Showing posts with label bike rain gear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bike rain gear. Show all posts

30 July 2015

Riding Through Five-Minute Monsoons

The sky is an iron-gray pall.   Every hour or so, curtains of rain fall from it for about five minutes.  Then it disappears, as if it were merely a hologram and once again the gray sky looms for another hour.

If you happen to be outside when the rain falls, you will get soaked.  Then, when the rain stops, you will ride or walk around sheathed by your wet clothes--if, of course, you didn't have rain gear.

I think now of times I made deliveries on days like this when I was a messenger.  The funny thing was that I could walk into some of the swankest buildings and stuffiest offices, soaked to my skin, and people in suits that cost more than I made in a month didn't blink an eye.  Sometimes they would even offer me a cup of coffee.  

(Once, when I made a delivery at the Pierre Hotel, someone--a manager, I presume--offered me lunch.  I took him up on it and promised that if I ever needed to stay in a hotel in New York, I would not consider any other.  I don't think he held me to it.)

I pedaled and delivered in the most soaking of downpours, against winds magnified in the concrete canyons of Wall Street and Midtown, and with needles of sleet stinging my face. And, yes, in the snow.

But I had nothing on these folks in Mumbai, India:


For that matter, I don't think the US Postal Service does, either. Nor did the US Postal Team:


Those guys were in Indonesia. Isn't it funny that the folks in the background, under an umbrella, don't seem as submerged as the guys on bikes.

When rain comes suddenly and you don't have rain gear, you can do one of three things:  You can wait it out.  You can ride it and get wet.  Or you can improvise:


Today I took a brief ride and packed my foldable rain slicker.  And, yes, I rode through two five-minute monsoons.

04 October 2012

The Ultimate Rain Gear?

Rain began to fall just as I locked my bike to one of the campus bike racks.

It seems that all week, I have been playing chicken with the rain.  The other day, I ran headlong into a line of showers when I took the Trek on its first commute ride.  At least, today I was riding Arielle, with her full fenders and flap.

Days like this get me to thinking about what might be the best gear for biking in the rain.  Some might say I found it while web-surfing when I should have been doing other things:

From: Speed Studio Designs





Hmm...I guess it's not bad if you're not worried about aerodynamics.  Then again, why would you be?

When I first saw the illustration, I thought someone had crossed a motor scooter with a golf cart.  Come to think of it, someone may have done just that.  Or, if no one has, I may have given someone a ridiculous idea.

Judging from the illustration, the bike shield looks only slightly larger than my first helmet!