Home / Uncategorized / you can’t ride because the weather is sucking…

you can’t ride because the weather is sucking…

…but not here in Mexas, I mean Texas. It was 85 and partly cloudy in Austin today. Sometimes from my window it looked as if it was 55 Fahrenheit outside, but I felt as if I was back in Honolulu when the door opened and I breathed in the warm, moist air.

For some of you, it’s not as fun to ride any more. I’ve ridden a 1999 Honda Shadow ACE in Northern Cali winter rain falling so hard I couldn’t see twenty feet in front of me as I barreled down an East Bay freeway to meet a freelance client about their design project. The water on the road was three inches high and the wind was against me. I kept it around 45 mph (72 kph). I didn’t have chaps. My face stung like a thousand Chinese pellet tortures and was beet red when I arrived.

“Hi. I’m here to create a killer poster for your event and may I please have a towel?”

If you live where it snows, I’ve ridden winters in Montana from Laurel to Billings on I-90 at 60 mph (97 kph) on roads with ice patches. It was less than 20 degrees (-7 Celcius). Wind chill at 60 was well below zero. No fun.

Please send bikerMetric photos of you riding in the rain and/or snow. It’s a good way to raise your street cred, ********.

That sub-zero day Levi’s covered my legs and thermal long johns were underneath. Cowboy boots were on me feets. No electric socks or anything fancy. My army jacket and gray construction laborer gloves covered my cracked flesh. This was way before there was a helmet law anywhere. I don’t know what was on my head but I remember as my body involuntarily shook at my destination that I was cold and worried about frostbite and my ears falling off. My tongue was stuck to the inside of my teeth when I arrived at the music shop in Billings, 25 miles away from our trailer home and modest mink ranch, to buy guitar strings.

Dean Markley Jazz strings, please.”

Then I rode back home.

If I still lived in climates like that, there is no way I’d be riding in it every day like I used to. I’d have my motorbike in the garage with oil drained and plugs out. in my head right now i’d be thinking about cool stuff to do to it before spring.

Sound familiar?





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5 comments

  1. cool photo, that one in the rain… I rode with a few buddies in a terrible hail-storm we all had dual-purpose machines (xt,dr…). you can understand why we have no photos …. we just ran away into a small bar, took all our clothes off (kept the underwear though) and set there with drinks until storm passed and clothes got dry over th fireplace.

  2. great story, man! that’s what it’s all about. thanks.

  3. yeah…. p.s. forgot to mention, the storm caught us after riding a road full of snow. the horror ….

  4. Hey man! Did you change something? I’m a Mac user. Whether I’m using Safari or Firefox many images do not post and both platforms are currently up to date. Is it on my end?

  5. all is good for now m dew. i caused some trouble and got bikerMetric knocked off for a while as it seems calling for the killing of royalty and bankers is frowned upon in the worldwide corporate community. from what i can tell, a lot of readers made a stink on facebook and probably contacted blogger/google. after a couple of days everything came back online and i was once again allowed tolog into my account. i am forever thankful to you all.

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