On The Mark

The October sun warmed the day sufficiently so that riding the middleweight roadster was still enjoyable, even without a windscreen. The waning sun on the vibrant fall colors painted beautiful vistas in every direction. Even the cars kept a respectful distance, as if the drivers were sympathetic to one of the few riders who was actually out that afternoon. For about the first hour, all was right with the world.

As the sun began to sink closer to the horizon, there were harbingers of things to come. As the temperature dipped, little annoyances began to creep into the fringes of the ride. I began to notice, for example, that what I thought was a well-sealed visor appeared to let little tendrils of cold air in, like a drafty old house. The gloves, though insulated, started to show signs of the same thing and my fingertips started to tingle ever so slightly. Momentarily removing my hands from the unheated grips and flexing my fingers restored the circulation needed to exchange heat from my body and comfort returned.

My jacket and pants that proved to be oh-so-waterproof in the past, managed to start admitting the same little drafts as the faceshield, mainly at the neck and hem. The costly magic fabric so infallible in rain still managed to feel a little drafty in the cooling air, aided by the speed of the bike. As for the boots, so far, so good on the leather-shod magic membrane covering my feet, but that would change.

My route involved crossing some points of higher elevation on the way from West Virginia’s Central Highlands to my sea-level home and as I started to climb, the combination of the waning sunlight, the highway-speed wind, and the rise in elevation started to take their toll. The leaky shield went from simply noticeable to mildly annoying, occasionally drawing a tear from one eye or another, but they were easily blinked away. The drafts around the hem of the coat and zippers of the pants became appeared and disappeared like little gremlins.

The real problem was starting to form at the foremost of my parts – my hands. I soon came to understand the utility of heated grips, which my bike lacked (it was basic and I had yet to appreciate them…until now). I would remove one hand at a time, flexing my fingers and shaking my hands. I would clutch in momentarily to do the throttle hand so I wouldn’t lose my road speed.

At my present age, I would start looking for a roadside inn with a fire or at least a mom & pop motel with a wall-mounted heater, but in my late-30-year-old mind, I had “promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep,” so I soldiered on. To say this was a mistake is to put it lightly, for as the sun went down and the elevation went up, the tendrils of cold air that were merely an annoyance a couple hours ago started to become little icy knives that dug into me, primarily my fingers. There were more tears in my eyes, not from pain, but from the drafts that found their way around my visor.  Little flecks were starting to appear in the beam of my light, flecks I suddenly realized were snowflakes.

Then, the inexorable, creeping cold started to find my feet, taking advantage of the fact that the body starts to shut down circulation to the extremities to keep the core warm. The boots weren’t drafty, but they weren’t warm either and my toes began to tingle. My hands began to require more frequent flexing and shaking and, in quiet desperation, I began to lean forward and lay them each in turn atop the protruding cylinders of the boxer engine.

Cold can take away your body heat, but a by-product is that it also takes away your concentration. Attention that was once directed at navigation, hazard avoidance, and station-keeping was replaced with thoughts of how to stay warm and simply wishing the ride was over. I stopped at a service station long enough to recoup some warmth, holding my gloves under the electric hand dryer and repeatedly pushing the button, but eventually I rationalized that I had to keep going lest the outside temperature drop even further.

Clearly, I survived to write this column some 25 years later; however, the little boxer soon grew a windshield and subsequent bikes had heated grips. I grew not only electrically-heated garments and gloves, but also a newfound wisdom that sometimes getting there the next day is a better idea than the risk of not getting there at all. The wind through the road cuts of I-68 in Garrett County is not something with which to trifle and you’d best respect it before the little, icy knives cut you 1,000 times.