[Jenny]

I had my first wet roads experience last week. I left the house for work on a gorgeous, sunny day, and an hour later it started to rain. It rained all day. I contacted my partner (who had also biked to work) and asked that he please meet me in the parking lot after work for moral support. Before we pulled out of the parking lot, he made me sit through the "how to ride safely on wet pavement" speech again (which is fine, I'd rather get that drill several times than no times). Oh, and there is at least one instance where this applies to the type of riding we were doing but might not apply to other times (we were doing residential streets).

Here's what I got:

1. Wait until it's rained for a little while (which wasn't an issue in that instance).

2. Make sure that the bike is sufficiently warmed up so that you can turn the choke off. This stops your bike from having any unexpected power fluctuations.

3. Take turns less sharply than you might on dry pavement.

4. Accelerate and decelerate less suddenly. You can ride at the same speeds (we were going to be on 25-35 mph residential streets), but you need to get up to speed and slow down less severely. He did say that the acceleration wasn't an issue for my bike because I don't have the power to accelerate very quickly from a stopped position. He said that if I ever got a more powerful bike, that's when I would worry about that more, but at the speeds I am currently able to accelerate (I still haven't done that sprocket change over), he said that wouldn't be a problem. So coming up to a stop sign, if I would start slowing down a certain distance from the sign, I should start to do so sooner.

5. If the bike does start to skid on wet pavement, try not to panic. That being said, straighten the bike up (if it's in a turn), hold the handlebars firmly but don't fight with them, and do NOT slam on the brakes.

6. I'm pretty sure that I'm missing something. I don't remember what, though! Bad me!