It was a dark and foggy night

Morning, actually. It was a dark and foggy morning on my commute to work today. I usually arrive at work before 7am so it's still completely dark when I leave the house. It had rained pretty hard the previous day, and apparently through most of the night as well. The ground and pavement was wet and there was a thick fog hugging the ground.

What was interesting, however, was the sky. Despite the fog, looking up I could see stars. Orion was on his head to the south and I could see Venus descending toward the western horizon. Once I got rolling the ride was fantastic. Despite being dark, there was no rain or road spray and the fog swirled around me in the gleam of my headlights.

It was magical.

Wet and dark commute

I woke up around 3:30 am and couldn't fall back asleep so I decided to get up and go to work early. It was still dark when I mounted my V-Strom and pulled out of the garage. Soon I heard the pit-pit-pit sound of rain hitting my face shield.

It was a dark ride into work, and wet. I had fairly heavy rain most of the way in. As I was riding, the thought occurred to me that I was no less comfortable than if it was 43 degrees and dry. The only difference when it rains is visibility gets reduced slightly.

I put lemon Pledge on the outside of my face shield to shed water. Ironically, I can see better when riding in the rain using that method than I can in my car with the wipers going! I also rub shaving cream on the inside of my face shield to prevent fogging. It works like a charm.

It's a slow time of year

"I have two best friends. The front wheel and the rear wheel."

I've not been able to spend much time with my friends lately. I go to work in the dark and I come home in the dark, and I've been fairly busy on the weekends. I've managed to get some brief rides in on Sundays, and have ridden to work once or twice each week (in the dark both ways), but that's about it.

I'm fortunate that I have a garage to park in at work, so that makes riding in the rain a bit more enjoyable (less un-enjoyable?). But riding in the dark has me wishing I had some retroreflective tape on the back of my helmet. Even though my bike is fairly tall and has some rather bright headlights, I wish it had more reflectivity and perhaps a brighter brake light.

I've been enjoying my Garmin Zumo 450 GPS. It's easy to use and easy to see. I mounted it on my left handlebar so it's easy to reach with my left hand. Some people mount their Zumo on the top-center of their instrument cluster, in the nook of their windscreen. That makes it easy to see but difficult to reach.

Thinking ahead

I will turn 40 next summer and thoughts of taking a celebratory trip have been crossing my mind. Where would I go? Would I go alone or take the spousal unit? Would I invite one or more friends to ride along? With the economy the way it is and feeling uncertain about my financial future -- I'm pretty responsible financially and have a stable job, but you never know -- money and cost considerations need to be taken into account. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to book an expensive trip that I can't cancel without penalty. I'd like to fly to Europe, rent a bike, and ride around for a week but that's not a cheap proposition and I don't feel that confident in my job security to plan something so expensive.

What I should do is take on more side jobs (I'm a web developer as well as an IT Manager) and just save up enough sheckels to pay cash for the trip -- and not book the trip until I have the cash in hand.