Thoughts on Rain

Living in the Northwest your riding season is rather limited unless you're willing to ride in some degree of moisture. I know plenty of riders that won't even chance a ride to the coast if there is a possibility of some leftover dew on shady corners. Around here is only full on Dry from mid-June to October, so at some point you're going to get wet. February in the mid Willamette valley starts getting warm (mid 40s, sometimes as high as 60) and will tease you with just enough of a break in the rain to convince you to break out the 3-season gear and mount up.

Let me break down what I don't like about riding in the rain.

First off the cold/wetness of the ride itself. Now half of that is just that I don't have particularly great boots for it, they aren't waterproof, I wear a textile 3-season suit which isn't perfectly waterproof and isn't gortex, my helmet isn't warm or watertight and its too tight to wear a balaclava under comfortably. Lastly I just don't like having to spend fifteen minutes gearing up and feel like the Michelin Man when I'm on the bike. I have electric gear but that feels like I'm tethered and isn't entirely comfortable. So I suppose the adage is somewhat true: there's no such thing as bad riding weather, just inappropriate gear.

Bad visibility when there's other cars kicking up spray, mud, and pooled water make for complaints that can't be attributed to cheaping out on my gear. On a very basic level we cornering enthusiasts don't like rain because it means less grip.

Less grip means less available lean angle, less quick-flick ability, less available braking ability, and less acceleration ability right? So let me recap. Riding in the wet is uncomfortable and we have less of every kind of performance from our high performance machines.

How do we improve the riding performance in the wet? As with most things there's a lot of old wives tales (sorry, old biker tales), friendly but worthless advice, and solid facts. Instead of re-iterate someone else's advice I'll just point you to them. This is an excellent start: https://soundcloud.com/ken-hill-534763963/podcast-41-riding-in-the-rain-what-you-need-to-know

Let me go in a different direction now. What do I like about riding in the wet? The country roads are more empty. Fewer people are out driving for recreation, more road for me, and of course that its riding. I suppose I could enjoy the bragging rights of doing a trackday in the rain, but both times I've done that (as a newer sport rider) I went off roading or crashed. In March I was scheduled for a trackday and watching the weather habitually as the forecast went from rain to clear to rain and back to clear. At the back of my mind I was hoping for a tiny bit of rain so I could really learn the rain limits of my bike. The weather gods gave me absolutely perfect weather so I didn't get to find out.

Unfortunately as I've often said finding the limits of your bike usually involves crashing it and we don't want that. The day I bought the Interceptor it was raining horribly. The day I brought it home from the 12,000 mile service it was raining and windy. Many of the days I've gone out riding in the spring its been less than dry. Funny thing is that in all the wet I've ridden it I've hardly ever engaged the traction control. Either my tire choice is excellent, my riding is good, or else the traction control takes a lot of slip to engage. Same thing about the ABS, I have to try to engage it. I've only engaged ABS in traffic once due to oil/water mix at a stop light.

One of my first real rain rides was on my old R6 with Dunlop Qualifiers as a newly minted sport rider. I was on a country highway when the skies opened up. Rather than go home I did what any Keith Code disciple would have done. I concentrated on throttle control rule 1, I kept the bike upright by using more body off position, and I adjusted my lines to keep the bike more upright. Surprisingly to me the bike was stable and I didn't find the limit.

Lets talk about equipment. Modern tires are incredibly good. Every manufacturer says that their street/sport/sport touring/touring tires have excellent wet traction due to siping pattern and silicon content. Like most riders I used to dismiss claims like that as marketing, until I started riding more in the damp or wet. Repeat after me: modern tires are good. Trust your rubber. As with any other piece of equipment the tires need to be maintained and used correctly though. Getting sport tires warm in the rain without warmers can be a challenge, but its doable. Make sure your pressure is right and don't trust worn out or old rubber. The best rubber won't save you though if you ride badly.

Are electronics worth it? It depends. The last decade has seen many bikes from 250cc beginner bikes to 1000cc supercharged track bikes getting some form of ABS and or Traction Control. To an extent you can divide the ABS offerings into two categories: basic ABS installed on bikes to meet legal requirements (see Euro requirements) and good ABS (see lean sensitive, KIBS, anything tied to an IMU).

Traction Control in a very basic sense is the ability of the bike to reduce power to the rear wheel when it detects it spinning (losing grip). Lets think about what that means. It means that you have to have lost grip already before the system can step in to reduce power to let the rear regain grip. Another way to put it is this: you have to be on the throttle for your expensive TC system to do anything for you. So you can either fight your TC system by chopping throttle once it engages or you can work with it and keep consistent throttle (which you should be doing anyway) and let the results of years of engineering work for you. On four wheels I've seen plenty of AWD/TC enabled Subarus in the ditch in a snow storm; the drivers were trying to steer out of a slide and jamming the brakes instead of hitting the gas and driving out of the slide.

In closing I'd just like to say that I dislike the rain, but it really isn't that bad. Some day I'll have a bike with supersport tires for the summer and track, and another with amazing wet sport touring tires just for the rain with a matching waterproof hi-viz outfit.