Worst weather you have ridden in

[the Ferret]

Thought about this subject for a thread on this morning's ride as I was being pelted with a light rain. If you ride a motorcycle much you are going to have to ride in some pretty crummy conditions. It could be rain, or heat or cold or snow. Touring for as many years as I have I could relate stories about every climatic condition, but I think the worst has been rain.

2 times I have ridden in rain so hard and so long it flat wore me out.

First time my wife and I were on a tour to New England. Coming home as we entered Massachusetts it started raining. We quickly pulled over on a bridge overpass and donned rain gear. Then it really started raining hard and continued to do so and was still raining hard when we reached our hotel room in Catskill, New York. Even though we were wearing rain gear we were soaked to the bone and our hotel room looked like a Chinese laundry with clothes laid out on every surface drying. We had never been that wet before.

The next time was on a fall men's trip to the U.P of Michigan. We had stayed in a hotel in St Ignace. When we woke up it was raining really hard. No choice we had to ride and it would be 5 or 6 that night before we would get a room in Dundee, Mich on the Ohio border that evening. Our itinerary took us over the Tunnel of Trees road, a world famous motorcycling road, but the weather was so bad, with limbs and leaves littering the road and deep puddles we rode this great rode at 20 mph. Again it rained so hard it was hard to see the bike ahead of you. We got in the middle lane and just stayed there all the way down I-75. You can hunker down on a bike but you can't hide anywhere. Rain even drips inside the shield on your full face helmet, and you will find out if the head air vents work as water works it's way in if you forget to close them first. Again everything was soaked thru. We used the hand dryers in rest areas and hair dryers at the hotel to try and dry our " waterproof" gloves and boots for the next days ride to home, which thankfully was dry.

I know it's only water, but it can make you pretty miserable when there is lots of it coming down and you are on a motorcycle.

So what is the worst weather you have ridden in?

[flynrider]

Funny you should mention this. Just last week I was riding over Wolf Creek Pass in CO. The skies were getting dark, so I pulled over at the summit and donned my rain gear. Not a mile later I started getting pelted with marble sized hail. Since the road wound down the mountain in numerous switchbacks, I basically stayed right under the hail storm for about nine miles. I was only moving about 40 mph, but without a windshield, it was like getting perpetually shot with paintballs for 10 min. The racket in my helmet only made the experience more miserable.

Prior to that my worst weather ride was in a tropical downpour enroute to Guaymas, Mexico. I was following my family who were up ahead in a Suburban. The rain was hitting the road so hard you couldn't actually see the road anymore. I could just see the top of the Suburban, so I just kept following it. It seemed like there was more water than air in the atmosphere around me. My sister looking out the back window of the Suburban said all she could see was the top of my helmet. It lasted about a half hour. and even though I was wearing excellent rain gear, I was totally soaked as were all my clothes in supposedly waterproof bags. It was like I'd ridden into a pool.

[Novice_imp]

I would say the worst weather was snow. I had a KLR and foolishly thought it could be ridden on the street in the snow. It was a short ride.

[Randy B]

I had to get money and the only way I could do that was to ride to the truckstop to cash a company check (I was driving a truck over the road in 1996). I didn't have the truck and my car didn't have a rear end in it at the time so the bike was my only option.
BTW this was February in Chicago. It was all of 20° out and I was wearing just about every piece of clothing I could get onto my body, and it still wasn't enough. I got on the NW tollway (I-90) and rode the 35 miles I needed to at speed. I can only imagine what the people around me were thinking.
I was a human popsicle when I got home. I think I sat at the truckstop for 45 minutes before I got the nerve up to get back out there. That was COLD!

[Cormanus]

Blimey, Ferret, that's a hard call. I can think of a number and they all involve rain or cold or both.

The most recent was with Pterodactyl and Jalalski on the way to Philip Island last year. I wrote about it [url=http://cb1100forum.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=4453&pid=66988#pid66988]here, but I didn't detail how relentless the rain was and how completely and utterly soaked I was by the end of the afternoon. I remember we stopped for a pie and a cup of tea at Braidwood and I realised my boots were full or water. I also knew we had a way to go and the only thing to be done was to go out there again in the pouring rain and get on with it.

Before that I remember riding home 50 kms or so through a Queensland summer downpour. Flynrider's excellent description of his ride in the rain sums up very well what it was like.

Funny you should mention this. Just last week I was riding over Wolf Creek Pass in CO. The skies were getting dark, so I pulled over at the summit and donned my rain gear. Not a mile later I started getting pelted with marble sized hail. Since the road wound down the mountain in numerous switchbacks, I basically stayed right under the hail storm for about nine miles. I was only moving about 40 mph, but without a windshield, it was like getting perpetually shot with paintballs for 10 min. The racket in my helmet only made the experience more miserable.

Prior to that my worst weather ride was in a tropical downpour enroute to Guaymas, Mexico. I was following my family who were up ahead in a Suburban. The rain was hitting the road so hard you couldn't actually see the road anymore. I could just see the top of the Suburban, so I just kept following it. It seemed like there was more water than air in the atmosphere around me. My sister looking out the back window of the Suburban said all she could see was the top of my helmet. It lasted about a half hour. and even though I was wearing excellent rain gear, I was totally soaked as were all my clothes in supposedly waterproof bags. It was like I'd ridden into a pool.

Mercifully, on neither of those occasions was it really cold.

[ride4now_imp]

I rode my Harley from Atlanta to Milwaukee a few summers ago... I left in the rain, and rode all day to just north of St Louis in the rain. And going over the mountain south of Nashville was awful... highway speeds, a bunch of high speed sweepers, lots of heavy rain, all while surrounded by semi's. Just awful. Another time I was in Florida on a trip back from Atlanta, I was in rain so hard that the bike started running rough. At one point just off the interstate, at a light, I thought it would stall because of the rain. I hate riding in the rain. and will not venture out if I KNOW rain is coming. Besides, unless I'm on the KLR, I'd have to clean the bike again. That's not fun either.

[emptysea]

Just encountered my worst riding weather to date about two weeks ago. Details in a forthcoming Seat Time report, but it was the combination of rain, riding in a group, and the type and lack of familiarity with the road that contributed to it getting the "worst" label.

[redbirds_imp]

In 1974 I rode the Blue Ridge Parkway in a torrential rain from Ashe County, NC to Cherokee. It was November and cold as well. As the BRP climbed near Mt. Mitchell, the road started icing and following the tire tracks of a car at my front saved my bacon. The icing stopped as I came down to a lower part of the BRP but the rain kept on unabated to Cherokee and a nice warm hotel room. My rain gear helped but I still got soaked. The cold was the worst and I was near hypothermia by afternoon.

In 2007, Pam and I were riding back from the South Carolina mountains when we got caught up in a low pressure system that came in unexpectedly. We rode for 326 miles (she counted them) in a tropical system downpour to home where we had to negotiate 1 mile of very muddy road to the house. She did fine on her V-strom but my ST1300 was a handful. ST1300's are not nice in mud I learned.

[DJS_imp]

[url=http://smg.photobucket.com/user/djs_151/media/bug%20bash%209%20-%202012/100_2456.jpg.html]
i've ridden in rain many many times.
a few were the hard to see in front of you kind.
i've also ridden in snow a few times, (snow falling but nothing on the ground)
i have ridden during heat waves where i would keep a damp shirt in the freezer and put it on for my commute to work under my mesh jacket.

never rode in hail.

[drodg33]

Back in about 2007 I was riding my R1200RT back from a conference in Wisconsin to my home in Indiana . I got caught in a horrible thunder storm that I finally stopped under a Viaduct on the highway to rest. I tried following the path of semis in front of me and finally gave up. I think over the course of multiple hours I stopped about three times. On a motorcycle like the RT I was able to stay dry underneath my Aerostitch jacket and pants. My employees make fun of my Aerostitch pants and jacket but you know they really are good stuff! Anyhow the storm scared the daylights out of me but I did make home in one piece.