WINDY!!!
We knew the forecast was for very strong winds, but decided to press on. Our awesome host, John offered his home for another day to avoid riding in the winds. We declined because the winds were forecast to be strong for 3 days and we don't have that much downtime in our schedule. We've already been going slower than expected during the past few weeks.
John offered some encouraging words on our departure, "you guys will make Van Horn no problem, you are plenty strong riders". Oh, if only that was true.
The ride from the observatory to Kent was pretty good. A few ups and downs to start, and then a bunch of down hill to the interstate. As John had told us, this part of the ride was pretty sheltered from the wind.
During this stretch, we ran across a team of three that was riding the Southern Tier from West to East. They had two guys riding and one driving the support vehicle. It seemed like an awesome way to ride the country.
Once we passed out of the valley and into the plains, we were instantly hammered with winds. Vicious cross winds repeatedly pushed us from the middle of the lane all the way into the shoulder. We reached the town of Kent, which is on Interstate 10. This is where we were supposed to turn left (West), directly into the wind.
The wind was absolutely brutal. We tried to ride up the Interstate on-ramp and it was very unsuccessful. I quickly reached my smallest gear, and was struggling to do 4 or 5 mph. Several gusts almost stopped me completely. We decided it wasn't worth riding 10 stressful hours into this wind. (again, my pictures struggle to capture wind)
We hung out at the Kent mercantile, ate snacks, drank gatorades, and generally sulked/laughed at the situation. We knew the winds would be tough, but this was way beyond our imagination.
We gave up. We set up our tents and decided to sleep until midnight, when the winds were forecast to die down.
Jake randomly got up around 7:30pm, and the winds were noticeably weaker. We decided to go for it. We packed up our stuff, and hightailed it down the road. Since we are in the far western edge of the central time zone, we had light until ~9pm. Our route took us on the Interstate for the first 16 miles and then we rode on a frontage road for the next 22. Luckily, we were able to reach the end of our interstate riding just as the last visible light was disappearing into the night. Riding on the frontage road was much more casual, and we reached Van Horn around 11:30pm and stumbled into camp at the RV park.
We made it. It wasn't pretty, but we made it.
Day 55 - 78.23 Miles and (Night Riding)
Trip to Date - 2987.58 miles
Coast to Coast - 1985.13 miles
so, john was right ... no problem!!
ReplyDeletehint for taking pictures of the wind, point the lens transverse to the direction from which the wind is blowing (or, if you wish to be more creative) the direction to which the wind is blowing. you really can't expect much if you point the lens IN one of those two directions. It's sort of like looking at the sun. (now I am starting to become a bit confused)