Ride from home over normal way to Pomerado Rd, then south to meet up with Jim, Dave, and John, who were riding from John's house. Right at the start, I felt a couple of small rain drops, but nothing fell afterward. I climbed up past the hospital and went across Twin Peaks, and it started to drizzle a little bit. Not too long after, I met up with the guys, and we headed north on Pomerado to Highland Valley Rd. The rain kept getting worse, so that at the RB Rd intersection Jim suggested we cut it short by doing the time trial loop and heading back to John's house. Needing the miles for next week's ride, John and I convinced them to continue. It kept raining and the intensity grew. We turned onto Highland Valley Rd, and the visibility started decreasing too. John and I were talking about turning around at the base of the first hill, but we decided to climb it and see how things looked at the top. Things looked wet, but for some reason we kept going, only modifying the original plan to take Highland Valley Rd to the 67 rather than risking riding on the 78 in such poor visibility. The climb was not awful, just very wet. Again, my cyclocomputer gave out when it got too wet. On the downhill stretch to the 67, I got even wetter, with water completely soaking my socks and filling my shoes. A small sprint to the stoplight, then we turned on the 67 and headed up to the summit point by Mt. Woodson. I was cold by this time and not functioning well, and the last section of this climb was bad. As if things couldn't get worse, the rain was the worst it had been on the windward, downhill side, slowing us down and coming at us so hard it stung. I had zero visibility, since my glasses were useless for seeing through. It was almost as bad going down Scripps-Poway Pkwy, with no visibility and a driving rain. Just miserable! We cut the ride short and headed back to John's house. Near the end, the weather cleared a little bit (go figure!). I caught a ride from Jim back to my house, the prospect of riding back being too much to consider. This was, by a fair margin, the longest I have ridden in such heavy rain, ever. Not looking forward to doing anything like this again.
Average speed = 15.5-16.0 mph. Total mileage = 40.4 mi
Total elevation gain = 2150'
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