Sweet wind

It was a bit of a challenge to make it out to Paula’s school for our customary Friday Sweetwater ride.

That (above) is what the wind was doing, all afternoon. 30mph gusts, if not higher.

Tis nothing when you feel half decent. Last week’s Sweet Friday ride was dismal. By the time I got there, I was done. We just rode back on the river path. Not today.

Crossing the Santa Cruz River yields a traffic free ‘commute’ to school. Choices are a) ford a river or b) brave ~4 miles of high speed traffic with little to no shoulder. Total no brainer for my rides out there. Recently we found a tiny piece of trail to make it even more traffic free, connecting to neighborhood roads out by her school.

I cleaned up Paula’s room while she did her last parent/teacher conference. Then we were out the door to test out mettle against the wind.

It’s been way too long since we rode here, so we did a bit longer loop, riding what the TMP rock ‘n road challenge does.

The cacti are starting to wake up…. hedgehogs are always the early risers:

I love getting pushed down the trail by strong winds. I reached Warp Factor 9 on a tiny descent without even trying. Then, having to apply the brakes uphill is always a strange sensation. It just feels so wrong, yet you know you’re out of control and should really slow down.

The wind shifted just enough to blow us back home (east), where we opted to stay on Grant rather than suffer the wind all the way down to St. Mary’s. Felt downhill the whole way, and definitely like cheating.

I’m dropping Chad off at the start of the AZT 300 route tomorrow morning. I’ll be sure to heckle him as he hikes his siiiiiinglespeed up a few steep pitches in the Canelo Hills. Then I’ll be watching his progress by SPOT. He’s beta testing our tracker that’ll be running during the race, with a half dozen or more SPOTS on the board. I’m hoping to watch his dot wrap up the 300 route, and more.