Scattered Showers of Various Intensity - By Emily

After four days off from riding, we were itching to get back onto the bikes! Unfortunately, the past two days it's been raining on and off and we've been living in swamps. Okay, they're not technically swamps. They're just flooded lots on campgrounds. Either way, you still expected a gator to pop out of the woods and rip a hole in the tent.
As you can imagine, it was not the most comfortable situation to be in. It was my day to drive the day we left Angola. The first half of the day was just about perfect. The weather, I mean. Driving on a 12 lane highway was not my idea of fun! Once I got to the Niagra County Camping Resort I set up the tent and blew up the air mattresses. Out of nowhere, it started pouring. I sat in the cover of the tent waiting for the rain to stop as it shook from the impact of the fat droplets. Unfortunately, the bikers got caught in the storm as well. I had to go rescue them. The congested highways made the cold, wet bikers have to wait even longer. Once I finally reached them after escaping the bumper to bumper traffic, we loaded up the bikes and drove back to the campground to warm up with showers then out to a late dinner. (Which was delicious, by the way.)
Which brings me to today. Dad and I rode while Mom and Alex put away the tent and did laundry. The day started out with the yelp of a peacock and the other songs of the surrounding birds. The weather was lovely. Then it started pouring out of nowhere again. Upon checking the weather, we discovered that the morning was supposed to be filled with scattered showers of various intensity, but it should die down by 9:30. We left the campground at about 8:30 to fairly good weather. After about 45 minutes or so of riding, it started sprinkling. This turned into a thunderstorm, which then died down into rain, but no thunder. After biking a few miles in this, I got a flat tire. We pulled over off of the road, but a passing semi deemed in neccesary to plow right by us and spray the water from the road into our faces. Not nice. Dad fixed the flat and we were on our way again. We biked 1 or 2 more miles before we had to stop again. This time we both had flats. Dad fixed his first, then mine. He discovered that there was a piece of metal in mine causing the consecutive flats. Unfortunately, that is what he had as well and we were out of inner tubes. After all of the stopping in the rain and wind, I was shivering violently. A nice couple and their daughter took us in for an hour across the street to get dry and warm up. I was shivering violently for at least two hours. It wasn't the funnest day of riding. We almost rode 20 miles. We would have finished the day if we had not had those flat tires, despite the rain.
On the fourth day of our break from riding, we took a road trip to Niagra Falls. Alex and I went into the Cave of the Winds and got completely soaked on Hurricane Deck. It was a lot of fun! =)