Wind therapy
If you're a biker, you know there's nothing like it!
Wind therapy? What’s that?
Ask anyone who drives a motorcycle about wind therapy and you will get a heartfelt answer.
Wind therapy is riding eastbound along a quiet back road in the bottom of the Canadian Prairies. The westerly wind is at your back, the prairie grain crops are waving to you as you pass puttering along at 81 km/h in a 100 km zone.
Wind therapy is getting tired of riding east in the eastbound lane. You sift over to the westbound lane and ride east in the west lane. Against the non-existent oncoming traffic. No one is coming west. No one is coming east. Just you and the wind at your back. For that one crazy minute, you are blissfully alone, and loving it.
Wind therapy is riding past fields of Prairie canola and smelling the flowers. You ride past a field of sunflowers, six feet high, and you get their calming odour.
Wind therapy is roaring through a mountain pass in the northern Rocky Mountains. You are riding hard on a fat left-hand curve. You hold out your right hand and reach for the solid grey granite wall of death just a fingertip away. There is no shoulder. Just road. Rock. The real possibility of death. Pure freedom.
Those of you, riding along in your steel and glass, all-wheel drive air-conditioned SUV cage watching, but never feeling, the world go by. We call you “cagers”. Cagers ride with stereo blasting, strapped in seat-belted airbag protection. You don’t “get” wind therapy.
Wind therapy is riding westbound through Gross Morne National Park in Newfoundland. Riding westbound against the wicked wind off the Labrador Current. Wind bounces fiercely along the rock walls of the Tablelands. A wind so strong that it lifts the front of your bike off the road. A wind so variable it bounces along the walls of the Tablelands and changes direction.
A powerful head wind is suddenly blowing so strong off your right that it wants to shove you into the oncoming lane. Or so strong off your left you are heading for the ditch.
The road in Gross Morne is almost hand-paved. It’s the best road on the whole of The Rock. It’s long, straight, without a single pothole. The road is raised up on a bed of rock. There is no shoulder. You must stay on the road, or you will drop six feet onto killing rocks. You keep going. You make it to a safe campground and set up for the night. And breathe a sigh of lovely relief.
Wind therapy is a cold morning riding south past Destruction Bay on the way to Whitehorse, Yukon. You are heading home from a ride to Alaska. The day is sunny, but cool. You look up ahead, way ahead. Weather is moving in. Clouds are tightening, blocking the sun. The wind is picking up and you are riding right into it. You have no choice, other than finding a rock to hide under. You gear up and ride on.
Four hours later, you roll into Whitehorse, cold, wet, and sparkling clean. After a three-hour shower, you have to be clean. You are exhilarated and wouldn’t have it any other way. You made it, you conquered the storm. You feel as if life is as good as it ever will be.
It is pure, unadulterated wind therapy. Ask a biker!
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I don’t have a motorbike, but my bicycle gives me a bit of this feeling!