A very wet commute

Spoiler alert: I've recently been doing very little other than working, commuting, sleeping and eating, so some of my blog posts might be a bit trivial. Including this one. Which speaks of a day that had strong winds and rain forecast for the middle of the day. So I made sure to time my commute well.

In the morning I managed to get in before either rain or strong winds started. Success! But in the afternoon, the rain was slamming so hard on my velux window I didn't think I would be that lucky in the afternoon. So when I heard the rain stop, I quickly decided to go home, and do the remainder of the working day in my home office. But that meant I got onto my bike not long after the rain had stopped.

I got to Hendrewen Road, which gets me out of Bangor, without problems. And also to the top of the hill. But on the way down I noticed a lot of water running over the road. And I am a bit weary of that. Sometimes, that water freezes, and then the road becomes terrifying. If I think this might be the case I take the long way around. At least it was fairly warm this day, and I wasn't worried about ice.

I know there is one dip in the road that collects water in high rain. And I wasn't surprised to see that that had indeed happened. But there were no cars around, so I just biked in. What else can you do? Normally that goes fine. This time I was surprised to see the water was so high it came over the top of my shoes. That is the deepest I have ever seen it!

Water running down the road in one direction

Walter running down the road in the other direction

That second stream had created an impressive puddle

Me after I came through on the other side; you can't see the tide line on my trousers, but I think you can see my shoes are soaking

If I would have been in a car I might have flooded it, but of course you can't flood a bike. The worst that could happen is that the floods have brought in debris you bike into, and fall over. But that didn't happen. So I just got to the other side with wet socks and shoes, and an interesting tide mark on my trousers.

When I got home I just hung out socks, shoes and trousers, and the next day everything was dry again. But I do think it would be a good idea if the council increased the drainage of this road. You could wait for it to indeed flood someone's car! And that it is full of black ice when temperatures drop below zero is not without risk either. I'm not going to hold my breath. But I suppose it is good I found out the easy way just how deep the water can get on this road!