Does Wind Suck or Blow

This is the question that I contemplated on my 61+ mile ride this past Sunday. I mean on the one hand you have the lower pressure that would seem to "suck" in the air around it. On the other hand you could say that the high pressure "blows" itself into the lower pressure. I finally decided that wind both sucks and blows especially when you're riding into it on a bike.

As soon as the ride began I realized that once again the forecasters were off with their predictions of 5-10 mph winds. More like 15+ and early on I was riding right into it. No big deal as my legs were fresh and I pushed pretty hard. I initially headed out to Moraine View Park to the southeast of my home in Normal,IL. I was maintaining around 15-17 mph which is pretty good for me.

The route was a good one taking me through the farmlands of Illinois and past row after row of GIANT windmills that are part of a new green energy producing project. It is amazing how big these things really are once you get up close to them.

I reached the farthest southeast point of my trip at about 27 miles. There were actually some real hills in this part of the county which is pretty exciting when you live in Illinois. It was fun to get the legs working.

Once I turned back north I realized just how hard the wind was blowing as I now had it at my back and was cruising at between 20-21 mph. By the time I finished the next 12 mile segment my average for the ride was up to 16.4 according to my Garmin GPS.

Alas, that would not last long as I now had to turn back into the wind to head for home. This was definitely the hardest it had blown all day and I was headed right into the teeth of it. On top of that I had quite a bit farther still to go than I thought. I stopped around mile 51 to take a look at the directions I had hastily jotted down on a sheet of paper. I didn't realize quite how tired I was until I tried to get going again and somehow ended up slowly falling over when I lost my balance and couldn't get clipped in in time. That was definitely an omen of things to come for the rest of the ride.

At mile 52 a dog came charging at me. The owner yelled "Don't worry he doesn't bite..." but judging by the barking I wasn't convinced so booked it out of there as fast as I could. Then at mile 55 while praying the ride would be over soon, I apparently ticked off a bird watching its nest and it came after me cawing like crazy and swooping down at me. Great, now I had to pick up the pace again to outrun the crazy bird from hell.

Lucky I was almost into town by then and managed to crawl into the house and collapse on the couch until the tunnel vision cleared. Man I love bicycling!

The next day we took the TrailBlazer into the shop and found it had blown a bearing in the transmission (this after the tranny being rebuilt 30,000 miles ago) and it's been in the shop since. That made the decision to commute to work by bike this week an easy one. I was really hoping to have it back by today so I could rest the next couple of days before the Ride and Stride on Saturday but it looks like I'll be riding in at least tomorrow yet.

Ride On!