Jessie's Well Blog

Day 25

Day 25
October 2, 2015

 

My route today changed from due east to southeast.  During the night the wind shifted.  Can you guess which direction the wind was blowing?  BING! BING! BING!  You are right! It was blowing from the southeast at 25 miles per hour with gusts up to 30.  I started riding at 7:30 am.  My average speed was 5.5 miles per hour.  I was not able to get out of my low gear.  As trucks would pass me in the opposite direction the wind gusts were so strong they would actually stop me completely and I would have to stand on my pedals to keep any forward momentum.  The trucks going my way became my friends.  As they would pass the air current eddy would give me about 5 seconds of reprieve from the head wind.  After 5 hours of riding I had covered 32 miles.  Marilyn and I decided it was time to pull the plug on the day’s riding.  We developed a plan “B” for our route which bypassed Johnson City, Kansas and put us in Liberal, Kansas for the evening.  From here I am able to split my days into shorter mileage and still stay on schedule.

The weather does not look much better for tomorrow so we’ll just do our best.  Still looking for the prevailing westerly wind.