I can't find an internet resource to prove it, but apparently it's considered entirely normal for Tucson to turn into a godawful, horrible cauldron of gusty and shrieking windstorms during the spring. At least if I believe KGUN9, the news network that claims to be "on my side".
Biking into a headwind is probably the most debilitating, morale-sapping experience one can go through. I've long since reached the point where on a reasonably flat, smooth road I feel most comfortable being in 20th or 21st gear or so. I don't quite put it in the highest gear, but it's close. When there's a bad headwind though, I start feeling exhausted unless I put it into something like 15th or 16th. And even that's probably too high, because it still takes me an extra 20-30 minutes to get home and I feel like Gary Busey's liver when I'm done.
The most infuriating part though, is that the wind SWITCHES. Basically 1/3 of my route is directly north, and the other 2/3 is directly east. And reverse it coming home, of course. In the morning, when I'm going face first into a 30-40mph wind that's blowing due west, I used to actually tell myself "Oh well at least this'll be helpful when I'm coming home" WRONG. 9 hours later when I'm headed home, the wind has switched. Now it's blowing due east.
Omniscient Wikipedia has some explanations that would be helpful if lived near a large body of water .
Differential heating is the motive force behind land breezes and sea breezes (or, in the case of larger lakes, lake breezes), also known as on- or off-shore winds. Land absorbs and radiates heat faster than water, but water releases heat over a longer period of time. The result is that, in locations where sea and land meet, heat absorbed over the day will be radiated more quickly by the land at night, cooling the air. Over the sea, heat is still being released into the air at night, which rises. This convective motion draws the cool land air in to replace the rising air, resulting in a land breeze in the late night and early morning. During the day, the roles are reversed. Warm air over the land rises, pulling cool air in from the sea to replace it, giving a sea breeze during the afternoon and evening.
But nothing explains this infuriating phenomenon for me. At first I considered that maybe it was all in my head. I'm paraphrasing, but the Essential Touring Cyclist did have a section where they address the fact that for a large survey of people crossing the US (both ways) 70% of people reported headwinds.
It may always SEEM like a headwind, because you still feel air blowing across your face, but the only way this would not be an occurrence is if you are slower than the wind is blowing behind you. If you are travelling at 20 mph, and there is a 15 mph breeze behind you, it won't neccessarily feel like it. It'll feel like there's a 5 mph headwind.
I threw out this theory though because A) It's not just kind of windy here, it's fucking brutally windy and gusts up to 50 mph and B) I have several flags across my route, all of which confirm Mother Nature is bitch slapping me both ways.
I've been keeping a very simple chart of the headwinds since the beginning of March, and the numbers back me up. After 39 days of travel (which equals 156 instances, because I switch directions once each time) I've had the following luck
40 times there was no wind
24 times there was a crosswind
2 times there was a tailwind
90 times there was a headwind
That just seems ridiculous. That's more than all the other situations put together. There's no water nearby. There's mountains on two sides of me, but I don't see why they'd have an effect either. I can't think of a single, solitary reason for this. And don't think I haven't been trying to figure it out. I want to know what I can be angry at. When I blow a tire, I can blame the douchebags who throw beer bottles out of their windows and leave broken glass all over the road. When an unexplained rattling develops, I can blame myself for Mickey Mousing my poor bike into it's current monstrous form. When it's too hot or too cold, I can blame my choice of geographic location to live in.
But who do you blame for a headwind? The obvious candidate is of course, Mother Nature, or whatever force your personal beliefs feel run the show around here. But there's no rational way to get back at her. I can burn tires, spray 70's era coolant into the air, and leave the water running while I brush my teeth all I want, but in the end she doesn't really care. What with global warming, China, and asteroid collisions all on her plate, the actions of one insane, pitiful individual probably amount to less than a tiny blip on her radar.
I've come up with an idea though. GAIA. I'm not talking about the crazy hypothesis that the Earth is somehow alive and sentient, I'm talking about the fictional character from the well known cartoon series Captain Planet.
NOW we're getting somewhere. It's silly to feel anger or frustration towards a series of pressure gradients and geographical features combining to influence wind direction, but it's totally appropriate to feel seething, white hot fury directed towards this bitch. Fuck you, Gaia, and your stupid giant purple vein in your hair. I hope Mati comes into your house in the middle of the night and stabs you in the face with a carpenter's pencil for giving him the stupid power of "Heart", which as far as I can tell didn't help him in a single episode except for the opening credits where he used it to have a small group of monkeys save him from a burning rainforest.
I feel better now.
