Just back from an +40 miler on our 17th wedding anniversary
. Took my hubby with me, however he complained as I was weaving my way through the potholes and dodging cars and the likes in the local town that I was on autopilot again, so I took a deep breath and bit my tongue. He was right, we were going over to my parents' home because my brother wanted to see us on our wedding anniversary and it is a route I cycle rather a lot at the moment! After switching off autopilot I tried hard to talk with him, but it was a touch breezy out, but it was also blue skies and really warm
. The wind being much further from the west than normal meant we didn't get hit quite so badly in the usual places, but it also meant that there was a strava segment that had an unusually favourable wind today - my hubby gave me permission to go for it and I knocked 36 seconds off the woman's leaderboard claiming the QOM! It's the little things in life!
In Middlewich life got interesting: its the only explanation for a sudden and serious grinding to a halt of being hit by a brick wall
: OK not a brick wall but the wind was gusting badly and bouncing off the buildings channelling it down the street and giving a really nasty headwind and at one point the sudden gust had me stationary for a moment before I managed to recover (track stand!) dropping on the smallest chainring and standing on the pedals to get some forward momentum! thankfully it is a section of road where cars cannot overtake you and luckily we had no cars behind us. Along the canal I was expect life to be much worse than it actually was and we were soon flying along much faster than we normally do when it is windy. Heading off onto the much smaller minor roads we did our good deed for the day when we came across a tarpaulin 3/4 blocking our side of the road - we stopped and anchored it to the lowest level of a 7 bar metal gate - which reminds me, earlier in the ride we had cycled passed on that had been knocked over by the wind? I had been left wondering how, until my OH anchored a tarpaulin to another one! (We anchored it to the bottom to try to prevent the wind knocking over the gate...)
Onwards and towards my parents' home we had to go over the M6 which was stationary south bound yet again, however that was not what we were looking at, it was the double rainbow that we were watching, though ironically we were not getting rained on and it was against a completely blue sky and there were only clouds on the horizon looking into the wind! I would have done a photo at this point, but there really was no way of getting one that was even vaguely 'nice' let alone decent. The local tip or the M6 simply did not appeal to me...
Our return journey was in the dark and tbh, there was little to report except for my both of my front lights running out (again
) and us upsetting a motorist - at least I think he it was us he was blowing his horn at
, anyhow, we ignored him totally
and that was that - home - in the dry with clear skies and wondering how we can get a ride in tomorrow - we have my parents' shopping to do in the morning and their party to organise for the afternoon, though we are not attending the party, more avoiding it!
http://app.strava.com/activities/102208318
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