We checked the weather and the radar, and everything looked good, a little overcast, but good. The temperature was comfortable and the ride up was great for the first hour and 40 minutes, then, the skies opened up and the last 20 minutes to Lakewood were in a downpour. It stopped just outside of town, we got there, parked the bikes and the skies opened up again! I can't say enough good things about the Rider Comfort System I got. The outer shell kept me perfectly dry, so at least my top half was dry.
We spent quite a bit of time walking around the store and we bought candy and fudge and some candy cigarettes, and I got a roll of giant Smarties and also some pop rocks. After we got home, I was extremely discouraged to find out that the sticks in the candy cigarettes were, gasp, CHOCOLATE, not the odd tasty white chalky sticks with the pink ends I remember "smoking" as a child.
So, it appeared that the rain had passed, so we wiped off the windshields and saddled back up for the ride home. Yeah, that lasted about 5 minutes and it started to rain again, and for some reason my headset wasn't working right because I couldn't hear Ed at all, but he could hear me fine. So, we ended up pulling into a gas station, and, let's just say my rain gear is no longer a virgin. I had to do it - a nice guy, who is also a biker but was in a truck that day, told us up the road a few miles it was pouring and there was standing water on the road. I love, love, love my rain gear! So, death grip on the handles, rain gear getting broken in, headset NOT working right and glasses fogging up constantly when not moving, we pressed on.
We pulled over after about 20 or 30 minutes so I could try (again) to fix my headset, but it still wouldn't work right. I finally figured out that I must have accidentally pushed the MUTE button on the underside of the receiver, because as soon as I hit the volume up button, I could hear Ed really, really well and had to turn it back down. We kept on riding, my death grip loosened, and I think that Ed was sick of me telling him every 5 minutes how much I loved my heated hand grips. Funny thing is that they actually baked the black from my gloves into my palms, but I will take that over frozen fingers any day!
We did stop another time after it stopped raining for one of the 3 or 4 two minute breaks in the rain we got and were able to squish out the foam in our glasses and try to dry them off some so we could see! Mother nature was being cruel, but we kept riding and it always looked like just over the next hill we would be out of it, but it was not to be. There were times it was raining so hard it felt like hail, but we kept going. After about 90 minutes of wet, cold rain, we made it to Appleton and the sun came out and there was much rejoicing!!
I am glad that my rain gear pretty much looks like a windbreaker suit, because I am sure that all the people we saw riding around thought I was crazy for wearing my rain gear. I am really glad that I didn't put the hood up over my helmet! We got home, put the bikes away, hung our gear up to dry, changed into some dry clothes and it started pouring! We just looked at each other and laughed.
