Monday, October 29, 2007

Welcome Home Wind!

Yes, indeedy we have now entered yet another one of my favorite seasons.... Wind. We moved my century ride in Powhattan to Sunday due to rain on Saturday, and were faced with beautiful blue skies, cool(ok chilly) temps, and 20 + mph winds. Head winds, cross winds, more cross winds, and finally on a stretch out to Cumberland, a tail wind. You know that bad times are coming, when 50 some odd miles into a ride, you are cruising at 25 mph.

For the wind challenged out there... that means you are going to die coming home.

Powhattan is fabulous. The roads are just to die for... smooth, fresh asphalt, little traffic, fun roller hills, and plenty of places to take a call of nature. This is my favorite place to ride, even above my routes, as my routes are all chip sealed. We didnt hit chip seal until we were in Cumberland, and even then, it was only for about 10 miles. We saw deer, nice people, tons of cyclists, and if it hadn't been for that pesky wind thing, we would have had a perfect day.

Congrats to Big Bill on hitting 7000 miles for the year a few miles from the parking lot on the way back. We graciously let Bill take the lions share of the pulls on the way back (into the wind) so that he could be the first to celebrate. I know that doesn't make sense, but it sounded good at the time. Face it, me 5'6" and Bill 6'2". I was much better off behind him going into a head wind! Ditto that for the reason I let the team of Andy and Mary on their tandem take some of the harder pulls into winds... its harder for tandems to stop/start, so I wanted them to have freedom to do what they needed to do. You can rationalize anything if you try hard enough!

The bummer of the day was J not being there. Hopefully she can get in to see a good tummy doc today. We miss you girl!

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