Bicycling in Rainbow Weather

Rainbows have made repeat appearances in Monterey County in Spring 2016, including this double rainbow seen 3/3/16. No filter, folks; that’s all the handiwork of the Master of the Sky!

At the same time and location on 3/3/16, looking west…

Tips below are from 2010. For updated rainy day tips, 

click here for “Rain, Cold Temps, and More:  Bicycling through the Seasons.”

All or nothing?

No need to skip biking just because you can’t bike all the way to your destination.  Besides rainy days, there are many more times to appreciate bike-and-ride combos.

The bike-and-ride options in Tips for Bicycling Monterey County were written for anyone who’d like the alternative of a ride—for their bicycle, too! The bike-and-ride tips include details on using the Monterey Salinas Transit system/”The Bus,” along with the airbus, trains, and more.

Rainbows and wildflowers

As this is written (April 30, 2010, it’s lush and green and sometimes rainbow weather.  Even through our rainy season of winter and early spring—and in 2010,  it’s almost May Day and still raining—we’re blessed to have far more good cycling days than not.

Maybe, especially if a visitor, you aren’t always sure whether grey skies mean you ought to cancel your plans for the bikeways.  Check the weather forecast.  And unless there’s a day-long torrential downpour predicted, you’ll probably still want to cycle at least part of the day.  That coastal trail is too beautiful to miss!

Although definitely not desert, this is a fairly dry climate.  Usually from about May or June until the rains start in late autumn—usually not before November—things dry out and the vegetation loses its vivid colors.  But the picture below shows what that water delivers, and one of the reasons we treasure our rain.

And oh, those rainbows!   We’ve had some amazing ones in recent weeks [this post first published April 30, 2010].  The one below was shared by Velo Club Monterey’s Answer Man Jan Valencia.  Jan was on his Seaside-Salinas commute when he caught that double beauty over South Salinas.

See “Rain, Cold Temps, and More:  Bicycling through the Seasons” for tips on making the best of biking in any weather.

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Bicycling?  In this weather?  As Andy Griffin so eloquently expressed in “The Business I’ve Chosen” (Oct 14-16, 2009 Two Small Farms newsletter)–unpredictable weather is part of life.  If you don’t like the weather, wait, it will change.

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