Rain Gear

Like all foul-weather bikers, I have struggled to figure out the best rain gear for my daily commutes and for longer duration exposure to the rain while touring. I have tried everything from cheapo plastic raincoats to fairly expensive "breathable" fabric raincoats, to ponchos, to just getting wet.

For commuting (5-7 miles, working up a good sweat), no raincoat has worked well. Breathable fabrics don't breathe when you are sweating hard and it's raining hard. Where can the moisture go? I haven't noticed a big difference between "breathable" fabrics and cheapo plastic.

I know some swear by dense-weave "ventile" cotton and the like, but I'm not willing to spend many hundreds on a raincoat.

So today I wore my J&G biking poncho, along with my "breathable" rain pants (with merino wool long johns underneath) and my Riv "splats" (shoe covers). Worked pretty well in a steady mist. I still swat (past tense of sweat) on my shoulders and upper back, but there's nothing to be done about that. Most of me was pretty dry. I'll continue this experiment.

I think for touring, I'll only bring the poncho in the future. The day I rode in the rain wearing my "breathable" raincoat, I ended up exactly as wet as I was on the day I rode in the rain with no raincoat. I was perhaps slightly warmer wearing the shell, but I could have achieved that by wearing wool.

Update:
After several sessions using several different ponchos, I must conclude that they have exactly the same problem as any other rain gear. I end up soaking wet from sweat on my upper back and arms, since that's where I sweat when I ride. A waterproof poncho is just a plastic bag with a head-hole, open on the bottom. In order to be effective, however, the venting would need to be on the top, where I sweat. That, of course, would let in the rain.

Perhaps the solution is to resign myself to getting wet, wearing wool for warmth when wet and a windbreaker to prevent evaporative chilling. Always have a change of clothes.