Recovering from a 4½-hour cold shower

I'm home and I'm wasted after about 4½ hours of riding in the rain.

Riding in rain is one thing, but riding in cold rain is much much worse.

I rolled out of the campground at 10:10 a.m. into intermittent drizzle and entertained guarded hope that I might find dry pavement somewhere along my route home. It was not to be.

Unsure about parts of the route home, I put a Ziploc sandwich bag over my Garmin 200W GPS unit for a rain cover and was pleased to find I could read it just fine and it survived the ride. It kept tying to route me through Memphis and I finally had to set incremental destinations, like Jackson, Tenn. and Hayti, Mo. to force it to see things my way and chart a more rural course.

My Gore-Tex lined BMW rain gloves kept my hands dry, but the wind on the soaked leather made them painfully cold. I finally pulled under a gas station canopy north of Jackson and put my glove liners in for a little more warmth.

My 13+ year-old First Gear rainsuit performed admirably and I'm very glad I wasn't carrying the Frogg Toggs because they wick water where my stomach contacts the back of the tank bag. I would have been really miserable if that had happened.

I pulled into The Store gas station at Kennett, Mo., on fumes and put 4.831 gallons of gas into my 5.4 gallon tank. I had hoped to warm my hands on a restroom hand dryer, but all they had was paper towels.

I was glad to have the heated grips and seat, but there is just no way I could get comfortable in the cold cold rain. I had left my Gore-Tex boots at home in favor of my low-rise summer city boots. My feet stayed reasonably warm and I was surprised to find my socks were soaked when I got home.

The Liberty Bank time/temperature sign at Paragould was alternating between 51 and 50 degrees when I rode past about 2:30 and I was more than ready to quit by the time I rolled into our garage at 2:38.

I had toyed with the idea of just booking a room at the State Park Inn and putting the ride home off until tomorrow, but I figured I would be bored out of my mind and I didn't want the extra expense. If I had known what a wretched ordeal today's ride would turn out to be, I might have stayed put. Whatever. I'm glad to be home, having covered 685 miles since I left home Thursday morning.

I just hope my Indianapolis friends all get home safely. Judging from the weather radar, they were in rain until about halfway through Kentucky and it doesn't look like it got quite as cold there as it did here.