Bikeforums.net is a forum about nothing but bikes. Our community can help you find information about hard-to-find and localized information like bicycle tours, specialties like where in your area to have your recumbent bike serviced, or what are the best bicycle tires and seats for the activities you use your bike for.Jim in KC
03-31-07, 12:31 PM
Last Monday, when weather.com predicted sunshine for Friday, I made an appointment with Bike Stop in Independence. By Thursday the forecast had changed to T-storms (which stain everything brown, unless it's green tea). Friday morning, the forecast is storms early, clearing in the afternoon. I check the radar at 7 am and the green blob is still 50-100 miles away, so I think, I'll a. beat the rain going out, b. wait 'til it stops, then c. ride back.
Part a works (12th St., Truman Rd (only 1/4 mile on the shoulder), Blue Ridge Blvd). It starts pouring 15 minutes after I arrive. Todd checks out my bike (5 minutes), we converse for as long as two relative strangers can (15 minures), and then I drift around the shop waiting for the rain to stop. Now it's noon. The rain is supposed to stop. And..the sky looks like soup, but there's no water falling out of it. I depart.
Before I can find shelter under the slender awning of a defunct bar along BRB, my pants are soaked. I don't want to put rain pants over them, I want to change. I'm standing in plain sight, 10 feet from the street, halfway between two blind curves 100 yards apart. Traffic is light, but as soon as a car clears one of those curves, there I am. I covertly unfasten everything, carefully lay out the rain pants, so I'm not trying, in my rush, to put them on through the wrong end of one of the legs, and in one deft maneuver, the change is made, after much previsualization.
It was a fun ride, and now I know that my brakes work when wet, because it rained all the way home to KCK.
Part a works (12th St., Truman Rd (only 1/4 mile on the shoulder), Blue Ridge Blvd). It starts pouring 15 minutes after I arrive. Todd checks out my bike (5 minutes), we converse for as long as two relative strangers can (15 minures), and then I drift around the shop waiting for the rain to stop. Now it's noon. The rain is supposed to stop. And..the sky looks like soup, but there's no water falling out of it. I depart.
Before I can find shelter under the slender awning of a defunct bar along BRB, my pants are soaked. I don't want to put rain pants over them, I want to change. I'm standing in plain sight, 10 feet from the street, halfway between two blind curves 100 yards apart. Traffic is light, but as soon as a car clears one of those curves, there I am. I covertly unfasten everything, carefully lay out the rain pants, so I'm not trying, in my rush, to put them on through the wrong end of one of the legs, and in one deft maneuver, the change is made, after much previsualization.
It was a fun ride, and now I know that my brakes work when wet, because it rained all the way home to KCK.