I tried

The math checks out

Equilibrium at the minimum

Dragging the chub around the neighborhood

Alive but still not kicking

First time rolling on the right side of the Atlantic, first time rolling on the left side of the road.

From Galway out to Ceantar na nOileán, the island district of Connemara, in a northwest wind that made a ripper on the plains of Kansas seem like a friendly breeze.

+25 mph sustained winds almost the whole ride, occasionally gusting to about 45 mph. I saw one other guy on a bicycle all day, and to judge by appearances, he was just lolling down to the pub.

Great feckin' ride, tho. One of those rides that's equal parts challenging, enjoyable, and beautiful. Every vista everywhere was new to me—the narrow roads curving around hedgerows and stacked-stone walls, the scrubby expanse of the bogs, the rocky desolation of the coastline. Was it worth lugging the bike across an ocean for? It was worth it.

The weather was mostly wet shit: mid-40's to low 50's with that almost comically intense wind. I got rained on four or five times, and squalled on twice. But there was some sunshine too. … Overall, it was probably the nicest day since I've been here—the driest, for sure.

The outbound traversing Moycullen Bog let me know right off it was going to be a hard day. It was no less windy inland than on the coast: I rode around the periphery of a large wind farm on the way out, and right thru the far part of it on the way back. But I found that lean-into-it pretty quickly, and the wind didn't bother me too much, except in the direct crosswinds, when the deathgrip required to keep it upright got tiring: my hands were pretty well done by the end of the ride. ... Luckily, tho, it was mostly a pretty constant wind, with not too many big gusts; and once again, the new wavy-rim wheels proved pretty damn good in the crosswinds.

Ceantar na nOileán was worth the trouble of pedaling out to, a moonscape of rocks and surf and wind where Galway Bay opens to the North Atlantic, and where no tour buses go. It’s a starkly gorgeous place, in an overtly unwelcoming kind of way, like Antarctica or the best brutalist architecture. I wouldn't want to live there, but I'm glad to’ve stopped by.

Prob should've done this as an out-and-back, returning the same way I came. I was doing about 30 mph without working hard on the bit of costal highway I retraced before turning off, to head back up the Cloosh Valley, via the Galway Wind Way (really), a route thru the Galway Wind Park (really), a nature preserve and wind farm that features a very sneaky 700-ft sorta-kinda hill. It was windy.

The wind died down after I reached Upper Cloosh, on the back side of the not-quite-a-hill. I wanted to hit triple digits solo for the first time this year, so I rode thru a bunch of rural and then suburban-ish roads that were pretty slow going (because gravelly and very narrow, with no visibility around every hedge- or wall-lined bend). The experience of riding thru the fields edged with stacked-rock walls near Upper Cloosh was worth nearly getting run over by a couple of tractors, I think.

Legs felt great in the first half, the one upside, I guess, to not having been on the bike in a week. Got a lot of lactate in the last third, tho, more than I've felt in years, and my quads hurt like they haven't in ages when I got off the bike. … On the one hand, I wanted to get that lactic-acid power system back up and running, right? On the other hand, it's a bit concerning, especially since the power on this ride turned out to be 10–20 W lower than what I would've guessed given the effort.

I ended the ride coughing and wheezing, a product, I honestly think, of inhaling peat smoke for much of the ride. The scent of it, coming out of the chimneys of houses along the way, was noticeable throughout. Charming enough burning in a pub's hearth, perfuming the air like light pipe tobacco, but it gets a bit noxious when you're breathing deeply in it for six hours.

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eric pashman

Feckin' savage

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I tried

The math checks out

Equilibrium at the minimum

Dragging the chub around the neighborhood

Alive but still not kicking

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