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There are unforeseen difficulties of changing locations.  In an area without hills and lots of tree coverage, there is a lot of wind.  The wind hits the broad streets and whips along it.  The tree tunnels magnify this affects when they exist the trees are far from the road and the roads are straight, so they offer no resistance.  The hard buildings that are part of the landscape do not buffet the wind, rather they cut it and force it around them.  Understanding this fact is something that you can only understand while on a bike.  Walkers are affected too, but to a lesser affect because they are plodding and the resistance is tiny.  Cars are as hard as the buildings, the wind is cut off.  On a bike your progress is stymied strongly or conversely aided strongly while you bomb down the road at 40kph feeling no wind at all.

Trees bend in the wind, their branches close together split the wind creating turbulence that saps it of its force.  Hills do the same, on a grander scale.  The wind goes up and it hits the wind going across and they pile up like a highway in fog— but unlike the analogy the wind does not stop, but scatters and flexes; it slows. Here in Big Smoke, the wind flows unimpeded.  Which is also not true—true Big Smoke is covered in hills and valleys, Suburbia Big Smoke is a little rougher than a Nevada lake bed or a Utah salt flat.  The boulevards are wide and nearly featureless.  True Big Smoke has trees as old as the city part they grow in and mostly big and tall.  Here everything is new, relatively and so are the trees.  The sharp cut of the buildings, with smooth, straight and flat sides splits the wind, it condenses it and forces it out faster than it would over a barren field.  Oh there are those too, barren fields, the wind runs unimpeded over them, but between the two story houses on wide boulevards, it whips up something fierce.

The first time was last Friday, that I went for a ride.  I used my winter bike, because it was the first bike I put together.  There is no snow on the ground yet, there are clumps but whereas Boonieland had a meter so far this year, (which did mostly melt) Suburbia Big Smoke has had a hundredth, which completely melted.  Anyways I was out riding far from the domicile and my seat broke.  The nose of the seat poked up and the rear down.  This now means I must find a bicycle repair shop before the winter comes to this place.

The second time was today, in the cold, which dropped upon the landscape with all the suddenness of a nature spirit realizing that winter inspection was around the corner and IT had not done a thing.  And then there was the wind.  I wore four layers including a wind breaker, with a hood and hat.  The ride was cold.  My head hurt.  Last year in Boonieland, riding in -35°C I was warm with a hat and helmet, today with a hat, hood and helmet, I was cold.  It might have been because I was cycling INTO the wind and because of the condition of the winter bike, I had to repair my road bike and it is much faster, wind plus speed meant the relative wind speed was close to 70km/h and in -15°C ( let me calculate the windchill factor) feels like -30°.  On the way back 40km/h with the wind feels like, surprise, -15°.  It is supposed to get colder this week than that and snow too.  I need to get the bike repaired soon.