The non race report of a trip to Albion

With some time needed on the bike this weekend and my no-snow clause in my race contract I tossed around a couple ideas for a ride with the final idea of parking somewhere south, ride to Albion, chill for a bit then ride back to the car. Two separate rides with two separate workouts. This also would give me a nice change of all the same roads.

One paragraph in is enough to start a rant. Yesterday's wind was crazy, I knew it was going to be. I read about it on weather sites, could hear it blasting through trees, felt it move the car on the drive down. I knew it was going to be an interesting ride. Soon enough after putting on 5 layers of upper body clothing, 2 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of gloves and 2 headphones on I was ready to face the wind. The 2 headphones were there to hopefully muffle the wind and distracted my mind from how cold it was along with the wind.

So my rant has nothing to do with cold or wind, neither are fun especially when combined, my complaint was on how many flags there were on the route that I choose. I'm not trying to be unpatriotic, I'm talking about ALL flags. Once out on the road I was being blown around pretty good and I knew it was windy, what I didn't need was a flag reminding my just how windy it was. I swear every house I went past gave my this visual reminder. I wanted to ride with my head down or eyes closed but not really knowing where I was going I felt that was a bad idea. All flags should be removed!!!!

I never really got a break from the wind even with the lying flags telling me I had a tail wind as I was attempting not to crash out on one of the worst roads I've ever ridden. The 50 from Loretto is apparently a major road that has not be repaired since it was paved 40 years ago. The temptation to ride on the smooth safe soft gravel shoulder crossed my mind more than once. The last few km towards Albion were enjoyable though.

Good visit with many, some comments were made about my choice of bike for the day, watched the 1:30 race start before gently persuading myself to head back north into a wall of death. Altered my route a little and got onto a great road heading into Tottenham, nice shoulder, good pavement. Much safer now that I was riding head on of the beast. I came across this.

There weren't many photo ops but this was just awesome. Yes that is a phone booth and a coke machine in the middle of a farm field. I'm beyond even smartass comments on this one.

Eventually got back to the car, a little longer on the return with a total of 4 hours on the bike with a mix of everything in there. Some planned intensity, some wind driven if you want to stay in forward motion you need to push a lot harder intensity also. I refrained from eating the scary food that was available at the parking lot I started from. I think you can park in a McDonalds for days without them caring, just eat something. BLAH!!!