Episode 60: Riding in the Rain - Preparation and Acceptance

While preparing every Episode for this podcast, I make an effort to refresh my memory on how I feel when I’m out on my bike.  Since I had determined that I would call this episode, Riding in the Rain, well then, I needed to ride in the rain!  

So this afternoon the timing was perfect.  Here in Colorado, most afternoons or evenings, a rainstorm will likely come through.  I saw on the weather radar that 30 miles from my home, there was a storm brewing.  So, for you, for my listening audience, I prepared for my ride, I confirmed that I had all of my rain gear, hopped on my Triumph Bonneville, and rode toward it.  

The sky turned from sunny to cloudy to almost like dusk, even though the sun would not set for another couple of hours.  I could see the beam of my headlight on the road.  The temperature dropped at least 10 degrees.  One giant raindrop smacked my full face helmet, quickly followed by another, then another, then a bunch.  

The wind started gusting and now the rain fell sideways as my bike had to lean into that northwest wind.  Inside my helmet though, all was well.  Comfortable and dry inside my waterproof motorcycle jacket, gloves, pants and boots, I could not have been happier.  

After just a few minutes in that storm, I turned around, a huge tailwind from the Northwest, and within just a few minutes, I rode back out of the storm, back into a sunny sky and a temperature that rose about 10 degrees, back to where it was before.

That time I was intentional about chasing down that storm and riding through it.  Over the past 50 years, I have ridden in the rain lots of times.  I’ve found it scary at times, but most of the time, I find it thrilling.  Not so with life sometimes though, right?  Sometimes the storms in life hit us hard, blindsiding us, completely unprepared and in total shock.  Like with motorcycling, we don’t know what may be ahead, but maybe can we prepare ourselves for such storms without living in fear of the unknown.  Let’s talk about it.  Thank you for joining me today.

OPENING MUSIC

I was on a solo ride through Monument Valley in Northern Arizona.  I was riding South, coming from a night spent in Moab, Utah.  It’s in the middle of Monument Valley where you find “Forrest Gump Point”.  Check out Episode 2 for details.

There’s a lot of space in Monument Valley.  Beautiful.  Amazing.  A tough environment with no shelter for miles. Few trees.  No underpasses to find protection under.   You think about shelter sometimes when you’re riding toward a storm.  It was a big storm.  Looking ahead down the road, within a couple of miles, there was a solid black wall.  A wall of water.  I pulled off the road for a moment to make sure everything on my bike was secure and that my motorcycle jacket and pants were fully zipped and waterproof, then I proceeded into the storm.  

First I felt the temperature drop, then came the light rain, then the heavy rain, then the lightning, then the hail.  Nothing I could do but to keep riding and watching the road as best I could. 

And then, within minutes, the rain completely stopped and I was in full sun once again.  I looked in my rear view mirror and there, as bright as a painting, was a double rainbow.  It was like Mother Nature said “Aren’t you glad that you kept going”?

I’m constantly amazed at how many parallels motorcycling has with other things.  So many pilots say that motorcycling is the nearest experience to flying.  Sailors compare motorcycling to moving through the wind and making adjustments when the winds change.

I think that endurance and perhaps resilience in motorcycling comes with practice too.  New riders get tired after a couple of hours in the saddle, where seasoned riders can go all day, day after day.  Some of that resilience comes with your body adjusting to the demands of riding, but I firmly believe that a large part of that resilience comes from a changed mental attitude.  Seasoned riders know that the wind will blow, we will sometimes feel hot and other times feel cold.  We know sometimes it will rain.  It’s almost like accepting those challenges as just a part of the riding experience helps us to deal with them.  Stress sometimes on the bike, sure, but a seasoned rider knows that the stress won’t last forever.  There is so much great riding ahead, if not that day, then probably in the next day or so.

This past week while working in Texas, I met a dear friend for dinner.  David and I go way back with a friendship that has lasted over 40 years.  David and I share talk about the good times and the challenging times.  David demonstrates that he cares not only because he listens to me complain about life sometimes, but he demonstrates that he cares by reminding me that yes, life will be hard sometimes and there are most certainly rough times again, but there are also GREAT times ahead!  He reminds me to stop worrying about the future and look around at all the wonderful things that are all around both of us.  If you don’t already a friend like David, well, get one!

Bad weather beats us up sometimes when we are riding.  So it is with life off the bike too.  Storms will most certainly come.  We can become paralyzed with fear, stay in our shell and stay hunkered down waiting for challenging things to happen to us, or we can accept that it’s a part of life, embrace that some motorcycle rides and life events will be challenging, and we ride right through them.  We ride through them because there is another side to that storm that we can’t see yet.  

SINGIN IN THE RAIN INTRO

And just like that double rainbow that I saw in my mirror in Monument Valley, perhaps when your storm is behind you, maybe, just maybe, the Heavens above have something amazing to show you.  So keep riding.

As always, I wish you peace, I wish you love…

Music by 

John Britton and Geoff Harvey from Pixabay

Singin’ in the Rain - Gene Kelly