The Hailstorm That Taught Me to Cover My Bike

The hail hit around four in the morning. I know because I was awake, listening to it hammer the metal roof of the shop, and all I could think about was the Road King sitting out in the yard under the cottonwood. It was August, the dry stretch in southern Idaho, and I had parked outside because the shop was full of tack and feed bags and a saddle project I keep promising to finish. The forecast had said thunderstorms. I read it, figured it would miss us, and went to bed.

By the time I got outside, the ground was white. Hail the size of shooter marbles crunched under my boots. The bike was covered in it, and the seat was a puddle. I spent the next hour brushing ice off the tank, checking the fenders, and doing the math on what a dented fender would cost to straighten.

The tank came out fine, luck of the draw. But the seat stayed damp for days, the grips were waterlogged, and I ran a fan on the electrical connections for two afternoons. That was the week I ordered a Favoto motorcycle cover.

This is not a story about a catastrophic loss, and I am not trying to scare anybody into buying a cover. It is about the slow, annoying damage that adds up when a bike lives outside. Sun faded the seat. Dust worked into the throttle. Every rainstorm meant another hour with a rag and a can of dielectric grease, chasing water out of places I could barely reach.

After thirty years of riding, I have been careful about oil, tires, and brake pads. I have replaced cables in a gas station parking lot and changed a rear tire in the rain. The weather was the thing I stayed lazy about. One hailstorm fixed that.

I spent two days drying out electrical connections. That was the week I decided the bike gets covered every single night, no matter how clear the sky looks.

The cover showed up in about a week. First thing I noticed was the fabric. It is heavy and coated, nothing like the flimsy silver tarps you see snapping in parking lots, and the inner layer is soft enough that it does not scratch the tank or the fenders.

It fits the Road King without a fight. The elastic hem pulls around the saddlebags, a strap buckles underneath to keep it from ballooning in the wind, and there is a vent up front that lets a breeze through so the paint does not sweat underneath. In the morning I fold it up and stash it in the left saddlebag. Ninety seconds, start to finish, and that includes the buckles.

I will be honest about the tradeoffs. It is not a garage. In a hard wind it snaps and flops, and I have gone out to re-buckle it more than once, usually at midnight in my bare feet. Rain can puddle on top if I do not angle the bike slightly. And it will not stop anybody from stealing the bike or pushing it over. It stops weather. That is all I ask of it.

The bike has about sixty thousand miles on it now, and it is the only one I own. Daily rides into town, weekend loops through the canyon roads, one long trip every summer. The cover has been through a full Idaho winter, a dusty summer, and one more hailstorm that rolled through while I was at a livestock auction across the county. When I got home, the bike was dry and the paint looked the way it did the week I bought it. That is the whole point of a cover. It is not glamorous. It just works.

Carol has taken to calling it my second skin, and she is not wrong. The cover goes on the same way every night, the same two passes around the bike, and it has become as much a part of parking as the sidestand. I do not think about it anymore. I just do it, the way I check the oil on a Sunday morning or top off the tires before a long ride.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If your bike lives in a garage, you do not need this cover, and you should keep your money. If your bike lives outside, even a couple of nights a week, the Favoto cover is the cheapest maintenance you can buy. It will not fix a bike that is already weathered. It will not stop a thief, and it will not replace a garage. It does one job and does it well: it keeps the weather off so you can ride instead of repair. I would also tell you to buy it before the storm, not after. I bought mine after, and that first hailstorm still cost me a seat cover and two afternoons with a fan. A cover is one of those things you never notice when it is doing its job, and you notice it immediately when it is not. The morning after that first storm, I made a simple rule: if the bike is outside, the cover is on. No exceptions and no telling myself it will probably be fine.