Riding In Fog

Going into a morning fog.

Riding at night in a heavy fog is just terrible. In Texas, about this time of the year when it's cold at night and warm during the day we often get foggy mornings and evenings as the temperatures start to shift. We were on a recent ride where we had a couple of hours of heavy fog right about sunrise and then again at about 1am. Daytime fog is bad, but that night time fog can start to work on your mind. It's like jogging on a treadmill, you know you're moving, but you get the sense that you're not going anywhere. The fog closes in on you and soon you start claustrophobic as its all around you. You can't look around for signs because they're out somewhere in the fog. You have to totally focus on finding the next piece of the highway's striped center white line. In your peripheral vision you have the shoulder's solid white line as your outside boundary, but you can't wander over to it as it will seriously reduce any margin of error should you need to take evasive action. Any break in the center line causes a quick panic as you hold the bike on that imaginary hoping it will reappear. If the shoulder line disappears as well then there's a quick deceleration, but not too much because you don't know what's behind you. What's nanoseconds seems too long as you look to catch the center line again, "there it is and all is okay for another few minutes".

The fog closes in and only the GPS tells you that you're still going in the right direction. The GPS display also aids by letting you know that the center line is about to start curving right or left. Stay focused. Fear of imaging a tractor trailer sprawled across the highway on its side somewhere in front of you makes you slow down. Is 55 in a 75 still too fast, too slow, just right? Who knows. After an hour or more of this you start wondering how much more of this can there be. Can't pull over, that's just as dangerous for passing cagers. Can't wait it out because it could linger for hours, but wait, was that a star that just twinkled. Could have been, maybe it's clearing. Sure enough, soon a couple of more stars appear then a real opening to a clear sky. Getting out of this soup and it's gotta clear the highway soon, but that last layer of fog just hugs the pavement. About ten feet higher and it's clear. Then, in bouncing patches of fog there's a clearing. Taillights appear up ahead and the center strip stretches further down the highway. It's clearing, pickup speed, 65. Now 75, all is well, what a pleasant night ride. Home at 3:02am.