On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Steve Palincsar <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> On Sun, 2009-02-15 at 12:08 -0700, Bill Gibson wrote:
> > I've always thought the rain cape made sense, ever since I first saw
> > Frank Patterson's drawings, in an old edition of Effective Cycling,
> > but I've never used one.
>
> I have.  They work wonderfully on upright bikes, not so much with drop
> bars.
>
> >  I've decided that it would be a sail in any
> > wind or at an athletic speed
>
> That too.


I live in Albuquerque, so what do I know about rain? Yet I have (very
infrequently) used 3 different rain capes, and I can vouch that they do
work, even in true southwestern gullywashers with howling winds, and they do
work with drop bars (tho' prolly not as conveniently as on a bobby's bike).
That is, the Carradice nylon cape I had didn't work well with drops since it
was cut too short for forward arm extension, but the Ducksback and the cheap
Campmor worked very well.

I remember one epic commute home a couple of years ago when I got caught in
a huge, huge downpour just as I alit (?) from the bus to ride the 5.5 miles
home northward on the RG bike path. (To give you an idea of how hard it was
raining: the road leading to my neighborhood flooded almost 3 feet deep --
over my knees, I kid you not -- in less than half an hour; I rode into it
and stalled.)

This downpour came with a huge, 30 mph headwind. I made it home in my
Campmor at 12 mph on my Diamond Back Axis Team Fixie conversion, and that
part of me above mid-thigh was fully dry.

It was annoying to have to empty the pint-and-a-half that filled the valley
between my arms, every few hundred yards.

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