Last night, around 2am, I decided to go and get something to eat at the McDonalds 12 kilometres down the road. Jump on the bike, get going, and about 5 minutes later, it’s like I’m riding in some kind of thick soup! :w00t:
Seriously, I have never seen fog like this before… you could see maybe 10 metres in front of the bike, and I had to progress down this road that I usually ride at around 70mph at more like 30-40mph, and that still took a lot of concentration to figure out where it was actually going, and whether there was anything in the way o.O
Twice during the journey I had to stop and wipe down my visor, which seemed to attract the fog and made the situation even worse.
On the way back, the fog got even thicker, it was like something out of a Stephen King book… and then, right after I leave a town in open country I see some dim lights flashing in front of me and nearly run over a warning triangle :w00t: A lorry had broken down in the middle of the road and you couldn’t have seen it more than 10-20 metres before.
In the end I got home intact but I have to say this was one of the most bizarre weather conditions I’ve had to deal with in now over 3 years of riding!
What are some of the weather conditions that challenged your riding skills to the fullest? Lets hear your stories.
I did freezing fog over this winter on my ride home at 6am. 30 yard visability but my visor froze every 20 yards or so, pinlock didn’t help at all then.
had fun on a ride out once where it went from bright sunshine to heavy rain to sunshine to low lying fog in the space of around 4 or 5 miles, very odd.
Last year coming back from Belguim. Heavy snow and visibilty was about 10 metres. Stopped in the services and 3 inches of ice dropped off the front of me and the bike.
One xmas eve did a long drive home in freezing fog in a car with no heater…had an iced over / frozen windscreen with about 1 inch of visibility from a bit that the engine kept warmer…not the safest drive…actually gave up and got gf to come and meet me it was so dangerous…she wasn’t happy.
Believe it or not
the craziest
weather i have
ever seen in
england was
about 3 weeks
ago. I went out
to do a fuel
economy test on
my hornet 6. Set
out down the M3
where i
encountered
bright sunshine!
Ive never seen
this phenomena
before since ive
been riding. I had
to stop and put
my shades on.
English weather
is so
unpredictable.
Have ridden in all weather conditions - most extreme being snow and ice and the odd torrential monsoon type downpour experienced on motorways where I got soaked to the skin and the bikes engine temp went down noticeably on the gauge because it was covered in so much cold water.
The extreme weather situations really develop you as a rider! You either learn to respect the conditions more, learn more about machine control, or learn exactly how much energy it takes to push or pick up a heavy bike multiple times!
I think for me, it was probably snow in winter 2003/2004 when it snowed badly half way through the day and I travelled the 15 or so miles from Clarkenwell to Richmond on my first Gixxer 750. That was hard work, but thankfully I didn’t drop it.
There’s been some bad rain rides, and some pretty brain-out moments in the early days when racing flat out along pitch-black and foggy roads out in the country-side.
This January was my hardest, coming over Morocco’s very snowy Atlas mountains. The road was shut for a few hours before they started letting any traffic through - then only in convoy and down the pass.
The road itself was under a sheet of 1-2 inch ice, and the fresh snow offered the only grip. Touching the brakes or the throttle would cause a slide, so we rolled down the hill in 1st gear. As most of the convoy were coaches, the idle in 1st was faster than theirs so we had to overtake - all in driving, gusting, swirling snow.
Once we got to the bottom of the pass (probably 5 miles), the traffic being refused to travel up was waiting. We both got a big cheer and applause from the barrier guards, parked taxis and truck drivers
We stopped asap and had a brew of Mint tea to get the blood circulating again.
I forded boot-deep water on the paddington slip road to the West bound A40 two years ago, had to circumvent a lake at the park royal cross roads by wheeling my bike along the pavement.
Freezing fog so thick and fast on my visor coming out of Aylesbury the year before that I could not see and was merely grinding ice into it.
50 miles of torrential rain last August, trucks on the A1 throwing huge bow-waves of water over me, like being hit with a fire-hose. Followed by another 30 miles of merely heavy rain. And then a few miles of dry before arriving home in… rain.
Gotta be torrential rain on the way to Bruges in November. This was a few years back. Couldnt see further than a few feet unless there was lorry in the vicinity and then we couldnt see at all. Arrived completely soaked, exhausted, cold and miserable.
Worst on the bike (A CB250 in 1976) was really heavy torrential rain all the way from Scotland back to London, took me 12 hours on the A1. What made it extra uncomfortable was I had a finger nail removed three days before!. Worst in a car was in Namibia when I made the mistake of driving through a sandstorm in the Namib desert. It sandblasted the front of the car back to bare metal. All the glass , including the windscreen was frosted white. After getting out of the storm I still had three hours to drive into the setting sun. But you could not see through the windscreen, so had to hang out of the window all the time in order to see the single track gravel road. I was three days drive away from where I could exchange the hire car, so buffed a viewing gap in the windscreen with metal polish. It worked a treat.
