Thought I would share this

[Fred]

there's something to be said for fullface helmets and  big windshields.
There have been times when I wished I could remember what that was.

[melbxs]

Just had hail the size of marbles here.

Not quite a Sydney style roof smasher, but noisy as all heck.

[Fred]

1 or 2 degrees, a bloody heat wave!

(minus)-14 degrees for weeks on end and then multiply out the wind chill factor at 100klm/hr.
I know; winge, winge,winge.

Don't need to do it any more since I retired SO I DON"T

[steptoe]

pussies???who's the pussy

 ???Bought a second car the next winter,,,

still ride mine all year round ,,even in a cold winter up here,,,1 or 2 degrees

[Fred]

Pussies!

When I first moved here (Ruffy Vic) from Darwin I got a bit of a weather shock the first winter.
Had to ride to work (75klm) 6 days a week at 5.30am.
Winter mornings in Ruffy, 650 metres up, -14 and I hadn't seen black ice since I was in Germany. Thats a wake up call for you. Came close to asking my father if he still had his ice tyres from his racing days in Nuremberg.
Believe it or not you do aclimatize. Bought a second car the next winter

[fungorus]

Try being a postie for 5 years......rain , hail , snow , heat , dogs Blah blah......every bloody day without a break......takes the fun out of personal riding pleasure....so I quit....now riding is fun again not a chore......

[Garym]

To late the Pommies are laughing... Well not this one, as I do not ride in Rain or cold......  Proper girlie biker 

[melbxs]

We better not talk about cold. The Pommies will be along in a minute to laugh. Some of them ride daily right through the British winter. 

[steptoe]

absolutely,,when you leave Rocky at 4 pm june long w/end heading for Tamworth,, :)many  many years ago {young and inexperienced}

being used to the heat it's something we didn't think of,,

we reached Toowoomba at about mid-night,it was cooler than comfortable,,but was handleable,,

we got to the big intersection were you turn left to Warwick,,saw it coming in the distance,, it took an eternity to open my hand off the throttle far enough that I could move A  {1}  finger tip over the brake lever to slow us down to a speed that we could negotiate the turn,, it hurt like hell but had to be done,,

that done, next mission was to pull up at a servo and get fuel,, how hard can it be,,
      stopped alright,, couldn't hold the bike up but, luckily a fella fuelling beside where we stopped was on the ball,,
  he held the bike up, with both of us on it while we worked out how to get off,,

it was minus 5 with a wind chill factor of who'd know what at 130 klm,,
      I didn't know till we stopped that the wife was crying cause her legs were so sore from squeezing together from shivering,,
     that is the coldest I've {we've} ever been
 
now back to the top {being used to heat}  we were wearing jeans and jackets,, nothing else,

had we had our thermals and everything else that we now own, it may not have been so cold BUT,,

 so we sat there till the sun came up,, she wasn't moving from in front of the fire,
 got down to Tenterfield and the road was closed at Armidale with snow,,

being from down there I know a few BACK roads,,down thru Inverell, and down thru the back of Keepit dam, didn't know about the 4" of rain though,,
fell off 4 times in the mud  {cold mud}  went down well with her, pardon the pun,,,but we got to where we were going, frozen and soaking wet, with out dying,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,and had 3 flat tyres on the way home
                                             
                                                the end

[Christian Raith]

Motorcycle Truth

There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away. Caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead shredded and streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.

Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you?re changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver?s license right next to your sex and weight as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition. But when warm weather finally does come around, all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a summer is worth any price.

A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time, entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sun that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than Pana-Vision or IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard. Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raising acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed. At 30 miles per hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree- smells and flower- smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it?s as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it. A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane.

Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy. I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a handful of bikes over half a dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride one of the best things I've done.

Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep." Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.

Author unknown; (However, most any motorcyclist would, if asked, write something similar.)