[Justin726]

Just curious, while out on the road, what is the worst weather you have run into or rode through?

I've run in the rain plenty of times before. I just suit up and keep going. Only one time I stopped because it was raining so hard the tire ruts in the road were filling with water and I was worried about getting into those ruts and hydroplaning. So I stopped more because of road hazzard than the weather.

The worst weather I ran into was this past August while with 2 of my Harley buddies at the Sturgis rally. We had been out riding most of the day. We were heading back to the campground and approaching Rapid City. The clouds had been building and quickly turning a dark, eire color. Pretty soon I could see lightning, and not too long after that I could hear the thunder because the lightning was getting nearer and nearer.

We were getting pretty close to town when I noticed a few large rain drops. The large rain drops continued for only about 1/2 a mile before the rain drops turned to hail. At that moment I wasn't too worried. I had been hailed on before and I was fairly well protected with my helmet, jacket, and gloves. My Harley buddies (and thier wives) were however wearing the standard Harley gear which pretty much consisted of jeans, sleeveless shirt, sunscreen, and not much more.

We only went through about 1/2 mile of fairly light, but pea to marble sized hail before we came to an overpass. We quickly stopped under the overpass. The paved shoulder was only 4-5 feet wide with a guardrail just off the pavement, so we barely fit the 3 bikes single file under the overpass. But at that point, we weren't too worried about the bikes.

We had no sooner put our kickstands down and the hail started coming down harder....the rain started coming down in buckets....and the wind picked up quite drastically. All 5 of us bailed off the bikes, jumped the guardrail and headed towards the large support pillars that held up the overpass. The wind was whipping the rain/hail under the overpass, so we did the best we could to all get some protection from the concrete support beams. After just a minute or two of the terrible wind, we were all looking up the at the concrete slope that lead to the protection of the overpass beams and wondering if we could make it up the slope in case we though a tornado was coming.

We huddled behind those pillars for at least 5 minutes before the hail finally stopped. The rain was still coming down in buckets, but by that time we were all soaked anyway. We each took turns getting back to our bikes and riding though the downpour to the hotel with a large awning that was less than 2 blocks away. Another 15 minutes later the rain finally started to let up. There was hail covering the ground.....the streets were flooded with rainwater runoff.....and we were all wet and cold. One of the gals ended up with 2 bruises on her back from getting hit with hail before we got to the underpass.

We should have probably pulled off earlier when the lightning was getting close, but we thought we could make it into town. This was by far not my brightest moment on a bike. Hopefully I've learned my lession.