Is that water from the sky?

Last night Claudia, Phil and I were some of the very few people who managed to show up to swim at the pool. It was nice, we were able to get 2 lanes so that they didn't have to wait for me and I didn't have to pull over for them. Why was it so uncrowded? I think partially that some of the swim classes are on hiatus right now, just before school starts. And some families are on vacation before school starts. But the biggest reason was the very strange weather.

It was cloudy, humid (all things being relative - no pun intended - since it was still only about 60% humidity), breezy to windy and cool. I think everyone except for the weirdos athletes stayed home. But we had our 2600 yards to swim and had no excuses to skip out. We're getting faster (or totally unable to count sets) and even I finished in under 1 hour 10 minutes. I worked hard on my form; full arm stroke, strong slow kick, face and neck relaxed, calm breathing. All that on sets where the tempo and speed increased. Could it possibly be that we're getting better at this?

As we were walking to the locker rooms I saw a lovely rainbow in the sky. Nice omen! The sky was streaked in beautiful shades of reds and purples and was just gorgeous to look at. And on my drive home it rained. Well, it drizzled. Ok fine, there were 14 drops of water on my windshield. That's more precipitation than we've had since about March.

After I got home I needed to put my bike in the car for the Wednesday night brick workout and decided to see, once again, if I could get my bike rack to work. I bought that rack when I bought my last car (which was substantially the same as my current car) and was never able to get it installed well enough to use it. Either I couldn't fit it in the car, or I couldn't fit the bike onto it without removing the seat, or something else would happen. In frustration I hung it in the garage and ignored it, thinking once in a while that I'd donate it to Goodwill or somewhere. Since my sis and bro-in-law will be here for our trial swim/bike ride down in Monterey I needed to figure out how to get 3 people, my bike and my tri pack in the car at the same time.

Two friends have offered to loan me their back-of-the-car racks and that would have been my last resort. But after way longer than it should have taken I got the rack installed, my bike on the rack, and the rest of my gear stowed away. I need to take the front tire off the bike but I don't have to remove the seat. I only have to fold half the back seat down so I can have my family in the car with my stuff. I think 2 people with 2 bikes and their gear would also fit comfortably. Yay and yippee for one problem solved!

Now I just have to heal my back enough so that I can run, make sure my knee is healed enough to run, learn not to freak out in crowded water and not get nails in my tires and I'll be all set!