Showers

While I’m by no means a 10-level bike commuting master, riding to work regularly in Portland once the rainy season’s started has taught me a few things about myself and my ability to operate a bicycle at night in the rain. Honestly, it’s not really a terrible exerience. In fact, any parallels I’m drawing here between riding at night in the rain and becoming and/or being attacked by a serial killer are almost entirely exaggerated.

Anyway, I made a mental list of observations on my ride home from work last night.

• The grass is always greener. Figuratively, I mean, not because of all the rain (though it is pretty freakin’ green). I mean that on those days I crack and use the car to get to work, I miss the bike horribly. It doesn’t help that I save only ten to fifteen minutes on my 13-mile trip. The only upside is really that I get to listen to NPR on the radio. Conversely, I’d be lying if there weren’t nights, like last night, when a car would be genuinely swell. My car isn’t currently what one could describe as “waterproof,” though, so I guess it makes the bike seem not so bad.
• I suck at riding a bike. Particularly one that’s partially submerged. I thought I’d developed decent skills finding paths through fairly ugly rock gardens and stuff on a mountain bike back East, but riding in the dark at night in a downpour with headlights and stuff ricocheting off everything is a whole different sack of rabid ferrets. My route has some of the best urban bike infrastructure ever built, and still, in a strong downpour it’s pretty clear that bike lanes are the part of roads that used to be called “gutters.” The water itself isn’t bad; it’s all the shit under the water. Everything I take pains to avoid riding over in better conditions becomes pretty unavoidable when it’s submerged in three or four inches of black water. My neck was killing me tonight from riding “strong like bull” over a section of submerged chicken nugget-sized stones on asphalt that make holding a line particularly interesting.
• I’m prone to whimsy, or maybe just hallucinations. Passing certain backlit porch railings in the rain at night causes me to see weird animations. Like those flip-books, you know? Something fixed in position behind the railings tends to look like it’s moving when glimpsed through the slats of the railings as you pass. In some cases, it’s enough to cause me to unconsciously gear up, a Pavlovian response to “dog running off porch” situations that I must’ve developed at some point.
• Rain pants are awesome until they become totally not awesome. Depending on the downpour, after about the first hour, rain pants magically transform from a really great idea into riding inside someone’s skin that’s just slightly larger than you. Try not to remember this the next time you’re wearing rain pants in a downpour for an hour.
• It’s all about establishing your humanity. Briefly covering your headlight with your hand is the quickest signal to an oncoming car that you, like any other human, dislike high beams in your face. Seriously. Any action you can do while riding to help establish your humanity helps. Just read a great article that talked about staring right into the goddamn soul of the lady in that SUV who’s about to turn into you as you cross an intersection. Same rules apply at night. Quick cover and release of your headlamp says you are not, in fact, a mere flickering blog of obliteratable light floating in the inky blackness. You are a thinking, feeling human being.

Even in rainpants.