Not the welcome I'd hoped for, really....

Welcome to Florida!

We ran into rain almost the moment we crossed the Florida state line. People had told us that Florida had daily afternoon showers. We envisioned something like the little showers that sometimes occur on summer afternoons in Arkansas—brief, highly localized hit-or-miss affairs. That sort of thing didn’t scare experienced bikers like us too much.

So we stopped and geared up. I reached into my port saddle bag and pulled out the little stuff sack containing my rain gear, the “Frogg Togs” with the silly pink labels that they use to signify a women’s size (I hate pink!). My gloves were water resistant, so I didn’t bother to slip on the rain mitts that came with them.

In Arkansas pulling on your rain gear is sometimes enough to bluff the rain out. We dared hope for a few minutes that we had managed to do so here. Instead he found ourselves in an honest-to-goodness rain, the sort that makes it hard to see through your goggles and helmet visor and surrounds you with a cloud of spray that runs up the legs of your rain pants.

I’d ridden through rain before, but always on rural roads. We were riding in this mess on the bypass expressway around Jacksonville, during evening rush hour no less. Rain and heavy traffic either one make me nervous when I’m on a bike—they both carry increased risks of accident. Now I faced both at the same time. At least the rain slackened on the expressway, and the travel moved along pretty well.

It was when we left the bypass to reach Highway 1 for Saint Augustine that things started to get bad. Now we were on a multilane suburban road with traffic lights every few blocks, crawling from light to light with thousands of commuter vehicles. The weather chose this exact moment to let the bottom drop out. Afternoon showers? This was a monsoon-like downpour! It didn’t blow over in a couple of minutes like most summer downpours back home, either. I began to wonder whether perhaps we’d missed hearing about a tropical storm heading inland.

Melissa Holbrook Pierson, the only female motorcycle writer I’ve ever read, has described how much she loves riding in the rain, of going along sealed inside a watertight rain suit. Either she has better rain gear than I do, or has ridden through less severe rains, because I was soon soaked to the skin. The pouring rain forced its way in around my sleeves, my pant legs, and my collar. I felt it blowing all over the lower part of my face and running into my mouth—not totally unwelcome, since we hadn’t had a chance to stop on the way around Jacksonville and I was getting thirsty. That was the only halfway good thing about the experience.

It would have been miserably uncomfortable if it hadn’t also been so scary. Riding in the rain, as even Pierson admits, is a most dangerous business. Riding in the rain in dense, start-and-stop traffic, where all the drivers behind you can see of your little dark-purple machine is the glow of a single tail light to let them know not to run you over, is a nightmare. I didn’t even try to look back. I simply kept my eye on the glow of the tail light of the bike I was following, doing whatever it did. I only looked back when it changed lanes and I had to follow suit, hoping that there would be a handy gap in the traffic to allow it. At least riding Tail-End Charlie I didn’t have to worry about looking out for any riding companions behind me.

We pulled over for a bit at a convenience store where we could take shelter by the gas pumps. Our plan had been to camp out that evening at a state park near Saint Augustine. We had no hope of that now, with all our camping gear soaked. We decided we’d hole up in a likely-looking motel instead. But we still had a few miles to go.

The rain and traffic both slackened, so we took off again. Now we could actually see a bit of the scenery. I saw my first Florida palm trees and a yard full of boats pulled in from the nearby ocean. We crossed over a tall bridge. The bridge had a broad metal grate on it that I didn’t see coming. When my tires hit it I felt the bike slipping from side to side. My heart skipped a beat before I made it past the grate onto a surface with better traction. It was not the only heartbeat-skipping moment that evening.

I had never felt happier to pull into a motel parking lot. Discovering that my saddle bags and top box had kept the clothing and other items stored in them mostly dry made me happier. I soon had the motel room festooned with my sleeping bag and other items from less watertight storage that did need drying.

We ate that evening in a nearby restaurant. By now the rain had stopped. I was still mostly wet; I was saving my dry clothes for the next day. It was probably my first-ever meal out in August where I chose to get the side order of warm soup. The main course was grilled tilapia. Our day’s travel plans had not gone very well—the rain was only part of it. But we were safe, for which I was most thankful. And if I hadn’t yet been able to see the sights I’d come to Florida to see, I at least had made a beginning on what I hoped would be a week of good seafood.

The next day we had a good morning of sightseeing at Saint Augustine and several pleasant hours of riding down the coast. At Daytona Beach we found a local place with more good seafood. In the evening we headed inland toward Lake Okeechobee—and got caught in another monsoon while doing seventy on the interstate. But that’s another story.

Thats some story. Yep when it rains in Florida, it rains. Some of the most intense thunderstorms I've ever seen.