Wind, Mud, Daughter

Last Thursday I took the day off so I could ride my Four Rivers 200k together. It was her first 200k for about 18 months because she has been so busy with her Masters and with work. She's hoping to ride Michele Brougher's 1000k in July so she needs to get some saddle time in. My Four Rivers is one of the easiest 200k brevets - normally.

The day before the weather forecast had predicted 8-10 mph winds but overnight they changed their minds and correctly predicted 20 mph winds from the North.

We had the usual onshore flow as we headed towards Huntington Beach and then even stronger headwinds as we headed North towards Sunset Beach. We rode on the beach path as we were barely able to hold 12 mph anyway. The beach was quiet which doesn't surprise me as the wind chill factor was 43F.

I was trying out my new GoPro Session 4 mounted on the end of my aerobars. The hardware is good but their software lets them down badly.

We continued inland on the San Gabriel River Trail with a strong side/head wind. One problem, of course, with strong side winds is that you expend energy not being blown off the road. Here's some video showing the turn onto the San Gabriel river trail. To be honest, the swaying of my bike makes me a little sea-sick. I think I need to invest in a helmet mount.

We headed inland to Montebello and had a nice subway sandwich in relatively calm conditions. Heading back there was still a head wind! This is the effect of a strong side wind.

Even though Stacey had warned me that there was copious mud on the Rio Hondo bike path, I decided to see if it could be ridden, especially as a mountain biker coming the other way said it was open. The first stretch had been cleaned but afterwards was a stretch of dirty water which I thought we could ride slowly to avoid splashing. I was wrong, it was sticky mud, the consistency of clay, with a sheen of water on top. The mud clung to our tires and rapidly enveloped the entire bicycle.

Listen to Stacey

We got to Shoreline village and ate at Tequila Jacks. We shared a chicken quesadilla and churros with ice cream. Very nice!

We had a very strong tailwind as we headed back to Huntington Beach.

As soon as we headed inland on the SART we had a side/head wind again. We had about 15 miles of tailwind and 110 miles of powerful head/side winds. So much for Amber getting an easy 200k.

I was wondering if there would be a way to mount an anemometer to the bike and integrate the wind velocity over time to get the total distance of air passed through. I bet this ride would have clocked 250km easily.