Go Back!

About all the snow you can find out there right now.

Saturday the temperatures were forecast to reach the 50's, so there was no way I was not going to ride. Despite the fact that the famous cyclist, Sarah Cooper, was going to be in town to speak about her accomplishments, I was going to have to take a pass on that. Riding took precedence this day.

Then again, while the Sun shining and the air being warm sounded awesome, the near 30mph winds did not. Oh well. Gotta go give it a try no matter what, right?

I waited until it got warmer and headed South for familiar roads. I was just onto the gravel when I looked up and saw a strange sight. Another cyclist coming toward me?! Who could it be? I waved and he veered toward me so I did toward him and we stopped. It was Todd who was out from Waterloo trying to get a ride in after being sick for a while. He said the wind was pretty brutal, and it was. However; I wouldn't find out how brutal it was until after he took leave of me and I plodded on southward against the Southeastward blast.

It was a constant 25mph with higher gusts, and at times I was going so slow I had to weave a bit to keep it upright. It was a bit of a sideways wind, so the bike wanted to push a bit. Herding the bike, pushing hard, and concentrating on the possibility of cars, (because you weren't going to hear them before they got to you), was draining after not being out in the country for a month.

As far as I got...... Pretty sad.

I decided to take a breather, and my phone was blowing up anyway with messages, so I pulled over at the usual spot and checked things out. Ironically, the wind intensified at this point. It was actually blowing the tears out of my eyes!

I had my bike leaned at a pretty deep angle against the gate there, but a gust came up and picked my bike up off the fence and slammed it down so hard it bent the rear derailleur and knocked by front bag clean off the rack.

I futzed around with the derailleur but there wasn't much I could do out there. I wasn't doing well physically anyway, so instead of making a bad situation worse I decided to turn back and nurse my bike back home where I could better diagnose and fix the issues. Good thing too because the chain was jumping around a bit and despite another attempt at straightening it out, I wasn't very confident in the situation.

Yeah.....I was bummed. I really wanted to get in a significant ride but even without the rear derailleur issues I would not have gotten far. I need to get a lot of work in before I am at the level many of the other gravel riders are around here.