Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Day three

More freaky weather.

This morning, the heaviest fog yet.  I had to stop three times, remove my helmet, switch my glasses (Ray Bans to regular, back to Ray Bans), switch gloves (summer gloves to gauntlets, back to summer, back to gauntlets).  Started warm, got chilly, back to warm; started out sunny and grey, became pea soup fog, then sunny, back to pea soup, back to sunny.

Things stabilized as soon as my route left the lake shore.

The fog is coming off the lake.  Something to do with warm air, very cold lake water, residual ice banks here and there... at least that's my uneducated non-meteorologist's guess.

It slowed me down, but blew me away.  I love fog.  It proves to be much, much trickier on two wheels.

If this keeps up, I may figure out a strategy.  I'm beginning to think that the right strategy is to button down.  Shut the visor, and then squeegee when the fog pearls up on the visor.  That means sticking with the Icon Patrol gauntlets that have the squeegee built in on the left index finger.

Then again, this is season three of life-on-two-wheels, and these are my first encounters with fog.

There may be no time left to learn.

Any thoughts?

PS: that's Stewart Hall in the background, and no, I don't live there, nor do I own it.

5 comments:

Troubadour said...

Not sure you can get enough speed on the scooter but I use Nikwax Visor Proof on my visor then at 50mph+ simply turn my head side to side. I try to avoid physically wiping my visor with gloved hand and find the gloves with the built in wiper cumbersome and overrated. I agree with your plan to button down and just try and tuck behind that windscreen. Good luck.

David Masse said...

Thanks Troubadour, that's helpful.

Odd too, because I started out on the expressway. 50 mph is not a problem. When I saw the traffic backing up, I noticed that it was fog where the expressway comes close to the lake that was the issue. I decided to take an exit and head to the lake just to take in the fog.

Trobairitz said...

Fog = ick blah.

Luckily I haven't had to ride much in fog. Hope you find something that works for you.

Unknown said...

David:

Rainex may be bad for plastic. Many use "Pledge" furniture wax/cleaner. the rain should "blow" off at speed. They also use this for the GoProHD case, to keep the water off.

Fog here makes our road very slippery as we usually gete fog at low temperatures and it sticks to the ground and turns to ice. Ice Fog sticks to your windshield on contact.

bob
Riding the Wet Coast

David Masse said...

Thanks Bob, I use Pledge on my visor and windscreen, but maybe not often enough. I'm going to check out the NikWax that Troubadour suggested. Any idea if Canadian Tire carries it?

What are your thoughts on a pinlock visor insert. I don't have one and was wondering how helpful they are. To be honest I've heard people rave about how effective they are.

I doubt that would help with fog though, since the condensate is much heavier (literally thousands and thousands of droplets) and on the outside of the visor, not the inside.

Mercifully, there was no fog this morning.

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