Sunday, October 6, 2013

Thunderstorm on the Hojack

With some rain yesterday and overnight I didn't want to ride my usual trails.  It occurred to me that riding the Hojack on my 29er might be fun.  There was an 85% chance of thunderstorms at 11am, but nearly no chance of rain on either side of it.  As 11 approached it was raining on and off.  It looked like it was done and I headed out from home.

The wet road and trail were fine.  There were some puddles on the trail but most of them could be avoided.  I cruised along at about 11 mph.  On my way back it started thundering and down-pouring.  It was actually pretty fun to ride in that.  On a trail with hills, the surface would be too slick, but this was flat.  The only downside was that riding with soaked clothes feels heavy, but it wasn't bad for a short trip.

Looking at my GPS, something went wacky on the first third of my way back.  It looks like I strayed from the trail a bit, though I didn't, and my altitude climbed from 400ft to 1200ft and came back.  I'd suspect there was some kind of weird interference going on in that area, especially because I've seen something like this before, but that was about when the lightning started, so it was probably related to that.  And maybe when my GPS receiver gets confused it has a hard time coming back to reality.

The ride was fun and I'm happy I can check off "riding a unicycle in a thunderstorm" off my bucket list.

Muni at Hojack - 2013-10-06 at EveryTrail

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