Suzanne Schlosberg, often seen on the CVC advanced rec. and racer rides, has twice done what most of us have only thought about: ridden her bike across the US. Suzanne, a free lance writer and former senior editor at Shape Magazine, reported to a Florida newspaper on her adventures. Here are more excerpts from her dispatches:
BRACKETTVILLE, Texas -- "Nah, it's not gonna rain. Let's forget the fly."
Twenty hours after a violent midnight storm turned our tent into a wading pool filled with floating sleeping bags and bike shorts -- and sent crazed cyclists running for cover in the restroom and vans -- I'm still trying to figure out why I didn't protest when my tent mate, Alec Boga, decided he was a meteorologist.
No need to cover our tent with the rain fly? Have 21 days on the road and 1,500 miles on a bike completely stripped me of good judgment?
The storm signs hadn't exactly been subtle earlier Saturday evening, when our group set up camp on a remote patch of gravel, brush, and dirt in the West Texas desert. Spectacular bolts of lightening lit up the clouds. Thunder roared. The humid wind started to blow.
But none of us could have predicted the deluge that followed -- an hour-long storm that left some cyclists terrified, others exhilarated, and all of us totally zonked out for the following day's 76-mile ride, which, after three hours of sleep underneath a soggy sleeping bag, felt like a 176-mile ride.
Our drenching was yet another weather extreme we have endured since leaving Anaheim April 18. We biked through snow flurries and 30-degree weather in New Mexico and 100-plus-degree heat west of here in Texas.
That downpour in the early hours of Sunday was no less memorable.
"I was scared to death -- I was thinking tornado." said Bernie Kalkbrenner, 51, a funeral director from Deluth, Minn., who spent an hour lying face down and spread-eagle trying to secure the four corners of his tent. "I've never been in such constant, unforgiving wind with such driving force."
Kalkbrenner, who had the sense to put the rain fly on his tent, stayed virtually dry. Boga and I, meanwhile, were battling the sheets of rain coming through ours.
"I can't believe we didn't put up the rain fly," I shouted over the wind, my drenched hair slicking to my face.
"Rod Villareal said it wasn't going to rain," Boga shouted back. Villareal, a 24-year-old communications student, had gone to high school in El Paso, Texas, and therefore had gained credibility in our group as a predictor of Texas weather. (The next day we learned that Villareal had changed his forecast and put up his rain fly).
Sue Rock of Philadelphia, 48, had borrowed a tent from her boyfriend back in Pennsylvania and didn't ask if it was waterproof. "It wasn't," she said.
Within minutes of the downpour, her tent was flooded. "I was afraid to leave the tent because I thought it was going to blow away," she recalled. "So I stayed there until I'm surrounded by three inches of water. I was lying on my back because when I turned on my side, water started coming in my mouth. I literally couldn't breathe because the water was pouring into my mouth. I was drowning in my own tent."
Finally, she decided to ditch the tent and head for the campsite's bathroom, where she figured she could dry her wet shorts and T-shirt with the hand blower. But she couldn't find her glasses in her tent, and with 20-300 vision, she couldn't see a thing. She wandered barefoot around the campground, stepping on burrs, rocks, and slicks.
She accidentally wound up in the Ryder truck that carries our baggage. Jonathan McGuire, our mechanic, who sleeps in the truck, found her at the tailgate, shivering. "She just sat there, saying, 'I can't find my glasses. I can't find the bathroom.'"
McGuire grabbed some dry clothes of his own and led Rock by the hand to the bathroom.
Not everyone had a rough evening. "I had the best time. I just enjoyed the ride," said Julie di Furia, 30, of Seattle, Wash. "I thought it was just beautiful -- the winds, the rains, the thunder. It was absolutely phenomenal."
When the rain finally stopped, people went to sleep in the bathroom, the vans, and the truck. Others stayed the night in their tents. Boga and I lay down on the wet tent floor that was covered with a soggy sleeping bag and fell asleep.
We woke up around 6 a.m., cold and muddy, amidst puddles of water. Not everything had gotten soaked -- my dirty laundry somehow escaped the rain, leaving me with dry although stinky clothes to get dressed in.
We wrung out our wet clothes, stuffed our sleeping bags into their pouches and loaded our much heavier bags onto the gear truck. Then we took off in the humid Texas air, with foggy heads and weaker bodies and no shortage of conversation for the day.
[Next month: Hitting the halfway point to Orlando and crossing into Louisiana]