Wind Crash

By the time I picked my bike up from Racer's, I was too late to join the scheduled lunch ride so I headed out for a ride from the shop's front door. I headed to the mouth of Rock Canyon and hopped on the BST. I had a headwind that wasn't too bad until I got to Slate Canyon. I tried out a few of the trails south of Slate, but the wind got fierce enough to blow me off the trail so I went back to Slate.

I had some extra time so I headed up Slate with the wind at my back. If you've been up there, you know it's steep - steep enough that you have to focus on keeping your front wheel on the ground. I rounded a corner, the trail got really steep, and suddenly the wind changed directions so that it was coming down the canyon. "Good", I thought - "I'll have a tail wind on my way back to the shop."

Suddenly, the gental headwind turned into a gale-force wind coming down the canyon. I'm no weather vane, so I can't guess as to the speed, but however fast it was, the wind lifted my front wheel off the gound and started to tip me backwards. I shifted my weight so I wouldn't flip completely over. The wind turned me sideways and my Superfly was suddenly a parachute and I was behind it. The bike pushed me down the trail I had just come up. The wind wasn't slowing down, and the trail was steep, so I flailed under the weight of my bike and the wind for another 10 seconds.

I wish you had been there. All this story needed was someone to laugh at me while I tried to lift my bike off of me.