biking in the rain

It had to happen sooner or later. So far I have been extremely lucky in my bicycle excursions and have managed to avoid riding in the rain and getting wet by riding in the rain. Monday my luck gave out and I ended up riding home from the gym in a pouring rain. I tried waiting it out, but after 45 minutes of trying to make polite conversation with the other ladies who were still exercising, I gave up and decided that I would just bite the bullet.

In view of the fact that streets were running with water and it was raining hard enough to limit the visability I decided to stick to the sidewalks wherever possible. While riding on the sidewalk saved me from being blown off my bike by the waves of water thrown up by passing cars, it presented another quandry. The sidewalks are line with trees which were flowing with downfall. If I rode close to the left side of the sidewalk, I was still under the fall line from the trees andI had to deal with the waves of fallen acorns, leaves, protruding roots and irregular grass sideline. If I rode to the right side of the sidewalk, because the sidewalk was narrow, I was still under the fall line from the trees, but the puddles were deeper and I was stil getting deluged by water thrown up by cars in the street. Since I was facing them, these waves were not quite as high as they would have been had the autos been passing but there was nowhere that I could ride where I wasn't getting pelted from trees, cars and or puddles. By the time I got home I was so wet that I decided I didn't need a shower. How wet was I? My bike bags, in spite of being waterproof, had two inches of standing water in them and there wasn't a square inch of clothing that wasn't saturated to the point of dripping. Fortunately, since this is Houston, not Holland, it was warm enough that I could just towel off and put on dry clothes instead of having to stand under the hot water for 20 minutes to thaw. I think I need gills and water wings.