Months ago I decided not to buy a plane ticket to Pittsburgh for the AIST Digital Transformation Conference. Though the final week of March is always a crap shoot in terms of motorcycle riding weather -- even those years when I start riding in February -- there was always an outside chance I'd be able to let Plex pay me for the gas it takes to get Nada 3 across Ohio and back.
The value of such a deal would definitely not lie in the compensation for several hundred miles of Ohio Turnpike, but rather the enablement of a subsequent weekend ride around the mountains of Pennsylvania and whatever adjacent Appalachian states I might wander into.
Despite an incessantly gloomy forecast for the past two weeks, I'd been holding out hope that the post-conference weekend would be nice enough to be worth the Turnpike. But the forecast never once suggested less than a 40% chance of rain on Saturday March 30, and a generally somewhat less damp forecast for Sunday.
Still, it wasn't until midday Sunday March 24 that I finally gave up hope and decided to drive rather than ride. It turned out to be a good decision. Even if the upcoming weekend turns out bright and balmy (not likely; as I write, my pocket weather map predicts a 60% chance of rain Saturday and 40% Sunday), I don't think the ride yesterday would have been worth it.
It wasn't quite freezing when I left home Monday morning, and never hit 40 before I reached Pennsylvania. That in itself wasn't really a problem; it would have been a chilly ride, but at least was sunny. Of it I might have said, like I did to the guy in Perry, Michigan last Saturday, "Hey, if I'd wanted to ride a snowmobile today, I'd be out of luck."
The gusting quartering headwinds, however, probably would have had me cursing the entire distance from Toledo to Youngstown.
And the ride from the Pennsylvania state line to Pittsburgh, at 41 degrees in driving rain, would have been a precise 1:12 scale reproduction of my personal Worst Ride Ever.
The value of such a deal would definitely not lie in the compensation for several hundred miles of Ohio Turnpike, but rather the enablement of a subsequent weekend ride around the mountains of Pennsylvania and whatever adjacent Appalachian states I might wander into.
Despite an incessantly gloomy forecast for the past two weeks, I'd been holding out hope that the post-conference weekend would be nice enough to be worth the Turnpike. But the forecast never once suggested less than a 40% chance of rain on Saturday March 30, and a generally somewhat less damp forecast for Sunday.
Still, it wasn't until midday Sunday March 24 that I finally gave up hope and decided to drive rather than ride. It turned out to be a good decision. Even if the upcoming weekend turns out bright and balmy (not likely; as I write, my pocket weather map predicts a 60% chance of rain Saturday and 40% Sunday), I don't think the ride yesterday would have been worth it.
It wasn't quite freezing when I left home Monday morning, and never hit 40 before I reached Pennsylvania. That in itself wasn't really a problem; it would have been a chilly ride, but at least was sunny. Of it I might have said, like I did to the guy in Perry, Michigan last Saturday, "Hey, if I'd wanted to ride a snowmobile today, I'd be out of luck."
The gusting quartering headwinds, however, probably would have had me cursing the entire distance from Toledo to Youngstown.
And the ride from the Pennsylvania state line to Pittsburgh, at 41 degrees in driving rain, would have been a precise 1:12 scale reproduction of my personal Worst Ride Ever.
PPG Place, Pittsburgh
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