Tag Archives: rain ride

Riding the BRB (Big Red Blob)/Bill Watterson understands me

I was thinking about Calvin & Hobbes as Kevin and I descended 84 in Monsoon-like conditions (except that aren’t Monsoons usually warm?). That BRB (Big Red Blob) in the weather radar map? At 9:05am this morning, it was right on top of us.

Finally, everything lines up for the almost-perfect rain ride. Or so it seemed last night, with the Big Storm dominating the new. Rain bikes checked out, lights charged, wet weather gear laid out. We were ready!

Except, at 6:50am this morning, there wasn’t much going on outside. A bit of wind, light rain bordering on drizzle. I felt like Marvin the Martian in the Bugs Bunny cartoon, wondering “Where is the Kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering Kaboom!” Many past potentially-epic rain rides have fizzled out, and I was afraid this might be one more. Nevertheless we put on our “epic-ready” gear and headed out.

It was pretty warm as we approached the base of Kings, and the drizzle upgraded to a legit light rain. We climbed… methodically. Nice talkative pace, also aware of the need to ride consistently so, if things did become epic, or even semi-epic, we wouldn’t freeze. From bottom to top we saw a gradual decrease in temp, and a gradual increase in rain & wind. 40 degrees on Skyline and we were still pretty comfortable, but I did make a point of going to the front and burning some fuel to stay warm.

The first sign of good things to come? The roadwork at Bear Gulch is complete! No more one-lane traffic control. A very good thing today because that’s exactly where it began to really rain as well. Descending towards Sky Londa we could tell we were immediately entering a darker-green territory, and thinking we just might see yellow. Little did we know we were about to very quickly move through the full spectrum, dark green, yellow, orange and, we couldn’t be sure, we’d have to verify later, but about a third of the way down 84 it felt like we found the BRB. The Big Red Blob, the way the weather radar depicts the very heaviest of rains.  Victory!

Of course, when you’ve found the BRB on a descent, you really don’t feel the need to spend a lot of time in it; it was very nice to get to the bottom of the hill and be able to burn some fuel again. The rain gradually decreased as we rode home, which normally would take away a lot from the ride because it’s the beginning, and the end, that provide the benchmarks for those who think you’re nuts to be out there. But not today; we have proof! Proof that, at 9:05pm, we were solidly within the real of the Big Red Blob.

A little rain scared everyone away?

I wasn’t planning on a solo ride today, but Kevin came down with his bi-annual kidney stone gig, putting him in Kaiser ER for most of the day. I was a bit concerned I’d end up missing the worst of the rain as several “orange” cells came over the house and moved on, but I still got to enjoy some fairly significant rain while out riding.

Some would think it’s nuts to look forward to heavy rain & strong winds, but truth is, if you’re going to get wet at all, you might as well go the distance. Light rain makes just as much a mess of your bike as the heavy stuff, and more than once I was thinking yeah, bring it on, I’ve only seen one other guy on a bike out here; everybody else stayed home.

The ride itself was nothing epic, just the usual Tuesday/Thursday ride, done backwards. It took me a while to get into it; about halfway up Old LaHonda before I felt like I had legs. From that point on, it was fun. I even gave brief thought to the original ride plan, heading out to the coast and up Tunitas, but I had gotten off to a pretty late start waiting to see if Kevin would be feeling better, so it was pretty easy to rationalize not heading out quite that far.

I hadn’t thought about doing the ride backward until I started heading back up to Skyline on 84, after descending west-side Old LaHonda. I was thinking, all this rain, that small waterfall at the edge of Skyline in-between Sky Londa and Kings must really be going. And, as you can see in the video at the top of the page, it was.

Descending Kings had me wondering why I waited so long to get a rain bike with disc brakes. The rain & wind should have rattled me, but the predictability of disc brakes makes such a huge difference in handling and sure-footedness that descending and maneuvering in general feels really good. I even checked after the ride to compare my descending time against my normal dry times, but Strava didn’t pick up the start & end points quite right, probably do to cloud cover. Whatever, if you ride no matter what and can spring for a second bike for bad conditions, make sure it’s got disc brakes! –Mike–