This year I had to set up a date for the 19 Triathlon a little later than we have always had before, because on July 29 I had my second Knee replacement. The doctor told me to put this event on hold for a while and let my knee heal, so I always listen to my doctors, you can ask Margaret, so the last Tuesday in October I set this annual event up. How did I know that we would have 40 to 50 MPH winds with rain just about all day, I am not a weatherman. Nineteen Tuesday Groupers thought it was a good enough date and 6 days before the event they all were signed up and ready to go.
Long about Thursday before we were to leave on Tuesday, my phone started ringing, and Emails started coming in, with 3 or 4 texts messages. It seemed like everyone must have checked out the forecast, which didn’t look all that good for Tuesday, and wanted to cancel, of course, I knew Bill B. would be there, strong winds, Rain, or Hurricane, wouldn’t keep him away, only a broken leg, or a knee replacement would keep Bill and myself away from a Tuesday Group Event. On Monday night out of the 19 T G that had signed up, 13 had cancel, all of them had good reason for canceling and I knew it didn’t have anything to do with the weather, because Ellis, one of our leaders, always tells us, “There is no bad weather, only bad equipment”. Maybe I can get Ellis to say this one more time.
When I arrived at little Island City Park, for once there was no cars in the parking lot, with no one on the Fishing Pier either, I didn’t understand why! It may have something to do with the way the American Flag was standing straight out from the Flagpole, the pole only had a slight bend in it and the flag was flapping in the wind like crazy. So, I decided to call all 5 of the T G people and tell them that we would meet at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge and to park at the back of the parking lot, this would save us 4 miles coming and going on our fun trip down to False Cape, and boy, we did have fun, asked any of the six T G.
Bill had the furthest to drive and he pulled into the lot right at 9:30 A.M. We all circled up in Tuesday Group Fashion, and I told them where we would be going and that we wouldn’t be doing the Kayaking Part of the Triathlon, not because of the weather but because the water in the bay had been blowen out for about 200 feet from the shoreline. I also told them to watch out for fallen limbs and fallen trees that we may encounter on our Biking Part of the Triathlon. The Crew, there at False Cape, removed one blow down South of Barbour Hill Road before we got there. (They knew we were coming in today) Then we each said our name, and then started down the gravel road, with hardly any rain, but with a strong north Winds, which pushed us up to 16 miles an hour going South and South/ West.
Everyone had great gear, and no one ever said anything about being cold, see we did listen to Ellis. I made 3 stops on the way to the park so we could all stay together and have a drink of water, you know on a HOT DAY we need to drink a little water.
In the St. Pk. we road over to where the Kayaks were on Barbour Hill Road and checked out the water level and no one wanted to do that part of the Triathlon. We took a short break here and looked out over the bay, but you couldn’t see very far, because of the fog, Cedar Island was as far as you could see, and not all of that was visible to us. We biked towards the V. C, but with know one wanting to stop there we biked on South towards False Cape Landing Road.
Reaching the field there at FCLR, we left our bikes and started the third leg of our Triathlon. Everyone wanted to see the ocean with all of those gigantic waves so we headed East, reaching the edge of the USA, as Bill calls it, the waves were breaking all the way up to the dunes, with tons of Sea Foam blowing right up FCLR and all over us, but remember we had good gear, and it didn’t worry us. We stayed there only about 10 minutes, and with sand blowing in our faces we moved away. Bill got a few pictures of the ocean, which he will have out soon and Y’all will get to see all our smiling faces. We hiked back towards our bikes on the Maple Leaf Trail, for about one mile, total.
With back at the bikes, we biked 2 miles back to the V C where we had our lunch sitting on the porch on the Cracker Barrel Rocking Chairs. We all had brought our own lunch to eat, but Catherine had a thermos of hot soup and shared it with all, and boy that hot soup on this cold day, it did go great with my P B & G Sandwich. She brought bowls and spoons, and lots of hot soup.
One of the Rangers that started working there at False Cape about 4 months ago, actually went to Elementary and High School with me, and he said that he would take us out in the truck, with those 50 MPH North Winds blowing, if we wanted him too. Well! Not wanting to make him bad, some of us took him up on his offer, We could have gotten all six bikes in the back of the truck and had enough room in the Crew Cab Truck for all to ride out, but Bill and Kevin said they wanted to fight that strong wind going through the Refuge, they did very good making it to the parking lot about 15 minutes after we got there.
On this trip we had Gayle O, Catherine F, Bill B, Richard T, Kevin Mc, and the crazy Leader of the group Bruce J. We all had rip-roaring time, and all stayed dry and warm. I did find out not to ride on the wet shoulder of the road, because as my tire slip in the mud down went my bike, putting me in the woods, in about 2 seconds’ flat. Everyone came to my aid, pulling the bike off of me so I could get up. No, I was not hurt, only embarrassed for falling off my bike, and no Bill didn’t get a picture of the crash. We saw about 2500 Martin’s flying all around the Wildlife Refuge, 2 or 3 Great Blue Herons and one Cotton- mouth Water Moccasin, sunning himself on the gravel road, no he didn’t get sunburn. The rain wasn’t bad at all, but the wind could have been blowing a little less, but we all had a good time and Catherine is already talking about the 20th Annual Triathlon for next year, she wants something special for that one, I will be happy with great weather, like we had for number 18, last year.
Bruce Julian