Dont Take Downhills for Granted.

I have expectations when riding my bike. If I put in the effort to ride up a hill, I expect that I will enjoy a commensurate downhill, preferably of a gradient such that I can sit back and enjoy the view without excessive worry about tedious things like tight corners, loose gravel, or wearing out my brakes. 

None of this happened on the Crafers Bikeway yesterday.

I planned for the best kind of downhill: one where the uphill bit was achieved by car.  After a convivial lunch in Mt Barker Roger dropped me off at Crafers and I pedaled happily into a blustery wind, anticipating 27 km of downhill all the way to my front door. Actually, I pedalled in circles first because it took me a while to find the way out of the car park, but we won't talk about that will we?

The ride started with gentle sweeping curves along the old Mt Barker Road. I passed a little boy zooming along on a balance bike. Then I passed his father, peeing quietly beside the car while shouting "Junior! Come back!"  He got quite the fright when I went by, even though I steadfastly pretended not to see him.

I passed a teenage mountain biker hoiking his bike over the concrete centre divider. Then I did the same myself (not quite, I squeezed through a gap rather than hoiking) in order to visit the lookout over the Cleland Conservation Park.

The downhill went by too fast, as downhills do, and I stopped to feel superior above the traffic on the freeway, with views all the way to the flat blue sea.

Halfway down the hill I discovered that the hills funnelled the blustery wind into a torrent of air that rushed directly up the bicycle path. Horrors! I had to change into lower gears and pedal. While going downhill! All the normal expectations of a downhill ride were destroyed. Pedal I did, while my jacket flapped angrily around my ears, wind-induced tears poured down my cheeks, and my downhill expectations were destroyed.

I think we can all agree that I have first world bicycling problems. 

I turned a corner and the wind tunnel turned off, just like that. Normal downhill programming resumed all the way to the end of the bikeway where Adelaide's suburbs lapped against the flanks of Mt Lofty. 

I rode leisurely through quiet urban streets, through the parklands, and past old cemeteries with ornate grave enclosures. 

Back at home, apart from having had my eyeballs windblasted, all was as it should be. The cat, living his best elderly gentlecat life, slept soundly in his bed. The wind which had ruined my downhill died to a gentle puff.

I will never take a downhill for granted again.