The hail you say!

This Memorial Day weekend I again drove rover-sweep for the Cottonwood 200 bicycle tour. Again, this year it went off without a hitch, thanks to the streamlined planning of our ride organizer, and our SAG captain, who in part organizes my services as the sweep vehicle.

Some of the riders claim this was the best weather we’ve had in years, maybe the best ever. Thunderstorms just north and west of our ride route on Saturday helped keep that ride cool. Partly cloudy skies made the remaining two days quite livable.

I swept in one rider on Monday with mechanical problems, swept in two riders on Monday having worn themselves out, and helped a rider on Sunday who had broken his seat. Aside from that, there was nothing negative to report.

Well, except that other thing…

There is always a last rider. There must be. There’s no shame in being the last rider, but it is usually a title that everyone seeks to avoid, if only for the sake of self-competition. However, this weekend, Chris — a very easy-going rider on a recumbant — did make last his goal. Or at least he made no effort to avoid the designation.

The line of thunderstorms ran tangent on a diagonal to the right angle of our ride as it turned from heading west to the south on Saturday. The south leg was only about 13 miles, and was the last leg of the ride. A couple of miles south of the turn is a classic country church, complete with a boy’s and girl’s outhouse, which we use as one of our last SAG stops (the church, not the outhouse).

By the time I finished checking a nearby town for any scragglers, I arrived to find our church SAG had already been packed up. Myself, feeling a little sleepy, decided to take a short nap, letting dry thunder above and wind in the trees beside lull me to a brief sleep. I knew Chris was a strong (if today slow) rider, and he more than likely would not need me between the church and the town at the end.

I roused myself when I saw that the edge of the thunderclouds had dipped as far south as the bottom of my sun-tinting on my windshield (I was parked facing south) — a limit I had set for myself when I went to sleep. I judged that such a line would be about 5 miles further to the south, and still not far enough to pose any kind of threat to Chris.

I caught up with him about 4 miles out of town, at the north edge of the city lake (okay, it is actually a Corps lake…). Traffic was light, and he was making good enough time that I knew he’d be in town by the time I found some place to turn around and re-sweep him. So I headed on toward town hoping to get my tent pitched in a spot that our bike-club president was saving for me.

About a quarter mile up the road from him, at a point where the guard rails and highway berm all fell away in such a fashion as to give a straight opening to view the surface of the lake, I was struck with such a gust of wind that my truck swerved. I glanced at Chris in my rearview, saw a lone car passing him currently, and knew that if he should be gusted when he reached this point, he’d still be safe, even if it pushed him a bit into the roadway. I continued on, pleased with how in fact the sky above was relatively clear, and that I did judge the thunderstorm rightly.

Until the plink. Plink. Plink plink. Plink.

Hail.

PlinPliplinkinkplilinkpinkplipkpkinkplnklip…

And the sudden progression into a dull roar as I and this whole part of the highway was caught in pea size hail coming from west from over the lake. Again, I figured this was just a little hail, and I’d probably just cause more problems trying to go back for Chris than I’d help, and besides, he’ll be out of this soon. I pulled over on the turnout of a little access road to wait for him, just in case.

And with no transition, I was suddenly in a whiteout of pea and marble-sized hail.

I allowed myself a fraction of panic. Not for myself of course, but for Chris. This much pea-sized hail would make cycling dangerous anytime, but adding marble and possibly golfball sized hail, and…

I started frantically throwing all the crap from my passenger seat, expecting him to cruise up beside me any moment and hop in. When he hadn’t arrived by the time I finished throwing thing around, I knew I had to go back and find him.

But I couldn’t see. It was true white-out conditions.

Then I figured, as long as I kept it on the asphalt, it didn’t matter, because no one else was driving on this section of the road at the moment.

I turned deftly about; my windshield wipers beating frantically to clear chunks of ice off my windshield. Ahead, on the left side of the road, I saw a darker shade of white against the white of the storm. The white of the road. The white of the grass and trees. The white of day.

I straddled the shoulder, my blinkers on, and tried to open my door. The wind was blowing it closed again, helped by gravity and my truck’s odd tilt on the shoulder. The thudding became louder and stronger as the hail grew in overall size.

Before I could think of what else to do, I saw Chris hunkering with his bike in the lea of my truck. He positioned his bike carefully on the grass, to best work with the wind, then hunkered to my truck and let the passenger door fall open. He threw himself into the bucket seat to protect his head, then organized hisself on the seat proper and got the door closed again.

After we both made sure each other was okay, we sat in nervous humor laughing and cursing the hail. My left arm braced against my driver’s side window, in case it should shatter. I even considered putting my bike helmet on in case my sunroof should break.

After several minutes which measured like hours, we both hopped out to get his bike into my truck. The road, everything in sight, seemed to be covered by a couple of inches of white beads. The storm had passed over us, and was blowing at us from the east now, the hail diminishing in size and force. We pulled ahead onto an access road to turn around, as traffic was beginning to resume and the storm to subside, or at least to leave our section of road.

Pulling away from the spot, we saw that less than a quarter mile down the road, there was no evidence of a storm. But my truck bore the dents, Chris’ arms the welts, that told us otherwise.

At the school where we camp, I surveyed the deep pile of frozen rocks in my truckbed. By now, in the warmer air, they could pack into course snowballs. I went inside to check on Chris.

“It shattered my helmet!!”, and he showed me where his bike helmet shell had been cracked and splintered, evidently denting the low-density foam beneath. A little later, he showed how his back was covered in tiny welts which were now quite painful.

Because his helmet was compromised (and maybe because he wasn’t sueing us) we allowed him to continue to ride without a helmet — something explicitly against our ride policy. He continued to refer to me as his savior or hero for the rest of the weekend.

I’m just glad he’s alright.

I’m also glad I decided to wait on filing my hail claim from last year!