped at the lunch stop when I arrived, so we got to eat lunch together. There was a small room indoors and I could take off all my wet clothes while we ate. Some people had gotten hotel rooms in town the night before, but I had been adamant about staying with the other riders in camp. At lunch, I told Sha that if she could find a reasonably priced hotel room, that perhaps we should take it. I knew that the day was only going to get worse.

While not the hilliest day (that was day 5), today had the longest single climb, 6 miles of uphill riding. The rain had kept up all day, and just when I thought my clothes could not contain any more water, it started raining even harder. This was perhaps the most dangerous part of the ride. The shoulder was small and right next to a drainage trough that had gotten very slippery with all the rain. I had to stop a few times on the way up to catch my breath before I could keep going. It was a very tough climb. Usually, the reward for such a climb is the incredible downhill run on the other side, but with the weather being so nasty, it would have been unsafe to go fast. I spent the entire downhill riding my brakes, but at least my legs got a rest.

Camp was in the town of Charleville-Mezieres and was actually indoors. However, Sha took it upon herself to find us a real bed. When she arrived in camp, she and a friend hailed a cab and started going around town, from hotel to hotel, trying to find a vacancy. It seemed as if every room was filled, mostly with other riders! Finally, after much searching, she found a vacancy, and it was only available because of a misunderstanding. The clerk thought two other riders wanted separate rooms when they wanted to share one. Sha happened to be there when they were correcting him and snatched up the available room, perhaps the last one in the city.

While it was good to sleep in a bed, we spent most of the evening hand washing all of our wet clothes in the sink and trying to find places to hang them around the hotel room to dry. There were clothes hanging on doors, the shower stall, the closet, the windows, and even the TV cables. We would have left the window open, but it was very cold that night.