As everyone knows, much of the country suffered from serious storms the last few days with the southern states being hit the hardest. NE Ohio was spared the tornadoes, but we were hit with damaging winds and heavy rains. This morning at around 4:00am I woke up to the sound of 60mph winds rushing through the trees and rattling the storm windows. It was unnerving and I was worried that we'd come out that morning to discover our neighbor's thoroughly dead ash tree laying on our garage (I should mention that we live next to the village idiot). It wasn't the thought of losing the garage or the cars it was the thought that my FX would be crushed that had me in fits.
Thankfully, we were spared.
However, as I've mentioned before, I don't ride on days with winds above 40mph. Even though a 60mph tailwind would have been nice, getting hit with all the debris would not. There were trees down all over the city, schools were closed because they didn't have power, and there was some significant property damage to businesses and homes.
As someone who does their best to ride in most conditions, I'm interested in hearing where you draw the line. I've only been at this for about a year and certainly don't have as much experience as some of you do. Are you a die hard that will brave anything to go by bike or do you have lines you don't cross?
Well, I used to draw the line basically at anything less desirable than 60F and calm and dry. But, since giving up the car I can't be quite so picky. I have faced 60mph+ HEADWINDS coming down off the Rocky Mountains. I had no choice. I've had days I really expected to get blown flat by the wind.
ReplyDeleteI can live with a day or so of it, but a couple of weeks ago I was getting really fed up with the wind. It had been blowing continuously for days and I was just dog-tired.
I would love to say that if the wind got above 40mph I just drove...but y'know.
I do remember one of my first Colorado bike commutes I was heading into Golden on hwy 93 from the north. 93 is notoriously windy between Boulder and Golden. The wind was blowing so hard I was leaning 45 degrees off vertical into the wind (from the side) and hoping and praying that the wind didn't suddenly die and drop me on the pavement.