The Seattle area is always a wee bit chilly and rainy, no? Doesn't that grow tiresome on a motorcycle? How are the locals with their respect to mortorcycle drivers? I wouldn't dare drive one here as it would be instantly asking for gooey death.
Chilly to you maybe, but to a local homegrown boy like me, it's a non-issue.
Seattle has a rep for rainy but the fact is it rains less here than in NYC. Thing about the Seattle area is that there are more overcast days than most anywhere. Seattle gtes 40-60 inches of rain a year. The rain is also what you people back east would hardly call rain. I have been in rains there that would make people from Seattle think that the earth was going to flood biblical style. It rains, but rarely really heavy rains.
I also do not live in the Seattle area. I live on the northeastern tip of the Olympic Peninsula. If it's raining in Seattle chances are it's sprinkling here. We get 10-15 inches of rain a year. It's because we are in the "rain shadow" of the Olympic Mountains just west of us. The clouds rain off before they can get over the mountains, and thus Port Townsend is relatively dry even in comparison to Seattle.
On the west side of the Olympics is the Hoh Rain Forest. I've been told it is the second rainiest place on the planet, with 400+ inches yearly. It's a national forest and it's quite beautiful.
Ironically the climate conditions here in the Port Townsend area are ideal for growing opium poppies. You can grow them in Seattle, but they will not produce opium, but here in the Port Townsend area, they grow like wildfire. In the past I have tried them, and I have friends that have had some from Afghanistan, and they say they are actually quite potent locally. There are even some crazy fools that make crude low grade black tar heroin out of locally grown poppies. It's nearly undistinguishable from the "black", that you get from Seattle, that comes from Mexico. But then, that's not an interest of mine these dayas anymore....
