Well, actually, I do tend to avoid riding in rain or snow. They’re both wet, both slippery and snow in particular is flipping well cold. But a misty moisty morning, when cloudy is the weather? Hell, I’ll ride in that. Also, in winter, when gloom of night starts around lunchtime, I’ll ride in that, too. (Oh, the joys of reactive lenses. They make all these variable conditions much less off-putting).
Mist may be cold, and wet, and damaging to visibility, but it doesn’t sting your face or drown your visor the way rain does. Unfortunately, it also makes the roads wet and slippery, but without the spray that, in about 5 minutes, completely undoes the hour spent cleaning the bike.
I did all this yesterday, taking the bike for a run down to Denbies vineyard in Surrey. I am not enough of an Evel Knievel to try B-roads like Box Hill (as lovely as they are) in those conditions. Apart from anything else, after the Olympics, Box Hill is even more covered in cyclists than it used to be and I’d rather not hit them. They scratch my paintwork.
By the time we got to the vineyard, coffee was in order, if only to hold the nice warm cup in my frozen hands. Followed by a tour and wine-tasting and the discovery that my favourite wines can’t be English, because the requisite grapes need a damn sight more sun and heat than we tend to get here. Both of which I’d like to order up for riding in, but I somehow doubt that would work. So for now, while rain and snow may stop me, neither fog nor gloom of night will stay this biker from getting out there. Even in a dismal English January.
