Two stories: Starting on a ride on hot humid days during a period when there was a monsoon like weather pattern, i.e., hot, humid, thunderstorm every afternoon, but reasonably clear until the storm comes in. Told my riding partner we would probably get rained on, but it would feel good.
As we hit the far leg of the loop, the storm came in. Dark clouds with a low black shelf at the edge of the front as the wind picked up to a level that was blowing limbs from trees. I was riding with a decided list into the wind, the rain stung, and I tried to tell my riding partner to pull into a driveway just ahead so we could get shelter at the house. He got the wrong driveway and we wound up going down a gravel driveway paved with large rocks at a speed that was on the wrong side o discretion. There was a curve at the end of the drive. When I got there, his bike was on the ground as he sped through the grass with his arms spread wide making eggbeater motions as he was taking seven league strides. I thought I heard motorboat sounds as I got there.
The other was on a catered adventure tour on the Friendship Highway from Lhasa, Tibet to Kathmandu, Nepal. We crossed the last pass across the Himalaya Massif at 5000m (17,000 feet); it was largely downhill for the first part of the 100 km. to Kathmandu. There was a fast downhill for 10 km until we stopped for lunch with a small herd of goats for company. We still had 40 km. to the day’s stop, but I looked down the steep road and figured it would take about an hours. Maybe an hour and a half if one were pessimistic.
There is always a wind blowing uphill in the afternoon on the south side of the mountains as warm air from the lower slope rises and it can be pretty stiff. The road flattened after about a kilometer, the road turned right, and my speed went down to about 20 kph, requiring some appreciable effort to maintain that speed, although it was still downhill. I had to adjust my ETA by about an hour. My speed continued to slow as I constantly adjusted my ETA up. Finally hit a stretch that was basically flat with some slight upgrades. I was pedaling about 6 kph (4 mph). By my reckoning, my ETA was still 3 or 4 hours. I got frustrated and sagged the rest of the way.
Yep, I sagged downhill. As it turned out, it was only a km or two until the road crossed a bridge and headed downhill with an appreciable grade. We stopped in a village called Nyalem. But I felt supercharged as I breathed the densest air I had encountered in the last two weeks.