Headwinds I Lose

Ever since we moved to a house that was not only up a Category 3 hill, but also, crucially, into the prevailing wind on my way home, I’ve been trying to develop a love – or at least a vaguely positive feeling about – a headwind. After all, if cyclists can learn to love hills, and supposedly enjoy suffering, surely we can relish the prospect of battering into a block headwind?

Typically, the photos don’t show the headwind …

Today and yesterday have been good opportunities to put it to the test. Yesterday was one of those days when I realised on the way into town that I had a stonking tailwind of the push-you-up-the-hill variety which is never as much fun as you might think when you get it on the outward leg of a journey (even worse is the undetected tailwind which only manifests itself when you turn around and realise that, no, you weren’t just super fit and awesome on the way out). Today was, if anything, worse – I set off on a bright, sunny, chilly but calm day, the sort of day that makes you glad to be alive and on a bike and faintly and smugly sorry for all the poor people stuck in their cars – only for the wind to get up just as I was setting off for home, and strengthen as I turned to tackle the final climb.

One thing about headwinds is they give you plenty of time to think. Indeed, I swear that time slows down when you’re going into one (this may be why Einstein* allegedly thought up the theory of relativity while riding his bike) – yes, you’re a bit slower going into the wind, but that doesn’t explain how you feel as if you’ve been battling it for eternity. So I’ve had time to consider some of the positives of headwinds and I’ve come up with a short list:

1. Unlike a crosswind, a gusty headwind won’t send you right across the road and into oncoming traffic.
2. er, that’s it.

Surely there must be some others? Because it’s going to be easier to learn to love the damn things than it is to move house, or change the rotation of the earth so our prevailing winds run from the east.

* “Never believe anything I’m supposed to have said if you read it on the Internet” – A. Einstein.

Advertisements

New Year, New You

Some mornings, heading out on the bike to lead the Bigtown Cycle Campaign winter rides can be a bit of a chore.

This was not one of those mornings.

Amazingly, it turns out 20 other people thought that a bike ride in the winter sunshine was an excellent way to start the year. As I mentioned on the ride back, it’s days like these that get us through the winter.

I hope your 2019 had as promising a start.

Today’s Cycling Adventures in Full

– Wake periodically in the night to the sound of the wind rattling the house

– Rise in the morning to the sound of the rain now blattering against the windows. Check weather forecast repeatedly to see if possibly it is going to relent on the double dot rain and gusting wind. It doesn’t.

– Check phone periodically for any text cancelling the thing I really need to be at today, or end up letting people down. None arrives.

– At the appointed hour, review my rain protection. Don actually waterproof jacket. Don not-actually waterproof trousers. Round up all my gloves – a pair to get soaked on the way there and a pair to get soaked on the way back. Cram hat on head. Zip jacket up to chin.

– Step over developing puddle where the wind has squeezed the water under the door frame and go outside.

– Almost lose the battle of wills between me and the wind and the garage door, but prevail. Step cautiously into the garage in case the wind decides to make it ‘best of three’. Wheel out bike.

– Decide bike will not be standing up in this weather, kickstand or no, and lay it pre-emptively on its side.

– Realise bike has a slow puncture. Get out track stand and pump up tyre.

– Pick up track stand from where the wind has blown it over.

– Retrieve hat and gloves from where the wind has deposited them.

– Do battle with the garage door again.

– Set off into the teeth of the wind. Get buffeted into the hedge about 100 yards from our house.

– Contemplate the B-road ahead.

– Turn around and get blown back up the hill, with another near side trip into the ditch for good measure.

– Text and cancel my appointment.

I can’t decide if I’m getting sensible, or cowardly in my old age…

Safe Mode

Hmm, what was that I was saying about December sunshine? Things were looking a bit less inviting for cycling this morning, especially for someone who hasn’t yet put her magical ice tyres on the bike …

I’d hoped the overnight frost would have been burned off by the forecast sunshine by the time I needed to set off for Bigtown, but instead we got fog, which was barely thinning by mid morning – and once down in the valley, it was thicker than ever.

As cyclists we get lots of safety advice, much of it unhelpful, but there’s one thing I don’t see repeated anything like enough – for cyclists and drivers alike – and that’s to allow enough time, especially when conditions are challenging.

I know myself that when I’m in a hurry, that’s when I’m going to take those little extra chances which are normally fine, but occasionally end up with an altercation (or worse) with an equally impatient driver. Being in a rush also makes us less likely to be empathetic (there’s even some ingenious research I read with trainee priests that showed they were less likely to stop and help someone if they were in a hurry to get somewhere, even if the thing they were in a hurry to go and do was to preach a sermon on the Good Samaritan) which doesn’t help on the roads much either.

So today, I made sure I’d left myself loads of time – to get off and walk if I needed to if the back roads were icy. Not perhaps as satisfying as steel spikes on your tyres … but just as important when it comes to keeping safe.

And if it turns out the roads weren’t too bad after all? Then there’s all the more time to stop and take photos …

Pencils Down, Please

November’s been hard work this year, what with a bit too much travelling and general stuff going on. On top of that the weather has been distinctly Novemberish, which isn’t surprising, I suppose, but it doesn’t exactly help.

December, on the other hand, will hopefully be a bit more sane. As someone who’s perfectly happy to let the festive season pass her by, there’s actually something quite restful about December. At this point in the year, I know I’m not now going to get everything I’d hoped to done, so there’s no point killing myself trying. Nobody plans meetings in December, at least not after the first week. And you’re allowed to pretend to be too busy to go to anything anyway. All this means that I have nothing – absolutely nothing – planned for this weekend (or any other weekend this year). This is the first time I’ve been able to say this since early October. No doubt I’ll still end up being too busy but at least it will be nobody’s fault but my own.

All of this would be much nicer if it happened in the middle of summer, but hey ho. At least today, when the sun put in an appearance, I was able to get out for an hour or so to enjoy it. And at this time of the year, that’s a bonus in itself.

Wind Assisted

So I survived my guest lecture this morning – the students seemed to largely pay attention throughout (I had visions of competing with their urgent snapchat conversations but it seems Young People These Days have absolutely no difficulty in putting their phones away and listening to someone rabbiting on, despite what you might think from the media). After some lively discussion and a (rather more academically informed) presentation on Warm Showers I climbed back into my Not Waterproof in Scotland waterproof trousers and my Actually Pretty Waterproof in Scotland rain jacket, and headed for home.

The ride in had been damp but in the end not too miserable, but as I had been pontificating about the joys of the authentic experiences available to those who travel by bike, the Weather Gods had been brewing up a properly authentic weather experience for my ride home. Well, authentic in all but one detail – true authenticity would have required a grinding headwind. Instead what I got was a fairly epic tailwind through town (interesting on the riverfront where, had there been any actual pedestrians hardy enough to be out on it, I would have had trouble slowing down for them) and then a properly epic cross-tailwind for the final climb up to the house. It’s quite something to suddenly find yourself cycling along on the wrong side of a B road when a gust catches you unawares; fortunately there were no other vehicles foolish enough to be out in this weather.

From the outside, had there been anyone to witness it, I must have looked a miserable sight – rainswept and windblown, battering uphill on a pushbike, my cap stuffed in my pocket for safekeeping. But I have to confess that it was actually a lot of fun. It’s one thing to leave a warm house and go out into the wind and the rain on a bike. It’s quite another to take on the wind and the rain, knowing you’ve a warm house to get home to.

Of course, this all depends on said wind and rain then not taking out your power for a couple of hours once you do get home. Thank goodness for woodburners, and laptops with decent batteries. And engineers who are willing to go out and repair power lines in a howling gale… now that really must be miserable.

That’s MS Expert to You …

I’ve joked in the past that having now been on not one but two cycle touring holidays – in two different countries to boot – I am now an international expert. Unfortunately, I seem to have had my bluff called on this one. After a couple of encounters with a lecturer at the local university when I might have pontificated on the topic with more confidence than my knowledge really warranted, I have been invited to come and give a guest lecture to his students on the potential of cycling for slow tourism in Scotland.

I’m only really entirely qualified to comment on the ‘slow’ part, to be honest, but this was one of those things that I agreed to back in September when it was aaaaages away and I had time to become a proper expert in all the other things before the end of November was upon me.

Except now of course, it is November, and I am no more expert now than I was then. Just to add to the fun, the weather is forecast to be dreadful, so even as I wax lyrical on the joys of cycling on holiday, the steady dripping of rainwater off my cycling gear will be giving the lie to everything I say.

Perhaps an alternative title could be “Cycle tourism in Scotland: Fine if you’re a duck”

Still, it’s been a nice excuse to go back over my holiday snaps again …