Wet Weekend Weather

I had big plans for last weekend. Friday was to be a gift, the best kind of gift, an extra day off. I planned to have Christine drop me off in Middlebury at the Long Trail trailhead on Friday morning and then spend the next three days hiking back to Killington, from where I would either get a ride to Rutland or walk there, depending on the time frame. Christine was away for the weekend on a girls only Saratoga Springs trip anyway. Unfortunately, I pulled the plug on Thursday night because the forecast looked like poop. Probably best that I did because it did rain a lot. In fact Rutland flooded on Friday afternoon. We got 1.2 inches of rain in about 30 minutes. I happened to be driving to the post office at the end of the deluge and had to turn around at the end of my street and backtrack because there was a two foot deep river flowing over the road and water was shooting out of the storm drains like a geyser. Turn around, don't drown is what they always say on the weather channel, so I did. The problem with downtown Rutland is that it sits at the bottom of a hill. When we get a downpour like that it overwhelms the storm sewers, which empty into the actual sewer, and the whole mess ends up crashing through the basements of most of the businesses and restaurants downtown. Which is a problem because the health department gets touch about raw sewage in eateries. This happened last year in June and caused millions of dollars in damage and people said it was a "hundred year storm." My how time flies. If I owned a restaurant on Center street or or Merchants Row, I'd be looking for another line of work right now. Water and mold abatement might be a good line of work to go into, for instance. Anyway, after that took the wind out of my sails, I ended up doing basically nothing for the rest of the weekend. I'm just sort of tired of being outside in the rain at this point. I drove to West Lebanon, NH to buy a book on Saturday. It seems kind of crazy to have to drive 100 miles round trip to buy a book, but short of buying it online, that was my only option. I'm all for supporting the local independent bookseller, it's just that my local independent bookseller doesn't have any damn books. It's really out of character for me to drive so far for so little, I know, but I really had my heart set on a particular book for the rainy weekend. A book who's author was featured on the Daily Show last week by the way. Maybe I'll do a little book review for my next post.

The only other exciting thing that happened all weekend was that my good friend Susie D. hosted a ladies downhill mountain biking clinic at Killington. She planned the whole thing and promoted it herself, as Killington isn't much use for those sorts of things, and she had a very respectable turnout of a dozen girls, despite the questionable weather. Sue is a pro downhill racer herself and a bikie from way back, so she is eminently qualified and of course she has massive enthusiasm, which doesn't hurt. I equate riding a ski lift to bomb down the mountain on a bike with a broken collarbone, myself, but it does look kind of fun, with all of the pads and a long travel bike. I met the ladies for a beer at the Lookout after they were done riding. There was an interesting cross section of ability levels and Sue said that it was a very successful intro for some of the girls. Of course there were a couple of dirt loving rugged girls, the type that might brag about broken bones and such. One girl told me that she had dislocated her elbow on a big drop with a flat landing. I've not heard of that particular injury, but trying to picture it is making me uncomfortable. It's not often that you get to have a conversation at a table of ladies that makes you squeamish. At any rate, Sue is a really effective teacher of mountain bike skills, as Christine can attest, and she is going to host another one of these clinics in September, so if you're an aspiring female downhiller, you'll want to check it out. I'll post the date as soon as I hear, and I'll put it up on the Basin Sports site too. Just do it, what are you afraid of, dislocating an elbow or something?