Sometimes

Last night the ride home was the very definition of nucking futs! Get to the valley and hop off the bus. It's windy. Not breezy or blustery, but f*cking Windy. With a capital W. 37MPH. From the north/north-east. Thus a head or head cross wind. 

So I cover every bit of exposed skin and start pedaling. Trying to anyway. For the first 20th of a mile it's going great. I'm able to keep moving and am not getting blown around too much. Then I get my first gust. It hits me and pushes me and the bike from the east side of the MUP to the west side and tries to push me up the plow berm and off the trail. I get off and push for a bit until it dies back down enough to actually ride. Ride another 100 yards before I get punched in the face with a huge gust that stops me dead. Literally stopped dead. I'm pedaling, but my rear tire is now just slipping on the ice. I dismount and walk again. Or try to. I have to stop walking because it is gusting so hard that when I lift a foot to take a step it is pushing me backwards on the ice. I top 260 lbs. And the wind is pushing me backwards. 

This wind hates me. It lets me ride in 100 yard stretches and then kicks in again just as soon as I hit one of the numerous glare patches on the trail. Wind + dirt + blowing snow = mirror finish ice. Negative friction. 

Did I mention that this is all on an uphill? Yeah. A long, slow uphill. 

Eventually I get out of the open and am able to ride again and it goes slow, but better. It took me 50 minutes to go three miles. 

I have no idea how high the gusts were, but the weather service had predicted 60MPH gusts yesterday. The thing is, I've been in 60MPH winds before and these felt a lot stronger than that. 

The upside of last night's ride is that it made this morning's ride with 16MPH winds and gusts of only up to 25MPH much more reasonable. Heck, I didn't have any problems getting to the bus stop at all.