Manassas

I didn’t avoid rain today ! All of my preparation amounted to nothing at the end of the ride : I was soaking wet.

Another relatively short ride planned to get halfway to Washington, and to the first Warm shower host in a long time. I think the previous one was in Utah ! Anyway, I had a map prepared, as I would use a few different roads today.

Unlike the day before, I immediately geared up for rain. It had been raining ever since my arrival yesterday, and it was still very grey and menacing in the morning. So I donned all of the rain gear and tried putting my shoes in plastic bags again. I did try riding with flip flops in Christiansburg, and it was not fun.

It had started with a light drizzle immediately. I was still riding on US29 for some time, and everything was going well. My shoes remained dry, I was going forward. I switched to a smaller road towards Manassas. No more shoulder, but a lot less traffic as well.

Then it really started to pour down on me. Not end of the world level, still, a really strong and constant wall of rain. I had to stop a couple of times at gas stations to wait it out. But at this stage, with the usual riding sweat, I was already just as wet with the rain gear as without. And my shoes started being wet as well.

I stopped for lunch just a few miles off my destination, but the rain kept on going. So I resumed biking and was back to square one : I had to dry off everything after my arrival. I found Margaret and Tom’s place easy enough, a really nice house in a residential area in the forest. And of course this is when the sun started coming out 🙂

100 days since starting from San Francisco !