Remember to Check the Weather

I took a longer loop today, intending to go over 30 miles to see how my LT would hold up. Well, instead of the expected beautiful weather, I somehow managed to depart into the wind during the passage of a front. Yup, that meant I went OUT in a headwind and came BACK in a headwind. Ah, the value of checking the weather forecast.

Also, of course, I was dressed for a southerly wind and came back in rapidly dropping temperatures. I ended up shortening the loop by about 5 miles, and did 26 miles averaging 11 MPH (!!!) . Windy!

Here is the GPS track of the loop (I borrowed my son's gizmo and bike, more on that below). Start top right-ish, head clockwise. Winds were SW at departure, NE half way through. Highway 36 is hard up against the mountains, winds hard out of the North:



GRRRRR. Well, another Colorado weather riding lesson.

Believe it or not, I might have actually made this weather happen. I took a short video of the beautiful sky over the mountains on an aborted ride the day before. If you listen closely, you can hear an intermittent "ping" in the background noise, that was my front wheel bearings about to fail. That's why I took Jordan's kit.