Darkness was coming but the howling headwind whipping at my body and had pounded me for the past fourteen hours refused to abate.
Standing over my bike while leaning into the vicious wind, I swigged down the last of the hot water from my canteen. I had eaten the remaining Snicker bar about an hour ago. The red bitumen and surrounding the desert floor radiated latent heat from a scorching afternoon.
Forty kilometers of the open desert still lay between me and the roadhouse at Cadney Park, the day’s destination I should have arrived at three or four hours ago. But the fierce headwind had had me crawling across the desert floor at a snail’s pace. Now, several hours of riding in the dark stood ahead of me.
