On Grad Parties and Motorcycle Rides...

I took a motorcycle ride to a graduation party from St. Cloud, to Chippewa Falls, WI (around 160 miles)...

It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky when I departed...

Even though there were some darker clouds as I moved through Wisconsin, not a drop of rain...(riding through Spring Valley & Dunn County was awesome--strikingly beautiful)...

Anyway, I stayed at the party for an hour and a half, and I began my trek back home.

At first, there were storm clouds to the left of me, and storm clouds to the right of me... (It felt like I was in the middle of the Charge of the Light Brigade)....I thought I was going to ride through the mess with nary a scrape.

Not so fast... When I drove back through Spring Valley, I stopped at a convenience store... I heard a few claps of distant thunder.. but I still held hope that my luck would hold.

I rode on through a winding country road, and finally, I heard little pitter patters hit my helmet...upon looking ahead of me about a mile or so, I saw what from that distance appeared to be a heavy fog, but I knew better that it was a downpour; then I looked above me and saw a greenish tinge to the clouds overhead, and knew the telltale sign of hail...

Just as it started to get heavy, I happened upon a small country store with an overhead canopy, and made it there just in time when a flurry of three-quarter inch hailstones began making their way to the ground. Another biker was there, who made a call ahead to his home in Ellsworth, about ten miles west, who said it had cleared up.

After the storm had let up quite a bit, and there was just a little bit more than a drizzle, I continued on my trek, thinking that Mother Nature just needed a good belch, and that would be that, and that my good fortune in keep out of challenging weather would continue.

Boy, was I wrong.

I rode through deluge after deluge of downpours and pea-sized hail. It felt like I was riding through Niagara Falls with a mixture of pebbles falling down with the water! After riding in and out of a series of six storm cells, I finally thought I was out of it when I crossed the border into Minnesota and stopped to fill up.

Wrong again.

I rode through another three episodes of torrents of rain, thunder and lightning through Anoka, MN on Hwy 10; by that time I didn't care. I was so wet, the only thing I was missing was a bar of soap (I thought about shampoo, but at least my full-face helmet kept my head relatively dry). When I was getting toward Elk River, I saw an awesome sight up ahead in the distance--a clearing sky! And I was riding right toward it. Halleluia!!! But then Highway 10 took a bend right there, and was leading me headlong--you guessed it--into another storm. At this point, I said, what the heck! I was a man on a mission to get home. I screamed defiance as I rode through yet another downpour, screaming, "Is this all you got?!? Come on!!" Finally, I rode through the last of the downpours as I headed into Big Lake, with another 40 miles to go, and I finally headed into the safe harbor of a clearing in the sky. By this time, the cold front had passed, and temps got down into the low 60s. I really thought I would dry out, I mean with driving 65-70 mph, you'd think it would have kind of a blow dryer effect.

Again, I was proven wrong.

By the time I got home, I was stiff, sore, and I couldn't be wetter and colder if I had plunged myself into Lake Superior. I took off my boots, and poured out over a cup of water from each.

All in all a good ride!

BTW--anyone have any suggestions on how to quickly dry out rain-soaked leather boots?