RIDER IN THE RAIN: Keeping dry, but is it not for everybody...?
Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2024 5:17 pm
There was a time, long ago when touring cyclists were not so much concerned about getting drenched in a sudden downpour. Camp was but only a couple of kilometres distant (or so sayeth the leader...). Alas, the pace was plodding, the daylight was dying, the corrugated road shaking everything to bits, and the rain was coming down in buckets interspersed with hail. Gimme shelter!!
And so, finding the nearest verandah, large tree or better still, a Youth Hostel with a roaring fire took priority of putting any rain protection on. But still history records that we continued to be the riders in the rain shunning the idea of keeping dry.
And roadies?
Well, today there were a few on the very ordinary Torquay coffee run, and amazingly, they were all getting very wet!
NO jackets to be seen at all (but plenty with gloves (as I had) and over-booties. And head-down grimmaces.
Item? I was the only one on the forward and back ride wearing a spray jacket!
I bought it yesterday afternoon, a kind of foretelling that it 'might just come in handy one day'. Ah, you don't say...
That day was today.
From stepping out the door squeaky clean and shiny to ... coming home splattered with mud and gunk, front and rear, all over helmet, arms, face and glasses. The noyce Castelli spray jacket, once peeled off needed a double-strength wash, along with the Castelli Rosa Corsa Infinium vest beneath — the rear wheel had gleefully targeted my bum and the centreline of my back, continuing its march north up and over the top of my helmet, at which point it was met by the spray coming off the front wheel. With roadworks elsewhere screwing my usual safe route (and will continue so until 25th August). I rode through a patently filthy construction zone, the road a ghastly mess of thin, slimy mud and dirt whipped and dumped by the passage of hundreds of trucks (the spray thrown up by their many wheels adding to my general appearance of looking like a yellow-tinted turd on wheels). The road was only wet on the final approach to Torquay, but my hour of glamour and gloss in the (very brief) sun was nowt but a vanished memory.
"You're filthy today!", glowered the barista through his aureole of steam, as Burberry-cosseted customers beside me gave me epically scornful side-eyes. "Wee bit o' rising damp...". I sat outside. In the rain.
Here is the question. Do roadies consider it somehow unfashionable — dare I say it, even daggy, to ride in the rain, without any protection? Is there a secret society code of "get wet no matter what!"? Or is there a spray jacket (or a poncho?) tucked into some tiny inconspicuous place, in the event that a shower turns into a downpour and the Show.Must.Stop?
It might read as a story in search of a headline. But really, I'm curious to know why rain protection appears so skint among roadies, even those in peletons, in very drack conditions.
And so, finding the nearest verandah, large tree or better still, a Youth Hostel with a roaring fire took priority of putting any rain protection on. But still history records that we continued to be the riders in the rain shunning the idea of keeping dry.
And roadies?
Well, today there were a few on the very ordinary Torquay coffee run, and amazingly, they were all getting very wet!
NO jackets to be seen at all (but plenty with gloves (as I had) and over-booties. And head-down grimmaces.
Item? I was the only one on the forward and back ride wearing a spray jacket!
I bought it yesterday afternoon, a kind of foretelling that it 'might just come in handy one day'. Ah, you don't say...
That day was today.
From stepping out the door squeaky clean and shiny to ... coming home splattered with mud and gunk, front and rear, all over helmet, arms, face and glasses. The noyce Castelli spray jacket, once peeled off needed a double-strength wash, along with the Castelli Rosa Corsa Infinium vest beneath — the rear wheel had gleefully targeted my bum and the centreline of my back, continuing its march north up and over the top of my helmet, at which point it was met by the spray coming off the front wheel. With roadworks elsewhere screwing my usual safe route (and will continue so until 25th August). I rode through a patently filthy construction zone, the road a ghastly mess of thin, slimy mud and dirt whipped and dumped by the passage of hundreds of trucks (the spray thrown up by their many wheels adding to my general appearance of looking like a yellow-tinted turd on wheels). The road was only wet on the final approach to Torquay, but my hour of glamour and gloss in the (very brief) sun was nowt but a vanished memory.
"You're filthy today!", glowered the barista through his aureole of steam, as Burberry-cosseted customers beside me gave me epically scornful side-eyes. "Wee bit o' rising damp...". I sat outside. In the rain.
Here is the question. Do roadies consider it somehow unfashionable — dare I say it, even daggy, to ride in the rain, without any protection? Is there a secret society code of "get wet no matter what!"? Or is there a spray jacket (or a poncho?) tucked into some tiny inconspicuous place, in the event that a shower turns into a downpour and the Show.Must.Stop?
It might read as a story in search of a headline. But really, I'm curious to know why rain protection appears so skint among roadies, even those in peletons, in very drack conditions.
