Tonight's ride was like a two face, harrowing on the way north and glorious on the way home. My eternal curse seems to be being faced with a headwind in both directions so if tonight's ride provided any benefit, it was that I only had to deal with 50MPH gusts one-way. 

On the way home a wayward Budweiser 12-pack box lodged itself onto my foot and pedal and I had to do quite the watusi to get it dislodged. Who else has "I survived the great gusts of ought eleven" stories to tell the grandkids?

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This morning was a great ride in with the wind in the back. I managed to make all the usual green lights, but with much less effort.
Yup, every soggy day this week.  Since the rain didn't get me this morning, the lake decided to get me at Oak Street curve . . .
this is a joke right? it wasn't that windy last night, certainly not enough to tell the world you rode your bike. #notimpressed
It was extremely windy throughout parts of yesterday evening through last night.  At some points there was virtually no wind at all.  I guess unless you spent the entire evening outdoors and occupied all of Chicagoland you might very well not know what wind this individual encountered.
I made it to my destination before the wind got super serious.  Afterwards, I had to make a store run to grab dinner, and on my walk back, the wind started gusting so hard, that half full trash cans lost contact with the ground, and flew into parked cars, spreading trash all over the streets.  Walking in it sucked enough, I couldn't imagine biking in it!
Although my Weather Channel app said that there was a 19mph wind from NNW this morning, I could swear that I had my usual LFT headwind x2. Which I suppose explains why I was feeling a little "winded" by the time I got downtown.
I had a slight tailwind on my ride to work this morning- I was headed south-east toward my office. It was really nice.  I am dreading the ride home since according to the weather, it will be up to 20mph out of the Northwest, which is where I will be riding into...Oh well, just part of biking in the fall I guess.  Some of the wind gusts yesterday evening almost blew me sideways into traffic- I had a steel grip on the bike to keep straight.

It was pretty windy (still is) that wasn't the real problem the wind tunnel or the way it deflects off surrounding buildings is what gets you off guard.

 

Peak wind reports over last 24 hours...

Illinois Peak wind
location (county): speed (mph)

Rockford (winnebago)... ... ... ... ... ... ... 58
Rochelle (ogle)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..46
Dixon (lee)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 47
Peru (la salle)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..43
Pontiac (livingston)... ... ... ... ... ... ... 41
De Kalb (de kalb)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 45
Aurora (kane)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .46
Waukegan (lake)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..40
dupage (dupage)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..49
Wheeling (cook)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..43
midway (cook)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .45
o'hare(cook)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..46
Morris (grundy)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..45
Romeoville (will)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 41
Joliet (will)... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .46
Kankakee (kankakee)... ... ... ... ... ... ... .45
Yorkville got frost last night!

This is the awesome thing about Autumn.  You'll get some crappy weather like we had that initiated this post, then you get an AWESOME week like we're having now.  Love bike commuting in Chicago!

 

 

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