Last Friday my wife sent me a mysterious text asking me if I wanted to picked up from work.  I ride to/from work almost everyday, and I’ve decided to try to beat my personal best for miles in a month this October.  So why would I want to waste a perfectly good opportunity to add some miles to my monthly total?  After all Fridays are one of the best opportunities to add miles, even if you’re tired (and I normally am) you know that you have two full days to recover.

So I told her I was fine and asked why I would want to be picked up.  She told me it was windy over where we live.  I explained to her that I am superman and a little breeze never slowed me down.

Turns out it wasn’t a breeze.  It was the dreaded Santa Ana’s, the devil winds!  For those of you that live in Socal, they need no introduction, but for those of you who live elsewhere and because I’m bit bored let me explain…

We pay a lot for homes and for rent in Southern California, in return we expect the weather to hover around 70 degrees.  If it drops into the 50’s, we complain that it’s too cold, if it breaks 90 we huddle around our A/C units and wait for FEMA.  If you choose to ignore the seasons completely, you could probably manage to wear t-shirts and jeans all year.  However, several times a year the weather betrays us, and the whole region goes into chaos.  One such case is when it rains (for those in the midwest, when I say rain, imagine drizzle); drivers take it as divine instruction to rear end one another, and in the absence of another vehicle to simply drive off the street.

Another such case is the Santa Ana’s.  A high pressure system of dry air forms out in the Mojave Desert, then squeezes it through our mountain passes (for those in Colorado, think foothills, for those in Alaska think… flat?) on it’s way to the ocean. Idle cigarette butts and sparks from campfires are transformed into massive wildfires with 100 mph winds and single digit humidity.  Satellite pictures of Socal during the Santa Ana’s show dust and ash filling the atmosphere even miles out to sea.

Our streets become almost unrecognizable as it’s covered in debris.  Landscaping and trashcans find their ways on to freeways, billboards are shredded, and signage of types is redistributed through the region.  For those of us who make our abode in Socal we feel like we’re on vacation to one of those other places that you visit and then go home…

So… after ignoring my wife’s appeal for good sense, I started off from work into the wind.  When I say into the wind, I mean directly into the wind.  Due to a lack of a proper windsock I went on accuweather’s app to see which the direction was coming from, if you drew a line from my work to my house that line would be the exact direction of the winds.

During the first stretch of my commute, I go beneath 12 overpasses.  I suppose I could say encounter 12 underpasses?  Anyways, I normally take these underpasses rather aggressively with the idea that if I build enough speed going down one side, I’ll have enough momentum to get back up the other side without killing myself.  As I dropped into the first underpass to my shock and horror I found myself slowing down instead of speeding up.  The wind was being funneled through the underpass with such pressure that the force from the wind was counteracting the force due to gravity.  I tried to stand momentarily to get more force out of my legs, instead I found my body to be a sail, with each gust pushing me off balance.  I dropped to some ridiculous low gear, and sat and spun and spun and spun…

To make matters worse, the amount of debris on the bike trail and streets began to accumulate, with each mile it became more difficult to avoid the branches and “urban landscaping” that wanted to pop my tires and break my spokes.  Some considerable branches and whatever that brown bark like stuff on palm trees is, broke off in front of me, requiring me to take evasive actions.

One of the natural benefits of the Santa Ana’s is to spread seeds and spores over a wide region increasing biodiversity.  I think I ended up with a whole angiosperm in my sinuses.  The wonderful flora, fauna, and fungi mixed with the single digit humidity made my throat burn and my head throb.

But at last I made it, and felt accomplished in some childish way, much like a kid who’s just burnt an ant or something.  I paid for the experience throughout the entire weekend, but was able to get back on the bike the Monday morning and start a new week.  So 7 days into October I sit at 107 miles and today is not done.