This year's Halloween run seemed doomed from the start. It was rain-postponed twice, bringing it right down to the wire in terms of holding it prior to Halloween. This left them no room to reschedule, and they were stuck with whatever the weather gods decided to throw at them. I was afraid to cross my fingers, as those very same gods hadn't been kind at all so far...
Nonetheless, the weather forecasts had been saying it would actually be a decent day. Sure enough, though; about three days beforehand, the forecasts begin getting sketchy, and they only went downhill from there.
The morning dawned grey and cold...and rainy. Checking the outlook, it seemed we might have a chance for the rain to pass by for the afternoon, but that is not how things fell out.
Here's the Haunted Hitchhiker, as seen in an earlier post. All nice and dry, and ready to rock and roll.
I'd picked up a couple of mini skeletons and plopped them over my spotlights and zip-tied them into place. (Yes, I made sure to turn off the spot lights. Although, it would have been pretty cool to see a couple of fire-enshrouded skulls coming down the road at you...)
Alas, the poor weather kept the crowds down to about one-third of the usual turnout.
Turnout was so poor, that the organizers were just handing out the t-shirts for free (they usually set you back $20 for them). They had boxes and boxes of them, and there was no way they'd sell many so they figured to cut their losses and at least hand them out.
The one upside to the low turnout, is it seemed it was all the hammerheads that had stayed home. The route actually went off without a hitch, blocking was good, there were no u-turns and missed streets, etc. However, there was a fair amount of rain. And since I was wearing my usual skull mask (which fogs up big time if I wear any kind of shades or even clear lenses), I couldn't see a thing because the rain was whacking me right in the eyeballs.
As the run was beginning it's return to the rally point, we came upon an on-ramp for I-93, which I promptly took, opting to hammer down to I-95 and then hit home. There, I planned a change of clothes and then head back to the after-party. However, no sooner were the dry clothes on, than Matty and Tara came pulling in. Matty was going to drop Tara off so she could grab her car, rather than having to do that after the apri-party. We all got to talking, and since the rain wasn't really letting up much, and there was a Pats game on (and since the beers in my fridge were already paid for), we decided to scrap returning to the run, and stay warm and dry inside, instead. The game was a complete success, as the Pats went on to rout the Rams, and we toasted their achievements early and often. We even had a few other folks stop by and catch the game with us - all in all, not a bad way to salvage the day.
So there you have it. Here's a couple of pics to show how my passengers faired. First; the two mini's. They look like they have a "WTF was that??" look on their faces. I don't think they were fans at all.
And then; the Hitchhiker. What a sorry state he was in. He was all rain-soaked and his trailing body had become covered in dirt, leaves, mud and road grime. He is going to need some serious cleaning/revamping before next year's run. (The revamping will entail being moved to a higher spot on the bike as the hovering-above-the-road experiment was deemed a failure. The soaking rain saw to that.)
Oh yeah - I'd also had one of those fake arms hanging out of my right saddlebag. I'd bungie-corded it inside to keep from falling out, but apparently that didn't work, as I noticed yesterday that it was gone. Suffice to say it was less than stellar display performance on my part, all around. But there's always next year, right?
Ride Hard, Take Chances The Weather Will Cooperate.
