Carol - Saturday's ride.  What a joy it was to have Cassandra home.  We started the day coloring Easter eggs for Sunday (I love being creative).  Then, after careful preparation...which includes fueling our bodies, checking tire pressure, lubing chains, packing our riding gear and bikes into our vehicles, we finally took off for our departure site by Sammish Island at the public hunting area.  After parking we looked up to see a wonderful young eagle in the tree.  What an amazing sight that was.
We started our ride in the direction of Bayview continuing on to LaConner.  Our average speed with no tail wind was 15.5.  This part of the ride was wonderful...good speed, great companionship, and lots of beautiful sunshine.  We couldn't ask for anything better.  After reaching LaConner we looked for a place to eat where our family friend Melissa works.  Yes, we needed to eat again to keep our energy levels up.  This ended up being a very good thing because after leaving LaConner we rode toward Conway then crossed over to ride through the tulip fields.  Wow....the sun was still shining but the wind we encountered was crazy.  From my time spent on our sailboat I've become pretty good at determining wind speed and it must have been blowing a constant 35 with gusts higher than that.  I've never ridden in wind like that before and at times it almost blew me and Cassandra off our bikes.  It felt like a constant non-stop uphill battle trying to ride against it.  Where before we were making such good speed, we were now averaging about 11mph.  Sometimes we actually dropped to 8mph and we rode our remaining 20+ miles in these conditions.  Needless to say we were both exhausted when we finished.
Since I usually ride alone I treasured having Cassandra with me and without her I probably would have been tempted to find another way back to the truck. All I can say is thank you honey for the inspiration to continue.