{"id":25315,"date":"2024-02-06T08:56:41","date_gmt":"2024-02-06T16:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=25315"},"modified":"2024-02-06T08:56:41","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T16:56:41","slug":"the-wayback-machine-riding-in-the-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2024\/02\/06\/the-wayback-machine-riding-in-the-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wayback Machine:  Riding in the Rain"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6>By Joe Berk<\/h6>\n<p>I thought I would repost a blog I wrote in 2019 about riding in the rain.\u00a0 It&#8217;s been raining nonstop here in So Cal for days.\u00a0 \u00a0When I say nonstop, that&#8217;s what I mean.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I&#8217;m staying warm and cozy with a cup of coffee here in my home, but looking out the window, I&#8217;m reminded of past rides in the rain&#8230;and with that intro, here&#8217;s our previous blog.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SaHou7SQHw0\" width=\"716\" height=\"403\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>So I\u2019m sitting here at the computer, enjoying a hot cup of coffee, looking out the window, and I\u2019m thinking about what it\u2019s like to ride in the rain. We\u2019ve all had those rides. Those memories stick in my mind. I remember every one of those rides like they happened yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201870s, and we didn\u2019t call them adventure rides back then. They were just motorcycle rides. I was on a \u201971 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\u2019t cold, but it sure was wet. We were soaked the entire day. Wouldn\u2019t trade a minute of it. It was a great ride.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s Eve. Wouldn\u2019t trade a second of it.<\/p>\n<p>Riding with Marty on the \u201905 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.\u00a0 It wasn&#8217;t a drizzle.\u00a0 It was a downpour, just like you see in the video above.\u00a0 I remember it vividly, and I wouldn\u2019t trade it for anything.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t trade a second of it for anything else.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d 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\u2019s what it was like, and I loved every mile of that ride. I wouldn\u2019t trade it for anything else on the planet.<\/p>\n<p>You might be wondering&#8230;why no photos? Well, the simple truth is that my cameras on each trip were tightly wrapped in plastic bags, and I wasn\u2019t about to break them out in the rain. That\u2019s 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\u2019re not using them, and they work great for keeping stuff dry when you ride in the rain.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Never miss an ExNotes blog:<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<style>\r\n        .wpedon-container .wpedon-select,\r\n        .wpedon-container .wpedon-input {\r\n            width: 171px;\r\n            min-width: 171px;\r\n            max-width: 171px;\r\n        }\r\n    <\/style><div class='wpedon-container wpedon-align-center'><form target='_blank' action='https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/cgi-bin\/webscr' method='post' class='wpedon-form'><input type='hidden' name='cmd' value='_donations' \/><input type='hidden' name='business' value='ExNotes@ExhaustNotes.us' \/><input type='hidden' name='currency_code' value='USD' \/><input type='hidden' name='notify_url' value='https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-admin\/admin-post.php?action=add_wpedon_button_ipn'><input type='hidden' name='lc' value='en_US'><input type='hidden' name='bn' value='WPPlugin_SP'><input type='hidden' name='return' value='' \/><input type='hidden' name='cancel_return' value='' \/><input class='wpedon_paypalbuttonimage' type='image' src='https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/en_US\/i\/btn\/btn_donateCC_LG.gif' border='0' name='submit' alt='Make your payments with PayPal. It is free, secure, effective.' style='border: none;'><img alt='' border='0' style='border:none;display:none;' src='https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/en_US\/i\/scr\/pixel.gif' width='1' height='1'><input type='hidden' name='amount' id='amount_d42876ae6ee9d97f9962a83026d109a3' value='' \/><input type='hidden' name='price' id='price_d42876ae6ee9d97f9962a83026d109a3' value='' \/><input type='hidden' name='item_number' value='' \/><input type='hidden' name='item_name' value='' \/><input type='hidden' name='name' value='' \/><input type='hidden' name='custom' value='23447'><input type='hidden' name='no_shipping' value='1'><input type='hidden' name='no_note' value='0'><input type='hidden' name='currency_code' value='USD'><\/form><\/div>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Don&#8217;t forget: Visit our advertisers!<\/span><\/h3>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.britishmotorcyclegear.com\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-23940 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/BritishMotorcycleGear400.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/BritishMotorcycleGear400.jpg 400w, https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/BritishMotorcycleGear400-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/BritishMotorcycleGear400-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 85vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Joe Berk I thought I would repost a blog I wrote in 2019 about riding in the rain.\u00a0 It&#8217;s been raining nonstop here in So Cal for days.\u00a0 \u00a0When I say nonstop, that&#8217;s what I mean.\u00a0 Ordinarily when you get caught in the rain, it lasts for a while and then stops, and then &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2024\/02\/06\/the-wayback-machine-riding-in-the-rain\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Wayback Machine:  Riding in the Rain&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[63,72,96,89],"tags":[3,162,502,466],"class_list":["post-25315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baja","category-china","category-feel-good-stuff","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","tag-baja","tag-china","tag-riding-in-the-rain","tag-three-flags-classic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25316,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25315\/revisions\/25316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}