Skipping the Rainy Commute vs. Riding Through It

A rainy morning often means the bike stays in the garage and a less convenient backup commute takes over instead, usually out of a reasonable instinct that riding in the rain is simply more trouble than it’s worth.

Skipping the ride on a rainy day

This is the easier short-term choice, and it’s a completely reasonable one occasionally. But for anyone commuting by bike regularly, treating every rainy day as a reason to skip means losing a meaningful number of commuting days across a typical year, depending on climate, and often scrambling for a backup plan at the last minute each time.

A kit that makes rain rides fine

A proper rain jacket, genuinely waterproof rather than just water-resistant, addresses the most immediate discomfort of riding in wet weather. Fenders on the bike itself prevent the specific, particularly unpleasant experience of spray coming directly off the wheels onto your back and legs, which affects comfort more than the rain falling from above.

Waterproof covers for bags or panniers protect whatever’s being carried, and a slight adjustment to riding style, reduced speed and increased following distance from vehicles, accounts for longer stopping distances on wet roads.

Once this kit is assembled, a rainy commute becomes meaningfully less miserable, often removing the need to skip the ride at all except in genuinely severe weather, which is a different and much rarer category than ordinary rain.