It's pissing down rain. Let's ride.

When the weather turns wet, many people take it as a sign from God that it's time to stay in doors, perched in front of the TV with a stack of DVD's and a bucket of KFC.

I know not where this morbid fear of the rain comes from. Especially when it is currently 24 degrees here in Sydney. So what if it's pissing down? It's warm enough for me to have the fan on as I blog.

I love riding in the rain. But it has to be the right type of rain.

Yep. Just like skiing requires the right type of snow, and UK trains have horrible problems unless they encounter the right type of leaves. And no, I am not going to make a joke about the 'wrong type of leaves', because I have read up on the engineering of the impact of leaves on the wheel/rail interface and acknowledge that it is a real problem. Only stupid journalists without a brain cell between them would think it's a poor excuse.

I will go off track for a second here. Imagine you open up the SMH one day, and get ink all over your shirt and tie. You call the editor and complain. The editor responds with, "We were given the wrong type of paper/ink."

Are you going to acknowledge that yes, that is a valid excuse for this particular problem, or are you going to go off your nut at him for inventing a stupid, unbelievable way out?

I can accept that using the wrong type of paper or ink would have serious ramifications for printing a newspaper. I was in the UK when the newspapers starting to switch over to ink that doesn't smudge. I remember what it was like to have ink smeared fingers after reading the paper. I understand that the type of ink that you use can have a big impact on the quality of the reading experience.

Just like rain.

For starters, it can't be too soft. The only result of gentle rain seems to be high humidity and fogged up sunglasses. The rain has to be sufficient to reduce the air temperature enough to make it comfortable to ride. But not so hard that the inside of your glasses end up running with water, which is just as bad as having them fog up.

Hail is a no-no. Not much fun having hail bounce off your back. And I'm not too fond of lightning either, especially if it is crashing to earth within a kilometre and I am riding a thing made of metal.

The heaviness of the rain eventually reaches a point though where there is no point in worrying about how hard it's raining. In really heavy rain, the shoes quickly fill with water, your clothes are wet through, every inch of you is saturated and suddenly riding through puddles 6 inches deep are no longer an issue. Imagine jumping into a swimming pool and then going for a ride - that's about how wet I end up sometimes.

But with all that said, I am not riding today as it's Sunday. I've got to get to work tomorrow, so today is a rest day. I'll sit on the back porch and eat a chocolate croissant and watch the rain come down, and think about how nice it will to be riding in that tomorrow.