It has been raining for the past few days now but I was the trooper and pedaled my way to work today. Biking to work doesn't have to be a soggy affair as long as you have the proper equipment!

First on the list of essential items to keep yourself dry on your ride to work is a set of good fenders. I was determined to ride to work today so I stayed up pretty late last night putting a pair of nice new shiny SKS fenders on my bike.

Zip ties are the handyman's friend!

SKS fenders are great!

I was told these fenders wouldn't fit my particular bike because the brake cables would hit them. I was able to get a longer mounting bracket for the rear fender and that gave enough clearance. Lacking a longer bracket for the front fender, I improvised a bit and used the handyman’s second best friend (duct tape being the first) to secure it to the fork . . . zip ties!

These SKS fenders are sturdy and do a great job of keeping tire spray and road splash off of you.

Thanks for the jacket, Josh!

A second essential item to keeping dry is a nice water repellant jacket or windbreaker. Josh gave me this nice windbreaker designed specifically for biking and as the photo shows, it repels water very well. I was nice and dry and toasty on the ride in this morning. Thanks for the jacket Josh!

The West Gate of old Taipei as seen on my way to work

There is one other thing, that I unfortunately do not have, that would make any bike commute in the rain dry and comfortable and that is a pair of nice water repellant biking shorts or pants and shoes. I wore my regular exercise shorts and they got damp fairly quickly despite the fact that it really wasn’t really raining that hard. I had to switch out of my damp running shoes at work and hope that they will be somewhat dry when I bike home. It’s on days like this packing an extra pair of socks comes in handy.