Classic Velocity

It has been a long time since I have gotten really and truly soaked while riding a motorcycle. Years in fact. It happened now and then back when I had no rain gear and had to press on in the rain. The topic is also no stranger to these pages (see Rain , Squandering the Attention Budget , and The Rain Machine). But this was different. I have plenty of rain gear. Good stuff, too. I have jacket liners and a full set of Frog Togs and rain covers for the tank bag, and even a set of rain gloves. But on this day, I had none of them.

It was a beautiful sunny morning with a few puffy clouds here and there. It was the best part of what was to be a hot and humid summer day. I enjoyed the cooler morning air and the curvy undulating unoccupied country roads. After a while, I stopped to grab coffee. While inside, a trio of joggers came in dripping wet. I went outside to see a glistening parking lot, puddles of water, and a soaking wet bike. This had been no light sprinkle. The rain squall had already moved on, and the sun had never stopped shining. I looked up to see a single light grey cloud amid the azure and cotton ball sky. I checked my weather radar app. Nothing. There were no visible signs of rain in any compass direction. Strange, I thought.  I wiped off the seat, shook the remaining water off the soaked tank bag (and put on its’ now unnecessary rain cover), put on my mesh jacket, helmet, gloves, and headed toward home in the opposite direction to the light grey cloud.

I was on the lookout for a fast moving grey cloud, but there were none visible. I rounded one of my favorite long sweepers, and a few splats hit the windshield. Big wet splats as if they came from raindrops in some land of the giants out of all proportion to planet earth. Before I could even fully assess my options, there was a torrent of splats. A full downpour while in full sun and with good visibility. The visor fogged, and I was soaked within half a minute. There were no options for shelter anyway, so the choices were to stop and stand in the open to get further soaked, or ride on to get further soaked. I took my mostly wet leather gloves off, and rode on, still looking for the cloud that could produce such a deluge. A minute later, it ended. There was a pretty well-defined line in the road where you emerged from the sunny waterfall and into sunny dry road. No change in sky, no discernible change in temperature, just a Hollywood-like transition. I looked back in disbelief, but there was not much to see. It should have looked like a waterfall, but it didn’t. The whole episode was less than two minutes.

Even in warm temperatures, soaking wet clothes are cold. Denim in particular has qualities which allow it to absorb 19.7 times its weight in water, and to simultaneously cool and stiffen. A mesh jacket allows the rain and cold to pass through to the layer against your skin. Brilliant. You try to minimize movement in order to prevent new cold wet areas from touching warm skin. It is futile, particularly on a motorcycle where everything seems to function as a funnel toward the area you would least like to be wet and cold. The fact that it is warm and the air begins to partially dry areas that you are least concerned about being wet and cold, makes it worse. Give me a good solid long-lasting downpour where everything remains soaked. 7.3 miles is a long way in these conditions, but eventually the destination is reached. You slowly climb from the machine as if you are in a full body cast, and quickly liberate yourself from the clothing.

10 minutes later, warm and dry, I looked up at the sky. The same brilliant azure now with fewer white puffy clouds. I consider myself a lifelong learner, and I like to find the lesson in every experience. The toughest part about this soaking is that, try as I might, I could not at first find any lessons to be learned. I was not about to carry full luggage and rain gear for every 1 hour joy ride with no weather indicated. I did not gain some insight about reading a summer sky. I would not change anything on the motorcycle. I finally concluded then, that the lesson was about predictability. Even as a motorcyclist where you accept some elevated level of unpredictability, we like predictability. Despite being somewhat non-conformist, we like rules. Even in a pastime driven by passion, we like logic.

The lesson is that certainty only applies a certain percentage of the time.