Battering to windward on the Dollarton. I grab two more gears than usual and pedal through peanut butter. It’s unfortunately not a winning ratio in Alfine-hub roulette. The cargo box is empty and as brutally arresting as a direct headwind can be, every twist of the road tosses my bike off-course with a random bias. I ignore the dance of the front wheel and focus well ahead, wishing for a wider bar than clears the covering. It takes me ten minutes longer than usual to reach SuspensionWerx.
With the wind blowing hard at our backs we’re fighting the leeward lift down Keith road. Claire holds the handles of the marine-plywood “boat” with both hands as our combined 300lbs of bike and bodies shimmies and snakes. The rain-cover rips at its mounting hardware and the box groans to stay in place, the frame flexes more than I care to think about. I’m clamping on the brakes with greater vigor than usual which has me fighting the feisty front wheel’s desire to steerer us out into traffic. It’s a good reminder that we’re due a set of pads in the back. As counter-intuitive as it is, that’s consistently where the magic happens when it’s time to slow things down.
We lean aggressively into a left turn at the exact moment the lee-side breeze jumps from zephyr to whirlwind. I counter-steer with prejudice and the front tire protests as it scrapes across the pavement as much as it rolls. It feels like the beast pivots ninety degrees on a dime and I relax the brakes as it whips itself into tacking the easterly course we desire. Our stereo is blasting Starship. We build this city… on rock and roll. We sing along but the relentless wind carries our voices elsewhere.
Enjoying a much calmer afternoon we stop to hit the park on our way home up the hill. After racing the ziplines, climbing up to the big slide a half-dozen times, and a general charge-about, my Clairebarian would like a bit of help climbing into the bucket. No problem. I bend down and lend some lift as she throws a leg over and rips one right in my face. She’s laughing so hard, I can barely understand that she’s attempting to dispute the origin of the toot. She spends the next five minutes trying to convince me the episode was hilarious. My mind is elsewhere, it’s the easiest wind I dealt with all day.
Cover photo by Morgan Taylor (Thanks Morgan, Stephanie, and Sophia for helping inspire us to spend more time on bikes!)