The Tour Lafitte That Wasn't...

On Saturday, my sister in law, a friend of mine, and I set out to ride in our area's largest bike ride, the Tour Lafitte. For the past 26 years, this bike ride has been hosted around the same time and benefits the Special Olympics. We registered for the 10 mile option and were excited to ride in it for the first time.

I even purchased a shiny new helmet for the occasion!

The weather was the hot button topic all during the day on Friday - the race director even appeared on the noon news to discuss the race.

We woke up on Saturday morning in hopes that all would be ok and it was at first...but the threat of severe thunderstorm warnings and flash floods kept popping up on our phones in the form of news alerts.

As we mingled around the parking lot of the starting location, a race volunteer rode through and told us that the ride had been cancelled. I didn't want to believe it until I saw it on the official facebook page. Within a few minutes, a notice was published to the Tour's facebook page to let us know that the ride had indeed been cancelled.

It seems as if every time Kayla and I get together for an event or race, something crazy happens...from race cancellations to terrible weather, car troubles, missing the start of the race, etc. We don't call ourselves the Unfortunate Runners for no reason, after all!

What did we do instead? Well, we went for a ride, of course! 

After carefully observing the radar, we figured we had about 45 minutes to an hour before the really terrible weather came through.

I knew an exact 5 mile route from the parking lot, so we set off on our Non-Tour-Lafitte adventure! 

We were actually surprised to see others who had a similar idea and were out for a ride as well! 

We made it back and snapped this super quick picture just in the nick of time. As soon as we got our bikes loaded in our cars, the big rain drops began to fall.

 

 Literally, just in time!

We decided to stop at Starbucks for breakfast and got stuck there. It began to POUR! It was definitely the kind of rain that wasn't safe to drive in if you could help it! 

Oh yes, and apparently my name is Carin now. Hah!

I forgot (silly me) about the crazy flooding our town goes through every time it rains a lot in a short amount of time. 

...so not only were we stuck at Starbucks, we drove a little down the road after the rain let up and were stuck again due to flooding!

Somehow, we finally figured out a way around it all and we made it home. It rained again on Sunday (yesterday) and the flooding was even worse - cars were swept away and the police were urging people to stay off the roads. The flooding was so bad, it even prompted a crew from NBC to our area and I hear a friend of mine's husband is going to be on the Today Show this morning to discuss it all...I'm going to have to watch for him!

In the end, we still had fun despite the race cancellation and I do hope to be able to participate in this ride in the future! I'm glad it benefited a good cause and the riders safety was taken into consideration. Just another story to add to our "Unfortunate Runners" scrapbook! :)

Have you ever registered for an event that ended up being cancelled?