Must dab brakes, must dab brakes

And suddenly I remember why I titled this blog as I did, because rain drops and rim brakes just don't work together.

Unless of course you know how to use both. The rain this morning reminded me of the near miss I had that prompted the thought and eventually the name. Prior to my starting commuting I hadn't really ridden a bike for a while and certainly not in the rain, fair weather MTBer that was me.

On a day not too disimilar to this one on my commute to work in the pissing rain......I was riding my standard route in my standard way 'all killer no filler', please bare in mind I do no pre ride checks (well 'did', thats since changed) never felt the need 'if it ain't broke don't fix it', hmmn. Anyway so there I am climbing the short rise over the railway which has a roundabout on the base of the descent, minding my own business trying to give the impression the rise didn't hurt.

As I make my way down the descent to the roundabout, I stick my arm out to signal my intention to go right (see car drivers, I let you know where I plan on going in advance....), this obviously leaves me with only one hand covering the brakes as the roundabout looms 'not a problem', well not when its dry. It suddenly dawned on me that I wasn't slowing, at all. I applied both brakes and still nothing, by this point I was quite aware I was carrying too much speed heading for the roundabout but it's cool because no one goes straight on when coming from the right at this time in the morning.

WRONG, shit that car is going to hit me and there is nothing I can do about it because like a chump I didn't plan for this or the affect the weather would have on my braking, or lack there of. Thankfully, as panic set in the car driver going straight on at the roundabout was watching my dumb ass as I tried to stop myself and envisaging a collision, he stopped to let me pass. At least one of us was awake that morning.

So now I dab my brakes fairly frequently when the weather is pants, just to make sure they are working, after all raindropsandrimbrakes don't mix, right!

Fairly aware that my last 2 posts are about me narrowly missing cars, thankfully these events didn't happen over the course of 2 days. Hopefully going forward as I learn to actually ride a bike these posts will become less frequent.

Here's to hope.