Oh man, this day was something else! Still recovering from it…hence the lateness on the report, here.
Hopped on over to Café DeLuca at 9am for the ride and there were only three of us. Hmmm. Fishy. But their loss to those who didn’t come, right? It was crisp, but still super nice weather for November 30th, and we were diggin’ on some quiet, fast roads out to Lemont. It started snowing lightly on us on the way out too, which we all enjoyed—first big snow of the year and all. But, as it started to accumulate, the roads got a bit slippery as well.
Still, no matter, we thought. Well, at least that’s what Dave and I thought. Uwe had the good sense to head back, fearing it could get worse. We, the Moyermeyer dumbo team, on the other hand, decided to press on to tackle le mont. I believe “This was beautiful” was even uttered at one point…but then the flakes got bigger. And we couldn’t see. And water started to accumulate on the roads. And we got soaked through. And started freezing.
Then it got worse. “Let’s turn around” changed into “Let’s stop” which changed into “Let’s get on the Metra” which changed into “Oh crap the Metra line through Lemont is only Mon-Fri” which forced the “Get inside now!”
Our adventure continued in some Lemont, Illinois dive bar where the barkeep and a couple buddies were watching a football game. Next step: Commence SOS-texting to everyone we know with a car! Meanwhile, if you can believe it, the bartender just brewed some fantastic Gevalia hazelnut coffee (from Sweden—one of my favorites!). Was not expecting that from the dive! Despite that pleasant surprise though, the situation was dire.
One whole sausage pizza later and having run the gloves under the bathroom air dryer thingy five times, we knew it was time to do something. There was a train leaving from Downers Grove back to the city in forty minutes. The trip there, however, would be the longest, coldest, most frightening 10-mile ride of our lives. Lemont Road to Main Street to the Metra station under giant snowflakes that had turned into freezing rain/hail.
I can’t attempt to relive the experience in the blog. Suffice to say it sucked. Soaked. Freezing. Hail pelting our faces. But what luck that as soon as we pulled in to Downers Grove a train arrived.
A lot of things went wrong on this edition of the DeLuca ride. A) We showed up, B) We didn’t turn around when Uwe did, C) The Metra in Lemont wasn’t running, D) Our SOS calls didn’t get any responses [within an hour], E) It was friggin’ freezin’ out there! But, then again, we got really lucky in a lot of ways: We made it to Downers Grove in time, without getting hit by cars on the 4-lane part of Lemont Road, we didn’t get hypothermia (I think), Dave’s girlfriend picked us up downtown and got us cocoa.
Definitely things to be thankful for this weekend. And, moving forward, thankful that all these hard-man points we must have accumulated this weekend (along with bonehead points) are going to make me feel really good about taking a whole week off the bike. Especially since I packed 300+ miles into the four-day weekend, I’m definitely ready to just sit around and get warm for the next seven days!
Thanks for reading, and good call on not joining us on this Sunday’s ride!
