(w)In(d)sanity!

You know what they say. What doesn't kill you, hurts a lot!! I'm not dead, but I am tired. Seriously, painfully tired!

Without checking the weather at all, I called Dan M. tonight and asked if he wanted to go for a ride. He said, "Yeah. I think I can do that." I said, "See you at 7:00."

I got ready and left the house just before 7:00 and rode slowly to Dan's house. I rode slowly mostly because there was an insane wind blowing against me. With a little effort, I made it the block and a half in about a minute. Dan was sitting in his driveway waiting on me.

We mounted up and headed out toward Glendale. The wind was almost unbearable at times. We were creeping along at 13-14mph on the downhills! Ugh! We somehow made it to the corner of Country Club and Lake and turned east.

Things got ugly fast!

The wind from the side was almost worse than the head wind. We were tossed around by gusts that would've capsized small fishing boats. Did I mention it was hot too! 93 stinkin' degrees! At least the humidity was a bearable 48%. The only good thing about the wind was the way it blew a fine mist over us when we rode past some sprinklers. Of course, it turned around and blew sand all over our legs a minute or two later when we rode past a gravel road. Sandblasted!

We got a short reprieve when we neared the lake and rode in among the trees. We actually got up to 16-17mph. Woohoo! Then we turned south and all woohooness disappeared. We were headed straight into the gale again and we were going uphill!

I hung with Dan about half way up the first part of the hill, then I let the rubber band stretch too much and I was out in no man's land. When I saw my speed dip below 9mph, I quit looking at my Garmin. It was too painful!

Dan reached the crest of the first half of the hill, looked back and saw me suffering far below. I can only imagine what I must have looked like to him. An ant toiling under a load 6000 times my size I suspect. He kindly rode back to me and dragged me up and over the first hump of the hill.

I didn't fair any better on the second half. When the rode tipped upward, I stayed with Dan for just a little bit and then dropped backward as he rode away. This time he didn't come back for me. He just slowed a little at the top and let me catch up. When I did, his encouraging words were, "I forgot how much of a wimp you were." With friends like Dan, who needs enemies?

We rode the next three miles or so out to Glendale dealing with the gusty crosswind again. Our goal was to hit eight miles in less than 38 minutes. That's what Dan had done earlier in the day riding straight into the wind. We made our goal. 8.5 miles in just over 38 minutes.

The second half of the ride was only moderately more enjoyable in the sick sort of way that it's more enjoyable to hit a cat in your car than it is to hit a dog. Less damage! (Sorry cat lovers! I am not one of you!) The crosswind was only slightly in our favor when we were going west, so we weren't a whole lot faster over the first three miles.

When we turned north, headed toward the lake, everything got better. We were quickly up to around 30mph. I hit around 37mph on the first downhill and over 40mph on the second part. It gave me great satisfaction to fly past the 25mph speed limit sign at that rate. I am a criminal in the making I'm sure.

After the lake, we kind of took it easy the rest of the way in. There wasn't any greater joy or lesser pain in working hard, so why bother? We cruised into town and at Sixth and Howard we parted. Dan wanted to go see who was at Lemon Park. I wanted to go see how nice a cool shower felt. Pretty good, it turns out! (garmin data)