Disaster Averted

Total for this ride: 18.9 miles
Total for this year: 212.6 miles

This was supposed to be an uneventful ride with a group of colleagues and students from work.  It turned out to be anything but...

It was the first time in ages that I actually organized and led a ride for folks just from my department.  Since I'd been leading the campus-wide rides for the past couple of years I stayed away from taking on an office group - two groups a week is just too much work.  But since this year I managed to organize a group of five leaders for the campus rides I figured I'd be able to resurrect the smaller office outings.  I sent out an e-mail last week to let everyone know that we'd ride the following Thursday.

The weather forecast called for periods of rain on and off all day.  I started watching the radar about noon and it looked like it was going to be close.  I sent out a broadcast message letting everyone know that I'd make the weather call at 3:30.  When the time came, it looked like if we started right on time at 4, and kept a decent (but not overly aggressive) pace, we would get back about 5:30 just as a large area of rain was due to hit.  I fired off another e-mail letting everyone know that it was a go.  I got changed, filled up the water bottle, and rolled the bike down to the front door of the building to wait for any other riders.

I didn't know exactly how many to expect.  I knew my my recruiter and one of my students would be riding.  I quickly found out that one Russian post-doc and two PhD candidates planned to ride too.  One of the grad students, a girl from (I think) India said she had bought her bike yesterday specifically so she could go on these rides.  A group of six seemed reasonable for a first outing, and since this was a short, simple ride up to Mt. Hope Cemetery and back, I figured it would be a piece of cake.  I could do this ride with my eyes closed.

We rolled away from the Carlson Building as the carillon rang 4:00.  By the time we made the turn onto Perkins Road it was apparent that we had a bi-modal distribution of riding abilities on this ride.  I was in the lead with my recruiter and student close behind.  The post-doc and grad students were already trailing fairly far back - maybe 100 yards.  And we hadn't even gone a half mile yet.  Hmmm...

It was at that point that we got our first rain.  We could see it coming - a brief cloudburst which passed over us quickly.  By the time we reached the intersection of Jefferson and BH Town Line Rd it had already stopped and we were dry.

We crossed the road and made our way toward the Lehigh Trail.  By this point it started to look like the post-doc and the male grad student were relatively capable riders.  The Russian jumped ahead of the group at one point so he could get some pictures of us as we rode by.  And the other guy, although he was sweating with long pants and a long sleeve shirt, didn't seem to be in any distress.  It became more apparent as we rode along that the Indian girl was going to be bringing up the back of the pack for the entire ride.

I got a little perturbed with the group when we hit the UR campus.  There's a short stretch there where we ride on the road (Intercampus Drive) between a couple of parking lots.  There's not a lot of traffic there, but there is some - a fact of which some in my group seemed completely oblivious as they rode in the middle of the lane.  I could see in my mirror that cars were starting to gather at the back end of the pack as my riders merrily rolled along without a care in the world.  I yelled back a few times and motioned for everyone to move to the right and I guess they eventually figured it out since the cars started passing us.

The entrance I normally use to get into the cemetery had a plastic chain across it - this was little more than an annoyance, since it was no trouble to just lift it up and ride under.  Once we got everybody through the gate I stopped to take stock of the group and see how they were doing.  Everybody was in pretty good spirits but I noticed that the Indian grad student was wearing a thin sweater and long pants - and carrying a backpack.  I started worrying about whether she'd be able to make it.  She did take a drink during the break, but she was all smiles so we pressed on through the cemetery to Frederick Douglass' grave site.  We stopped at the closest point on the road to the grave, and I pointed in the direction it was located if anyone wanted to go take a look, but nobody did.  So with the weather starting to move in, I suggested we head back.  They all agreed and we took off.

We had gone a few hundred yards from the turn around point when the guy grad student, who had fallen a little behind, yelled up to me that he needed to put some air in his tire, and that we should keep going.  With the skies looking more and more threatening by the minute, and since he wasn't in any kind of physical distress, I decided to keep going and get back before the skies opened up.

Once again the group kind of divided in two as it did on the outbound leg.  I rode through the parking lots at UR, down to the towpath, and then up the bridge over the canal at Kendrick Rd.  At the top of the bridge I stopped my group to see how far back the rest of them were.  The Russian and the Indian came into view about a minute after we got there.  They waved, and we took off.  That was the last time I stopped until we got back to the Carlson Building.  And we got back not a second too soon - it started raining as we hit Andrews Drive and we started hearing thunder.

I waited a couple minutes in the front of the building to make sure the others got back OK.  They didn't show up, so I took my bike up to my office and then came back down to wait.  After about 10 minutes I started getting a little worried, and then I noticed that two of the bikes were back in the rack in front of the building.  Apparently they got back while I was taking my bike up to the second floor.  OK.  That just left the one guy who stopped to pump up his tire.  I asked the other two if they had seen him.  Not since the cemetery.  I went back out to wait.

By now the weather was bad.  Hard rain, lightening and thunder.  And after a half hour, still no sign of the straggler.  I told the other two that I was going to take the truck and see if I could find him.  I drove in the route that would have given me the greatest chance of seeing my guy if he was coming in.  Nothing.  I left campus and drove up to Crittenden thinking I'd drive to where it crossed the Lehigh trail and maybe I'd see him there.  Again nothing.  This was not good.  I went back to campus to check in with the others.

They had heard nothing.  We tracked down the guy's cell phone number and called but it went to voice mail.  Now I was really getting worried.  I told the group that I was going out again and to call me if they heard anything.  I jumped into the truck and made another search - this time going all the way up to the cemetery.  Still nothing, so again I returned to campus.  By now it was 7:30 and although the sun was still up, we'd soon be losing daylight and I knew I didn't want to be searching in the dark.  I decided that he must still be somewhere on the trail or in the cemetery, and the only way I'd find him would be to hop on the bike and retrace the entire route, which I did.

All the while I'm riding up there I'm thinking that he's had a heart attack and died (he is an older student...) and that I was going to be held accountable since I was the one who organized the ride.  I made it back to the cemetery, crossed under the chain, and tried to remember which roads we had taken on the way out.  Just then my phone rang.  It was the Indian girl - the guy had called!  He was alive and well, but he was lost.  So told them to have him give me a call so I could figure out where he was and mount a rescue mission.  Turns out when he stopped to pump up his tire, it was actually flat and he didn't have a patch kit.  So he started walking.  He made it as far as the canal but didn't know how to find the Lehigh trail from there, so he just walked east on the towpath.  This took him all the way to Brighton, where he decided that he needed to ask directions.  It was then that he somehow got in touch with his fellow student and they contacted me.

I finally made it back to the truck and drove out to retrieve the poor lost soul.  He felt pretty bad about the situation, but I assured him that he was not the first person I'd rescued (remember Andrew with the flat tire in Bushnell's Basin last year??) and he wouldn't be the last.  Still he was pretty glad that I came for him.  I got him back to campus about 8:30 - three hours after I originally ended the ride.

Moral of the story - never leave ANYONE by themselves on any of these rides.