I have been riding all weekend logging well over 400 miles in 2 days of freeway, street and canyon riding. On paper the weather could not have been better. 80-ish (25-ish Celsius) degrees with a nice breeze. As usual I appropriately dressed for this kind of weather - my replacement Rev’it Airforce jacket and the Alpinestars jeans.

Last Saturday I ended up at the Rock Store. My temperature gauge showed 96F (35C) . Going back down to the 101 freeway and riding home my gauge showed 92-94F (33-34C). My Sunday ride was all over town ending in a fairly short Angeles Crest Highway run. Temperature gauge sporting something around 90F(32C) around town and nice and cool 75F (23C) going up the mountains in La Cañada.

As you can see the “theme” temperature of this weekend riding was 90 and higher. And as I rode along I remembered of this post I read on the Motorcycle Philosophy blog about the wind chill factor - http://www.motorcyclephilosophy.org/2008/05/wind-chill-motorcycle-myth.htm. Basically it boils down (no pun intended) to this - when the temperature is higher than 73F (22-23C) you no longer can experience a wind chill when riding. Scientifically it might be just so. However when I was riding faster and there was air coming in through my mesh jacket it felt nicer than riding slow in the same temperature. I am not sure if that was in fact a wind chill. Or rather just an air flow that would make my jacket no longer stick to my t-shirt or maybe vice versa :). In any case going faster and having more air come at you did make some difference even in a hot weather. Not sure about the science of it. But looks like I might have found the answer to the centuries old question - to chill or not to chill :).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 11:03 am and is filed under Motorcycles, Street, Riding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.