Glad I took the heavy bike out today

Actu­al­ly, I did it on pur­pose. I knew there was a chance it might rain, and I thought that if I was gonna get caught rid­ing home in the rain, I’d rather ride the heavy, sta­ble, upright bike with the elec­tric hand­warm­ers (one of which actu­al­ly works) than the beast with 120 horse­pow­er on a hair­trig­ger, the steep steer­ing angle, and the brakes capa­ble of throw­ing me for­ward over the handlebars.

Well, sure enough it rained tonight. I wait­ed for a break in the rain, but left at exact­ly the wrong time. A lit­tle way up 101, the rain start­ed to get heavy, and the rain­drops got big­ger and big­ger in the head­light. As I start­ed to feel the impacts hit my leather, I real­ized: that’s not rain. It was chilly, but not real­ly cold, so I assume that it had to be hail, not sleet, but it was enough to make me won­der if I should do some­thing more than slow down, like pull over and stop, or even just get off at the next exit and find a din­er for a cup of some hot beverage.

It got fright­en­ing when the pre­cip­i­ta­tion start­ed to col­lect. The free­way was still all wet, not frozen, but the frozen pel­lets were falling faster than they’d melt. I start­ed to won­der if it was real­ly smart to con­tin­ue rid­ing on a road­way cov­ered with wet ice marbles.

I did­n’t rel­ish the idea of sit­ting at the side of the free­way, and I was between exits, so I just took it as easy as I could, no sud­den changes, about 40mph on a road I’d nor­mal­ly ride at 80. The four-wheeled traf­fic around me was keep­ing pace with me over in the slow lane, and the folks mov­ing at real high­way speeds in the fast lane were few and far enough away for me not to wor­ry about them.

Ha! Who would have thought I’d get my first chance to ride in a hail­storm here in the Bay Area? Appar­ent­ly Rte 17 was closed today due to snow. Not hard to believe; last week­end I saw snow at the “Four Cor­ners” inter­sec­tion of Sky­line Boule­vard and Big Basin Way. It was the sort of filthy series of snow clumps that tena­cious­ly refuse to melt at the side of the road in the spring­time, in parts of the world that have real win­ters. Rows of rem­nants of snow­drifts no larg­er than bowl­ing balls.

Well, I made it home and I’m about to crawl in under the elec­tric blan­ket. The bikes are all out under their cov­ers and all is well with the world.