On Saturday I was hoping to ride with my friend Dave. We were going to go mountain biking, but we have had so much rain that the trails would be too muddy. We decided to meet up in Yellowwood State Forest for some gravel riding instead. On my way there, I discovered Yellowwood Road was flooded …

… so I went over to Jackson Creek Road instead, but it was also flooded …

The only other ways of getting to where we were going to ride would either be flooded too, or would be far out of the way. I called Dave and let him know … we pulled the plug  on the ride. He was coming from the other side of the state forest, so I think he was able to get to parts I couldn’t. I think he was going to ride back and forth on the parts that weren’t flooded.

I went home, and headed out for a short (21-mile) but hilly road ride west of town. It was hot, very hot … the heat index probably neared 100 degrees. I had a great, brief-but challenging ride. Here are a few photos.

It’s been one of those mornings. You know the ones. Seemingly everything goes wrong, including small and fundamentally unimportant things, but eventually they build to one giant heap of frustration.

I woke up late and stumbled into the second bedroom that functions as our home office. My computer was turned off and I couldn’t seem to turn it back on. I unplugged the power cord, and suddenly the computer sputtered, lights flashing and fans spinning, for about half a second, then fell silent again. It did this a few more times — with no power source connected! I was more than a little creeped out by this, and frustrated that it wouldn’t work. I messed with it for a few minutes, but ultimately gave up. I hope I’ll be able to fix it later. I used my file server to send an e-mail to work saying I’d be a bit late.

I got ready to ride to work and looked outside. Rain, as predicted. Great. When I went to extract my coffee mug from the dishwasher, I hit it on the underside of the counter where the dishwasher is screwed in, covering the mug with sawdust. I dropped the lid on the floor and it got covered in gunk. This was not going well. I almost forgot about three different items and kept having to go back for them as I continued my struggle toward the door.

Once I exited my apartment, I realized it was wet and foggy, but not actually raining much. Actually it was quite pleasant outside, a nice quiet morning. I paused to admire some buds on the trees in front of my apartment.

Budding trees

As I started riding, I felt better almost immediately. I actually like riding on cool, overcast, foggy days, if I don’t get too wet. There were very few people in sight until I reached campus, which had quite a bit of foot traffic. Some fields and paths off 7th Street approaching Jordan were flooded.

Path

Flowers have been planted on campus

When I got past campus I once again had the roads to myself. I didn’t push myself and savored the ride, knowing soon I’d be mired in work. I wished I could have ridden off into the distance.

Green light, and fog

I did take a slight detour to capture this:

Johnson’s Creamery

Even though it’s no longer a creamery, this is a real Bloomington landmark. All in all, a great ride to work. The ride home promises to be much, much wetter.

I like to ride after work whenever possible, but lately I haven’t done much of that. Now that we’re on daylight savings time and the days are getting longer, I’ll be able to do more.

We had heavy rains for a couple of days and I was a bit surprised that I didn’t see Moore’s Creek Road on the list of road closures. It’s a low area right by Lake Monroe, and it flooded last year. I was curious about this, and unsure how comprehensive the list of closed roads was, so I rode down to see if it was in fact closed. Here is what I found.

Moore’s Creek Road, March 20, 2008

Here’s how it looked in early March last year.

Moore’s Creek Road, March 5, 2007

A few more words on the flooding: we didn’t get hit as hard as some other areas, such as Ohio and Texas where I’ve read about quite a lot of problems. Here, as far as I can tell, the flooded areas are the usual suspects, mostly low-lying areas near bodies of water. I haven’t heard about anyone getting hurt, and someone in my office who lives far out in the country has been able to get to work just fine. I don’t know if any homes are affected, but in the above photo at least, what you’re looking at is by a recreation area; the homes nearby are on higher ground, for this very reason.

The worst of it seems to be that I my riding options may be pretty limited this weekend.