'bout this time...say 2 years ago, the first warm day of the new season and ALL I wanted to do was ride...HOWEVER...the "light breeze" as they called it was blowing steady at 30 to 35 and gusting to almost 50. NOT your ideal conditions! I decided to drive south to my daughter's house and park and ride back, It was a 22 miles ride with the wind at my back...I could get the car later! I live about 8 miles from Trek in Waterloo, so I saw a lot of riders banging into the wind on the way down there. I REALLY felt kinda sorry for them. The ride home was a hoot...There where a few spots, since the roads are not anywhere NEAR straight that I had a pretty nasty/dangerous cross-wind. About 1/2 way home I saw a rider about a 1/2 mile ahead of me. I started hammering. I caught him pretty fast and recognized him as an "into the wind" rider I had seen earlier. I announced my presence so as not to startle him and blasted past him going UP-HILL at about 30 mph! (Gotta love the tail-wind thing) In his defense he was probably faster and stronger than I was but I was fresh! He disappeared into the distance in my mirror and I rounded a turn to catch a crosswind gust! OOOOPS....alright...still in control..I gingerly reached over to tap a button on my computer to change modes and it popped off....hit my foot and I kicked it into the ditch. Well given the crosswind, I was REAL careful slowing and stopping, the last thing I wanted was to be in the ditch too. I spent a good 20 minutes looking for the computer but there was enough fresh, lush weed growth to have lost it forever. I was not nearly as upset about losing the computer as losing the data for what whould have undoubtably been the fastest 20 miles of my life...(even wind assisted...lol...I'll take it (and yes, I would qualify the story with the wind assisted explanation))
Got home in record time!...whatever it was...'cause I don't wear a watch when I ride (mine rattles)