Interesting ride home last night!
 

Well I set off back from work and it was absolutely p*ssing it down, no big deal, bit of a giggle sliding it about. Half decent waterproof kit, no problem.
Through a patch of nice blue sky I see up front a massive thunderhead looking like it's towering up thousands of feet, going into it was like someone had turned a switch.

Then I get to a road that sometimes has a bit of a dribble running across it and see a 3" thick tree branch float over. At this point the rain drops are almost stinging through my jacket and the sky is as black as coal. Fork lightening coming down in front, right on my route.

Next bit, XJ running grand despite plowing through a 6" deep puddle at 45 or so and creating a bow wave you could have surfed on... lightning still coming down, now just at 10'o'clock over the high ground which I'll be riding over, having second thoughts about this now... low level route... nah be right!

On the moor road, cool firework show! Lightning strike about 50 yards away from the road? I'm going to go look for the tree when I get chance! The (very near!) bolt striking it and the thunderclap had absolutely no delay and was bloody deafening!

I was quite glad to descend into the next valley and out of the way!
Fun times, love a bit of heavy weather on the bike :)

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

Last time we had a storm pass our house that close, there was an enormous lightening flash & thunderclap

Very odd feeling

Fried the stereo with the electrostatic discharge.

I still love thunderstorms, always will

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

that sounds like it was fun :-)

i know what you mean about close lightning. its amazing. was in a boat, fly fishing up from the Tummel when the same thing happned. you have never seen someone row so bloody quick in yer life :-)

bestest lightning show i have ever witnessed was about 15 years ago coming across the fourth road bridge. the lightning was dancing off the rail bridge and the road bridge every few seconds.

Interesting ride home last night!
 

Ha, sounds fun but scary! Here's me worrying about biking in the rain!
I love thunder and lightening but not sure I'd have the bottle on the bike!
I am like a big kid though so the excitement of the thunder and lightening might make me forget about my nervousness of the rain!!
Sounds likes a fun ride home! Hope you weren't too soggy by the time you got home :)

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

A bit soggy but not too bad, didn't bother with a neck tube cos it was really warm and it was blowing in from the side and down my neck. Yeuch!

Don't worry about rain, go out when it's proper tw*tting it down and go bomb through some puddles and see just how much it can take. I had my SV submerged about 3/4 of the height of the wheels before :)

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

Sounsd like fun but I would've been papping it. My grandad was struck by lightning twice (in the days when you walked across the moors for three hours to work of course) so I reckon there's a family curse.

You'd be OK wading any bike up to the air intake level wouldn't you? Or do you run the risk of shorting out the systems in the wiring below?

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

Risk of shorting stuff out. But I'm allergic to work so I gobbo absolutely everything up with silicon grease so I never have to touch it again!

Not as confident on the XJ as the intake is under the seat rather than the tank

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

flash floods in todmorden and walsden apparently - people reporting the sky as black as they've ever seen it and rain coming down like they've never seen before.

http://news.sky.com/story/1121934/to...er-flash-flood

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

You can go deeper as long as you keep moving the bow wave in front of you, stop and you've got a problem.

I've had water over my 21 inch front wheel on my drz, you do start to worry about what's below the water, I got my front wheel wedged in a river on a large rock on the strata Florida in Wales and had to put both feet down in freezing cold water (february), my mx boots were submerged and not waterproof.

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

This is the write up including video of the actual event...


http://forums.sv650.org/showthread.php?t=196316

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

Quite poetic that hun, who'd've thunk it? :p I only did 3 miles in it and had watched the majority of the lightening flashes from the safety of a mate's house, she was getting most upset at the thought of me going out in it! But then she did want to sort a cover for my bike when the monsoons started :-s hehe.

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

Fixed for ya.

My annoying one with the mega P it downs this week. Coming down the motorway through what is really a waterfall. Visibility of about 10 yards max even with wipers on full.

Only one car hasn't the sense to put on the lights, after all it is daytime and you don't need them. True to form it is a beemer 3 series. As I get along side I then notice the reason for such inept driving. It is a woman, on the bloody phone. Totally oblivious to what is happening around her.

Then there were the cars piling onto the hard shoulder after hitting the 1ft deep puddle and cutting out. I got a horn behind me as my first action on exiting it was to touch my breaks to dry the damn things out. in hindsight, I guess I should have let the car up my behind dry his before I touched mine.

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

45 degrees in the wet? Must be mad!!!

I had lightening hit my house once, blew up the TV and a large chunk of the wall where the ariel was. It was the loudest sound I've ever heard.

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

Reminds me of a night ride on my advanced bike course! From Betws y Coed past Snowden on BMW 1200's being blown from kerb to kerb in a lightning storm with the instructor telling me to hurry up!

Even bikes as big as those get thrown from one side of the road to the other in the midst of a good storm.

Loved every second of it!

Pete ;)

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

You would be amazed just how deep the water has to be before it will actually stop you riding through it, provided it isn't actually flowing with any current that is. A group of us tried crossing a ford in Wales last year and I made it across with the water up to the headlight on my Hornet, the trick as someone has already said is not to stop...... (air intake under the seat)
We came back the following morning on the way out of the hotel and although it looked about the same depth it was flowing proper quick this time and we daren't go near it!

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

Hmmmm. There's a decent ford near me, this sounds like a laugh...

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

Just don't try it if you're on your own.......what I didn't mention was that eventually one of us "failed". Stripping down to your undies in the middle of a Welsh village to help rescue a mate is the true test of friendship!

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

There's a photo somewhere of a very short Policeman trying to get a liveried bike back on its wheels in the middle of a ford near Chatsworth...

But I promised never to use it!

Pete ;)

Re: Interesting ride home last night!
 

Be careful with the faster flowing fords if you're gonna go through deep water, at depth even a slight current feels like a tidal wave, I personally don't like them when it's fast flowing, I don't feel comfortable with what could be floating down stream under the water.