Well I must say...I've never experienced anything like this past weekend on a bike. Wind, wind, and more wind. In our quest to remain competitive on the BikeJournal mileage leader board, a few of us brave souls took on mother nature this past weekend and nearly lost the battle! From our weather guesser's technical accounts, all the elements and planets aligned properly to produce some of the worst weather on the West coast and Northern Nevada in quite some time. Record snow falls, 120+ mph winds, and floods all plagued our region in a short two days.
In a sick sort of way, VegasDogDoc and myself were looking forward to testing some of our newly acquired "foul" weather gear. Unfortunately, the rain abated and just left behind horrendous, 30+ mph winds. We took our usual southwesterly route down St. Rose Pkwy directly into this beast just to see how bad it could actually get. The longer we rode, the slower we got! VegasDogDoc commented that this was just like climbing Mt. Potosi. With every mile up that 10 mile mountain, the grade increases by 1%. And so, the same with the very "flat" St. Rose Pkwy. By the time we got to the end, we swore we were climbing a 20% grade! "Enough of this crap!" I thought to myself. So, we changed strategy and tried to put the wind at a 90 degree angle to our projected path. That worked for awhile until a very strong gust, literally picked me up and moved me about a foot sideways! That was certainly unerving to say the least, so we wisely turned downwind, put the beast to our backs and headed home. That was probably the hardest 25 miles I've ever put on a bike...no more of that, ever!
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