Uhhhhg.

What a day. Work was a horrible mess of stress, then had to rush to get out a little early to drive to Vienna meet my friend to catch up on a casual training ride.

Let me say again how much I fucking abhor the traffic in Northern Virginia - that aside..I can curse at the VDOT demigods who did a poor job in planning how bad traffic will escalate daily. It took me almost an hour to drive to Vienna to meet my friend - we biked from Vienna to where I started in 15 minutes. Insanity. 4 blocks in Vienna took me 45 minutes. I should have just parked my car (if there was a place to)....and unloaded my bike and just biked. Enuff of that.

So we meet up, and change a few things then get on the trail - realizing that it was about to storm. I said "two things...if I am going too fast - yell at me to slow down...this is supposed to be my low impact day, and if it looks like the weather is going to be nasty..and you feel uncomfortable...just yell #2 and we will turn around"

Number two (appropriate term) did happen - but she didn't yell it, I did.

click to enlarge

We got out to Ashburn and started eyeing the storm clouds which seemed to sneak up from the NW and then turn odd colors...the wind picked up from all directions...we could see lightning and thunder in the distance - but all ahead was to roll on... Then I saw this one set of almost dark hunter green clouds - I slowed to a stop and said "number two - let's head back".

Hammer Time, it's Tornado Time

We turned around and low and behold - the wind picked up and we started to dash back. In no time we were in Herndon where the lightning was too close - we needed to plan out the shelters between there and homebase Vienna (not very far). I said "hop on my wheel and I'll pace us to Reston where we can take cover under the Reston Expressway overpass..." sure enough..it starts pourning rain...and almost hailing, like a scene out of the movie Twister with Hellen Hunt's face in a constant state of worried bewilderment - but hammering 27 miles an hour in a downpour. We got to Reston with a whole bunch of other stranded cyclists (mostly marathon cyclist only to crazy to be out in this weather). Took about 20 minutes for the storm to pass - close lightning strikes.

Fortunately it was hot enought that the rain was comfortable - and we continued on back to Vienna. Sure enough, about a mile down the road - another storm (or part of the storm) reswelled and was the closest lightning I was remotely comfortable in so we headed to this hockey rink near the trail. DUmping rain - we managed to get inside and were there for another 30 minutes until this storm passed. I cannot remember lightning this bad - and it was dumping buckets. We finally were able to get back on the road - it was still raining - but safe. We both froze our butts off on the last 8 miles - shivering cold from the temp drop and being in AC for 1/2 hour in wet cycling clothes.

We finally made it to Vienna...saddled up to our cars and about to load bikes and what not - it began to pour rain again - we managed to signal that it was a crappy training ride and that we'd call later. I stopped in the community center - and they informed me that they had 2 lighning strikes within the block - which explained the 4 fire trucks out front.

Wierd science.

Tomorrow is my training ride with my club - supposed to be another thunderstorm then too...oh fun.

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