Part of the secret too is to get a rain jacket that has lots of ventilation. This past winter I was wearing a Showers Pass Touring jacket that seemed to work quite well. In warm weather mostly I just don't worry about it and get wet. Still yeah when you stop it is good to have something warm and dry. It does take some experimenting to figure out what works for you.

I like my Nomad: it's what I ride 98% of the time. I have the 38-16 gearing so that's about 17 gear inches at the bottom which I use all the time. I have Marathon Supremes 50-559 on at the moment which work great. It's a heavy bike but then I carry twenty pounds of this and that all the time and then too twenty pounds of flab so really blaming the bike is ridiculous. I have the Andra CSS rims which I just love. My Trek 520 rims were getting dented from barreling down hills and hitting pot holes. The roads aren't so great! The Nomad is just solid. Plus I can haul a huge lot of groceries!