Only about 19 miles today of which 16 or thereabouts on the road, and a short 6 mile jaunt on the mountain bike trails last night. It's been raining every day for two weeks or so now, and we're getting a bit fed up with it.

When the sun came out in the afternoon, I jumped on the bike, rode up to the road (slowly, unpaved roads with big puddles and up a sharp incline) and turned left, which is the hilly side. I haven't ridden there in a while, though the club rides I am participating in have gotten a lot hillier, so I wanted to see if there was some improvements on "my" rolling hills. It goes like this: Down first, then one hill, after which there's the local school, then two more hills, after which there's the local inn, then a long hill with steep and more shallow section, after which the road drops into a small valley and stays there for 2-3 miles. Then it slowly creeps back up, with two stores coming up right at the start of the incline -- that's as far as I had gone. Roundtrip would be a little over 20 miles to there, but I wanted to go further, maybe 1h out and then turn around at a convenient spot.

But that was calculating without the weather. It was nice until I dropped into the little valley, where drops started to fall, and looking up, I saw a grey wall in front of me. I went on for a while with the rain in my face until I felt that rain was really quite painful, and looked closer to see little grains of hail or graupel. A lot of cars on the road, too, with trailers or camper vans -- it's the height of tourist season, and the road is the main access to a large state park and the only access to a hot springs resort. Anyhow, I turned around in the valley, thus the low mileage. It was a lot better with the rain coming at me from the back, too.

On the plus side, all the hilly rides with the group clearly improved my stamina, and while I'm not fast, "my" hills felt a lot easier (and a little faster) today. And I got a wonderful hot shower at home afterwards.