April in August

I did not imagine that Düsseldorf in August would be more like Cleveland in April.

I have not kept track exactly, but I think it has rained just about every day in August. Not all day, every day, but just enough to make it hard to plan for outdoor things. Unless you don't mind getting wet. Like today, it's been mostly cloudy with a very few bits of sun, and now, when it's time to leave and maybe go for a ride, it has started to rain. I think that might be one of those laws of the universe, along with the one that says a rainy weekend is followed by a beautiful Monday.

I've not yet learned the weather pattern here. At home, armed with Internet connections and almost real-time radar, we cyclists like to think we're amateur meteorologists. And after a while, you do get to see patterns in the weather. I can look at the radar and have a pretty good idea whether I can go ride and stay dry or not.

Here, at least so far in August, the weather has no pattern that I can make sense of. It will be raining at work, but not where I live (25 km away). Or I ride North and it's raining, then turn around and find it never rained only a few km to the South. The upside is there have been some interesting cloud formations:


After almost 4 weeks of this, it's getting to me. Part of my problem is I don't like to clean my bike. And given my apartment living now, it's even harder. I can't really go out on the sidewalk and wash my bike. And actually I've been told that is probably "not allowed". I was told you may not wash your car out on the street.

So if it's looking like rain is likely, I've not been going out or have been staying close to home.

What do the cyclists do around here? Sunday, while sitting in a coffee shop and watching the rain through the window, I saw a line of about 10 cyclists go by. This was a hard rain, and they were "just" recreational riders, not racers, so they didn't "need" to be out training. They were just riding, and getting wet. Obviously they like riding enough that getting wet wasn't a problem.

We racers tend think of ourselves as hard core when it comes to riding. Right now I'm not so sure.