Wind

It gets pretty windy here where I live.  Maybe not the worst in the country but it's pretty strong.  Strong as in 100mph gusts with 70mph sustained.  If you're interested that kind of wind is almost a category 1 hurricane (Saffir-Simpson Hurrican Wind Scale).  It can blow like this for a few hours or all day and through the night.  I've never been to the south of France but I've read about it and the descriptions of the Mistral are spot on for our winds here.  We get them as siroccos or as winter storms.  I remember one bad wind week years ago spinning my lowest gear on my mountain bike into a headwind.  It took me a ridiculously long time to get home.

So, with that background out of the way we "slept" through 50mph winds with 70mph gusts a few nights ago and woke to 55mph gusts.....between the gusty winds and the wind chill bringing the temps town into the 20's my wife and I had a quick conference at breakfast.  Do we put the kids in the trailer or drive the car?  The car won out but I still rode.  It was a kind of car-lite compromise.  Drive the car to school with the bike on top and ride from there to work.  Of course, for us, this is a non-issue since neither of us have a place to park the car at our respective places of employment.  Or, we do but since we don't drive all the time we don't have a permit so it costs a bunch.  I can park pretty cheaply at my office but that doesn't help my wife since she picks the kids up.  It actually works pretty well.  We only drive the car a couple of miles and the kids don't get buffeted and potentially tipped over (surprisingly easy to tip a trailer over).  This is pretty much how we weather the winter months when there is snow on the streets.  I ride, the car sits at school and my wife takes the bus.  In some ways it's the only real car-lite solution around here.