More Hills, More Grinding, More Dirt — We Do this For Fun

So, a complete wind SNAFU.

Took Gordo to Oyster-Bay/Center Island, even though he was not in the mood to windsurf or surf. Mistake No. 1 You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make 'em drink!)

We get there, it's unexpectedly honking. Back home it looked merely breezy. This was not in the forecast for up here. ... And Windfinder Pro said it was 8 knots.

Eight knots my arse, more like 18.

Rough seas on the sound side, far too rough for a novice. And the bay side was directly offshore. One mistake and he'll end up on the other side, in Billy Joel's backyard. Since he doesn't tack yet, strong straight offshore winds were out of the question. I could have sailed myself, but I wasn't going to do leave him on the shore twiddling his thumbs.

"If you are down to do something else, I'm totally down to do that," he said.

Long and the short of it; we turned tail, re-geared for biking, and put in a good 1.5 hr ride, hills, trails, technical and road. It felt like more climbing than descending, if that's possible. (But what that really means is more time climbing than descending.)

For Gordo, going up long hills is an out of the saddle walk in the park. Not sure he even broke a sweat. He went up Longview like Contador but without the steroids. Me, I'm huffing and puffing. In the time I take, he can circle round 3 times and do the same hill over again. I might have a few techniques for hopping over roots and kerbs up my sleeve, but that's about it.

We had some good fun on the trail section, but the technical climb got the better of both of us. We could call an interference on Oliver a large light-colored lab/pit mix. Did not want to ride that single track while he was on it alone off the leash. But he was too cute, and was genuinely confused in search of his mistress, as the calls and yells from the soccer game down below had him turning in circles.