Too windy

SSE at about 20mph.

I was riding towards the south thinking I that I've ridden lots of times in stronger winds than that.  I have also ridden lots of times when I felt stronger than I felt today.

I wasn't have much fun heading south so after a while I tried to work a little bit to the east.  That also turned out to be pretty hard.  Meanwhile the predicted partly cloudy was mostly cloudy with the occasional quite dark patches.  The air started to get that fresh and full of water feeling that often precedes rain.  I decided two different things at more or less the same moment.  One, I was too far from home.  Two, it was too windy to keep trying to ride south.

It was premature but I started a move towards home.

There's some digging going on in a park over in South Saint Anthony.  I couldn't tell exactly what it was from Raymond so I detoured down into a neighborhood I visit only very occasionally and came across this.

That's an outline of Lake Superior with an opinion message.  That is the first such sign I have encountered.

I spent quite a chunk of my time back when I still went to the plant every day engaged in activities which facilitated the mineral exploration that eventually identified the locations where the sulfide mining is now proposed.  So I have an opinion.

I often said to people at the plant that sooner or later people in the big cities were going to get wind of this proposed mining and they were absolutely not going to be happy. And that is what has happened.

After getting a little closer to home I tried to work a bit to the east to increase the total mileage of the ride to something acceptable to me.  East was much easier than south.  I got over to Como Park thinking that if I could get to the southeast edge of Lake Como it would be mostly downwind all the way home.  I was trying to stay out of the wind as much as possible so I ended up riding someplace I only very rarely go.

This is inside the park, the engraving on the bridge identifies it as part of the Como-Harriet street car line from 1898 to 1954.

Imagine that, we used to have public transportation on tracks.  Now we use that bridge as part of the continually expanding system of asphalt paths in Como Park.

What had attracted my eye though was a field of wild flowers that park management has planted and allowed to flourish just below the bridge, just off to my left in the above photo.

I thought the best angle for a photo would be from up on the bridge.  Luckily I happened to have a bicycle with me so I was able to ride back off to the left a hundred yards or so to get onto the section of path that crosses the bridge where I was able to get the photo I wanted.

Too windy but I managed to get a ride in anyway.  I believe that is the Auckland Rule.

In the final indignity of the day after I had gotten myself that far over to the east as soon as I started back the wind did one of those Hauraki Gulf nearly 90 degree wind shifts, coming smartly around to pretty much SW.

*sigh*

My remaining miles were more south that west but the miles west that I did have to get to get home I rode into a cross head wind.  It ain't right.