By Joe Berk
I thought I would repost a blog I wrote in 2019 about riding in the rain. It’s been raining nonstop here in So Cal for days. When I say nonstop, that’s what I mean. Ordinarily when you get caught in the rain, it lasts for a while and then stops, and then maybe starts again. With this atmospheric river (the meteorological term) we are experiencing, it has literally been constant rain. I’m staying warm and cozy with a cup of coffee here in my home, but looking out the window, I’m reminded of past rides in the rain…and with that intro, here’s our previous blog.
Wow, it has been pouring here for the last week, with little respite other than this past Sunday. Sunday was nice. Every other day this week and the tail end of last week has been nonstop rain. Big time. Buckets full. And my iPhone just started buzzing with a flash flood warning for this area. Wow again.
So I’m sitting here at the computer, enjoying a hot cup of coffee, looking out the window, and I’m thinking about what it’s like to ride in the rain. We’ve all had those rides. Those memories stick in my mind. I remember every one of those rides like they happened yesterday.
The first was the return leg of my first international motorcycle foray, when good buddy Keith Hediger and I rode up to Montreal and back. That was in the early ‘70s, and we didn’t call them adventure rides back then. They were just motorcycle rides. I was on a ’71 CB750 and Keith was on a Kawi 500cc triple. It rained the entire length of Vermont at about the same intensity you see in the video above. We had no rain gear. It wasn’t cold, but it sure was wet. We were soaked the entire day. Wouldn’t trade a minute of it. It was a great ride.
Another time was on the second ride I ever did in Baja with good buddy Baja John. It was pouring when we left at 4:00 a.m., and it didn’t let up for the entire day. I was on a Harley then, and we finally stopped somewhere around Colonet to checked into a cheap Baja hotel (a somewhat redundant term, which is becoming less redundant as Baja’s march in to the 21st century unfortunately continues). Leather, I found out on that trip, makes for lousy rain gear. I went hypothermic, and I had the shakes until 4:00 the following morning. It made for a good story, and the rest of that trip was epic. Down to Cabo, back up to La Paz, on the overnight ferry over to Mazatlan, out to Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara, back up to Nogales, and a thousand-mile one-day dash to make it home on New Year’s Eve. Wouldn’t trade a second of it.
Riding with Marty on the ’05 Three Flags Classic, we were caught in a downpour the second day out as we rode along the Dolores River in Colorado. It was a magnificent ride, with Marty on his K1200RS and me on my 1200cc Daytona. It wasn’t a drizzle. It was a downpour, just like you see in the video above. I remember it vividly, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Colombia had lots of rain, but it only hit us hard on the very first day. It was raining hard that first morning as we rode out of Medellin and into the Andes early on that fine Colombian morning, but it lightened up by breakfast. I had real rain gear and the only issues were visibility and passing 22-wheelers on blind curves, as my Colombian riders did with gleeful abandon. Exciting times. But good times, and certainly ones I remember. Colombia was an adventure for the ages. I wouldn’t trade a second of it for anything else.
I’d have to say the heaviest rains I ever rode through were in China, where it rains a lot. It probably rained 25% of the time on that trip, and the first few days were the worst. Imagine riding up into the Tibetan Plateau, in the dark, on dirt roads, in rain way heavier than what you see in the video above. That’s what it was like, and I loved every mile of that ride. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else on the planet.
You might be wondering…why no photos? Well, the simple truth is that my cameras on each trip were tightly wrapped in plastic bags, and I wasn’t about to break them out in the rain. That’s something I guess I forgot to mention in my earlier blog about what to bring on a Baja trip: Garbage bags. They take up almost no space when you’re not using them, and they work great for keeping stuff dry when you ride in the rain.
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One of the rides I always remember was in the pouring rain too, but in England, from Trowbridge to Salisbury on a 650cc Triumph Tiher that someone (not me, I promise) had shoe-horned into a chromed Norton Slimline frame, then stuck high bars and VW Beetle exhaust silencers rammed into the headers on a curbstone, then covered with slash-cut end pipes. Ok, I confess to doing that part.
I had a leather jacket (don’t, for the reasons in the story, waxed cotton overtrousers over Levi’s (that worked) and Metropolitan police motorcycle boots nearly up to my knees with a zip up the back and a strap at the heel and the top. They didn’t do much to keep water out because the zip never worked properly, but a supermarket plastic bag over my socks inside the boots provided what was then a pretty darned hi-tech solution.
But ah, the memorable part! Coming out of a 90-degree left-hander for the last mile-long straight before I got to the village my girlfriend lived in (you know, the one with the long hair and the pony-skin coat and the jump-suit she wore everywhere, whose parents were away. I bet you met her too…) my back wheel clipped a steel man-hole cover or a drain or something. Whatever it actually was I never found out, because the next minute was dedicated to avoiding never finding anything out ever again. The back wheel spat itself out to the right. Corrected. Ok, the back wheel’s going left now. Corrected. The thing was fishtailing all over the road and I was correcting it or it was correcting itself so fast there wasn’t time to think of anything except 1) Do not even think about touching the brakes or you’ll die and 2) roll off the throttle or you’ll die.
And as suddenly as it had gone, the back wheel started behaving, the last mile and a bit passed uneventfully, the rain stopped, the coffee was on and so far as I recall, her parents were out as well.
Awesome, Carl. One of the best comments ever, and thanks for posting it.
About that girl you mention…you wouldn’t still have her phone number, would you?
Terrible rides in the rain . Me and a guy I met in the road headed to Canada on our Harley’s from Niagara Falls. Rain all the way . But worse a heavy fog where one could barely see a tail lite in front of you . You had to follow so close to see that no way one could stop I’d needed.
And it got worse . This was across sone never ending bridge . And my bike is bungued with sleeping bags etc. the wind was insane. Blowing sideways. I really didn’t think I could make it. I just kept the shovelhead in a low gear and just prayed . We both made it . But my nerves were shot .
I know that feeling. One time in Baja the fog got so bad I couldn’t see the ground below me. I very slowly decelerated and got well off the road until it lifted. Bad fog is really, really bad.
Yeah! And imagine the cross wind on this miles long bridge . I don’t know whst we crossing actually , I couldn’t see. Going across whatever , Lake Erie? Idk. The only good thing is it was too foggy to look down .
As u can see from my earlier poor typing , it still shakes me a bit .
The Bridge of the Gods (crosses the Columbia River) is another one that is a bit scary to get across. It has one of those mesh road surfaces. On a motorcycle, if you look down it doesn’t look like there is anything between you and the river below. One of my favorite spots in the world.
Several years back when I was a motorcycle messenger I had to do a run in a driving LA/Pacific dumpster rain storm. Went from Inglewood to Venice to Chatsworth then to Downtown LA and on to Compton and back home to Inglewood. All on LA freeways with spun out cars and people not looking for bikes in a driving rain storm. All on a Honda 350/4 that had an extremely bad front brake (pads hydroplaned in the wet) and the grips would get water under them and get loose. Yeah. That was a day. When I got home I just took off my clothes and jumped in a very hot shower for as long as the hot water lasted.
It’s amazing how vivid our memories are when we recall riding in the rain. Thanks for commenting, Bob.
If my rain suit is working I enjoy riding in the rain. Not in traffic though.
Most of the time my rain suit wasn’t working…