Prosody

Early Saturday mornings are my favorite time to ride--light traffic, cooler weather, lots of sights, sounds, and smells. This morning was foggy, but the fog around my neighborhood was light enough for cycling. However, as I descended into the Chesterfield Valley--a flood plain for the Missouri River--the fog thickened. I turned onto Edison Avenue, a new road not yet opened to automobile traffic. Since I was safe from drivers who would not see me in the fog, I pedaled on, but I had to stop several times to clean the condensation from my glasses. I could barely see, but I could see enough to avoid the rollerblader and the jogger sharing the road with me. When I got to the end of the closed road, I decided that the fog was too thick to cycle with automobile traffic, so I turned around and headed home. A ride I had intended to be about thirty to forty miles had become an eleven-mile ride.

The fog was so thick that every hair on my arms held a droplet of water turned opaque by sunscreen and insect repellent. Though the pavement was dry, water sprayed from my wheels. My shoes were wet. Rising up through the fog were giant coils of black flexible drain pipe, spaced along the road, waiting to be buried, installed...whatever. The stoplights at each end of this stretch of road materialized only a few feet before their intersections. To the north of the road were the dim outlines of loading docks for strip malls, and to the south, running parallel behind a drainage ditch and an embankment, a single railroad track then the hills at the edge of the valley. About midway along the road a songbird carried on. Otherwise, it was quiet. I found myself wishing I had lights; it was a beautiful morning.

Guest

I'm not a big fan of riding in fog- it's too clammy, wet, and tends to be cold. I had a bad experience once riding in the fog on the lakefront in Chicago- I hit a big fog, and I couldn't see 3 feet in front of me, and I ended up catching a cold, since I didn't have any real outerwear on and decided to ride it out anyway.

I'm not likely to do that again soon...

yikes

I was riding home from a friends house one night in very thick fog. It was around 1:00 or 1:30AM and the streets were very quiet. I rode past some bushes and heard an animal or something move. It scared the SH**T outa me so I booked home very quickly. Didn't want some axe murderer jumping out and chopping me up.

Chris L

Seemingly unlike everyone else, I love riding in fog! I can think of nothing better than riding in misty rainforests in the mountains, the thicker the mist the better. About the only time it worried me was the first time I rode Springbrook when it was so thick I could barely see my handlebars, at that stage I didn't know that area as well as I do now.

Either way, fog is all good!

MichaelW

I like fog as well, in the right circumstances, but you do need lights and to be properly dressed. The best fog ride I ever had was behind a milk delivery cart. These battery poweerd vehicles cruise at 25mph, and you can draft behind them very easily. It gave me some useful protection fropm the traffic along a busy road.
When I lived by the coast, a sea-fog could descend and within 10mins, the conditions could change from dry sunny day to cool, damp fog.

Swimjim

Riding in fog is a good way to get real dead real fast. I don't know about you guy's, but I prefer not to become a sailbiker.

Jim

bradw

Hey Prosody, I live in St. Louis (near Carondolet Park) and I went out for a 25 mile ride that morning. I too had trouble seeing with glasses, and had to stop every mile or so for the first hour.

Normally would've turned back, but I had my brand new Trek 520 and I wanted to test it out.

Prosody

Had I stayed toward the top of the hills--Clayton Road, maybe--I probably would have kept riding, but down in the valley the fog was so thick I decided it was too unsafe to ride without lights.

bradw

Even here in town there's some "hill and valley" effect. As I rode to the top of "The Hill" neighborhood the fog cleared up, but then as I dropped down to the "valley" along Manchester Blvd it became very dense again.

But then I encountered the extremely dense and dangerous "knuckleheads" along the paths of Forest Park.

closetbiker

I live on a delta where fog rolls in on occasion. When I first started to wear glasses I would ride through a fog bank and when I came out, the moisture on my lenses made me think I was still riding through the fog. Several blocks later I managed to look over the edge of my glasses and clued in.

orguasch

yesterday I rode in the fog, could not do my usually speed, but later on in the day the sun was up, so have to rev. everything up, to get my heart pumping

Prosody

Just saw a local television news story about a **** on one of the Forest Park paths. The ****** apparently dragged a woman jogger into some bushes.