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What do you do when it rains?

© Brian Salisbury

One of the first questions people who don’t ride a motorcycle often ask me is, “What do you do when it rains.” Actually, I asked a good friend and experienced rider that same question many years ago right before I bought my first motorcycle.

He’d obviously grown tired of hearing it, and he gave me the same flip answer he threw back at everyone else. He said, “I get wet.”

The question doesn't put me off, and I’m not surprised that people assume motorcycle riders either duck for cover or get soaked when the clouds open up.

Riders often park under a highway overpass to wait out a cloudburst. And occasionally we’ll see an unprepared soul riding his motorcycle in the rain without a rain suit.

I’ve been there myself.

Years ago, my wife and I took a motorcycle ride to South Hampton on Long Island. By mistake, I forgot to pack our rain suits. Until that day, I had never taken a ride without carrying at least one, and usually two, rain suits.

Well, of course, during the early afternoon it started to sprinkle. We quickly grabbed our stuff and headed for home -- two hours away.

When the rain got heavier, I pulled into a diner where I figured we’d wait until the weather passed. However, hours later, it was still pouring. We decided to get going.

Garbage bags for rain suits

But before we left the diner, a waitress gave us each a green, industrial-sized garbage bag to use as makeshift rain suits. We cut holes in the top and sides of each bag so we could pull them over our heads and stick our arms out. We used pieces of cord as belts to hold everything down.

I started the bike; we climbed aboard and took off in a flurry of flapping plastic.

Back then, and certainly now, my wife was a Bloomingdale’s shopper. So, wearing a garbage bag on the back of a motorcycle in the pouring rain was not her style at all. But, that day, she rode tough for 75 miles while sporting one of the waste removal industry’s finest examples of high fashion.

Riding through three days of rain

On my first motorcycle trip out West, when my riding buddy, Don, and I reached Pueblo, Colorado, it started to rain. And it continued raining, day and night, for three days.

We rode in the rain and camped in the rain. But our riding gear and camping equipment kept us dry.

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