September 6, 2020
Weather, Or Not
It's a fool's errand to try and outthink the weather. A sucker's bet. Believing that logic, hope and the sheer force of your will can dodge "sour" weather on your bike tour is laughable.
But that's exactly what we're doing.
Plan "A" was to take the ferry to Michigan on Tuesday and start the ride Wednesday morning. But the forecast has been a shape-shifting chameleon of weather data which refuses to sit still long enough to be made sense of. We fervently would like to start out this tour with no rain on the first couple days. After that, getting rained on is not exactly "optimal," but there you are out on the road, and what else are you going to do? Throw on your rain gear and keep going, that's what. But having your first pedal stroke send you into a day's worth of rainfall is a dreadful thought, and we are tying ourselves in knots trying to avoid it.
How many weather apps constitutes sliding into some form of obsession? If the answer is three or more, we have lost our marbles. We have The Weather Channel app, the Apple Weather app, and a boutique app of unknown provenance. Each of them has a special thing they do quite well, but none of them are a satisfying stand-alone tool for ciphering through the weather. So, we toggle back and forth, back and forth, refreshing every 30 minutes hoping for something definitive but alas, there has not been an Archimedan "Eureka!" bathtub moment of revelation for us. To illustrate:
Below you'll see screen shots of the forecast from the boutique app's rainfall forecast. The first is taken at 2:44 PM on Saturday 9/5, the next at 8:40 PM the same day, and then two more taken at 2:44PM and 7:01 PM on Sunday, 9/6.
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I admit they are not making wildly different predictions about rainfall, but are almost malevolent in moving predicted rainfall over, around, into, and out of the forecast. Its mission seems to be to prevent me from finding a tidy ride plan that avoids any and all rain. Side Note: For sure we won't be going to the beach in Ludington because that looks like certain death ; - )
As I said .... A Fool's Errand.
But, at some point you have to lay your cards on the table. I can state with no equivocation that we are now launching the project a day later than planned. Ferry over on Wednesday and start the ride on a sunny, crisp, rain-free day on Thursday. Well. Maybe. Depends on the forecast, you know?
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