I may have changed my mind about wet riding after going down last Sunday. I always had a don't leave when it is raining rule but if I get caught out in it, so be it. I may modify that in the near future.

Did a 450 mile ride and all but the first 5 miles and about 100 miles in the middle of it was in the wet varying from drizzle to downpours. I had an uneasy feeling before leaving the house, but since I was the one who organized the ride I felt it my "duty" to go. The weather people had all said the night before that it was going burn off about 9am and when we did the ride last December it burned off about 1pm so we thought it would be alright. I should have paid attention to the "feeling" this time. I had also pulled all of my cold gear out of the topcase the night before since it was suppose to be in the 80's that afternoon. Another pair of weather gloves would have been nice after my "water-resistant gloves" were soaked half way through.

About 20 miles from home it was getting dark, raining harder, already tired and wet and on an unfamiliar road I go down. It was on a uphill left curve into a right hand curve at the base of the hill, I thought I was going slow enough but it surprised me and I low-sided on the right hand turn at about 20-25 mph on wet chip seal doing a belly flop onto the paving and sliding into into the mud. The friend I was riding with helped me get the bike out of a barbed wire fence and recover the topbox from behind the fence. I checked to make everything worked, pulled away the broken right side bodywork, gathered up a few parts worth saving and headed home.

I hate that chip seal crap, that is one thing that I did not see up there last summer and will not miss about Texas, it is a lousy excuse for paving. It seemed like every road that Snowman led us on up there was great asphalt instead of the cheese grater crap they do down here.