Passes & Canyons Blog

My Kawi has been getting wet quite frequently of late.

An appropriate biker quote at the end of this post would be, “If you don’t ride in the rain, you don’t ride.” I’ve already used that, though, so we’ll just mention it here.

I’ve done a lot of riding in the rain recently, most particularly yesterday. Judy and I had been up in Eagle over the weekend, doing some riding with Willie and Jungle and others as part of a tour they were running. As you may recall, Willie runs Ball O’ String Custom Adventure Tours and when she has only one paying customer on a particular tour, she invites friends along to make a larger, more fun group. Of course we pay our own way.

We went up on Friday, had a couple good days of riding Saturday and Sunday, and then when Monday morning dawned we found the sky grey and dripping. No problem, we have good rain gear.

As we layered the stuff on, I offered Judy my rubber booties because she just had hiking boots, while my riding boots are pretty water-resistant all on their own. Jungle had a pair of neoprene gloves–the stuff they make wet-suits out of–that are too small for him but fit me perfectly, so I also gave Judy my rubber mittens. She stood there like a little kid getting all prepared by Mom to go play in the snow and when we were done there was no way any moisture was going to reach her other than the occasional drops that do get in under your helmet.

We took off and quickly ran into what proved to be the worst of the storm. Just the day before, between Eagle and Vail, we had seen a car that had apparently hydroplaned into the guard rail, and the ruts in the road in the car tire tracks were filled with water. Now here we were on that same stretch of road with those same ruts filled with water again. Yes, I was nervous. I stuck as best I could to the crown of the road but that’s not always possible. I tip my hat to the people who design tires for doing their job well. We had no problems.

Heading up over Vail Pass it was cold and colder. It doesn’t matter that this is August, when you get up over 10,000 feet it’s cooler than at lower elevations. Once we got over the top, though, I felt good knowing that was the worst we would be encountering. The rain continued to just past Georgetown and then the sky cleared a bit. Fortunately, it didn’t actually get warm until we were in the city, or else we’d have been stopping alongside the road to peel all this gear off.

Along the way I couldn’t help but wonder about Tom and Marsha, the paying customers we had been riding with, who I knew were also headed back to Denver. I knew Tom had good rain gear but as far as I was aware, neither of them had much to wear for warmth. Plus, they only had half helmets that Mile High Harley-Davidson had supplied to them. I couldn’t help but suspect the ride was going to be much more unpleasant for them than for us. And I did hear from Willie today that they got there safely but, yes, they got very cold.

So if there’s anyone out there reading this who is planning a riding trip to Colorado, this is why this site has the Good to Know page. It opens with this paragraph:

If you’re coming to ride Colorado’s passes and canyons in the summer you may think you won’t need warm clothing. You would be wrong. With some passes higher than 12,000 feet, it is not unusual to run into temperatures in the 40s even in August. Snow is not out of the question. Be sure to bring all your winter gear: gloves, electric vest, leather chaps, whatever.

Believe it.

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