Todd's Canyon- 3XPark ride

Just woke up after a tough ride, a spa dip and a few beers.  After Vince said he wanted to meet at Chapman and Santiago, I decided to take off from my house around 6:15am.  There was no wind.  So I climbed up the hill out of my neighborhood to Olympiad and headed towards the canyon.  All was well...no wind.  I turned right on El Toro and the wind was howling.  There was a charity mountain bike ride going on by Cooks.  It looked pretty fun.  There was supposed to be a party at Cooks after with a live band.  I headed up the hill and the wind was getting worse.  I then headed up Modjeska Grade and the wind just got crazy.   It was a combination head wind and cross wind.  Once I got to the ridge, the wind was so bad it was starting to blow me over.  I saw another guy going the opposite direction just walking his bike.  Heading down the hill, I had to unclip a couple of times in case I wrecked ....keep in mind I was going about 5mph downhill(Noah speed).  I eventually made it down the hill and back on to Santiago.  The wind was a mix of head, tail and side.  It was crazy.  I did make 19mi in about an hour so it was still an ok pace.  I was wondering if people going the other way knew what they were getting into.    I got to the meeting point 5 minutes early, but there was no sight of Vince.  I was going to wait for about 20 minutes and then take off.  Right before I was going to take off, I saw Vince pedaling like an animal into the wind up Chapman.  After a brief pit stop, we headed up and then down Jamboree.  It was a tough ride down since we were moving at a pretty good pace, but the cross wind was trying to throw us into the curb.  High profile carbons weren't ideal for the first part of this ride.  We hit the bike path off of Portola and cruised at 30mph+ all the way to Harvard.  I'm sure people going the other way were pretty surprised at the speed we were moving and we weren't even pushing it.  Vince and I talked a lot until we got to PCH after CDM.  Right then I know I was thinking about the pain that was about to come so I wasn't thinking about talking anymore.  It was pretty uneventful until we hit Park.  Then the real "fun" started.  Vince and I hung together for 3/4 of the first climb and then he pulled away.  We went to the park to refill on water and then headed back down.  Top speed on the way down?  51.8mph. Pretty fun.  We turned around at the stop sign and headed back up.  At this point Vince owned it and I pushed to survive.  We both pushed to the top and then turned around.  This time I didn't care about the downhill speed.  We turned around at the stop sign again and headed back up with Vince getting a pretty decent lead.  It was a complete struggle with sweat pouring all the way to the top.  Pretty painful.  We met up at the park and refilled.  We went our separate ways after that.  I headed up 133 to El Toro and did Aliso Creek.  It was slow going, and the more east I went, the tougher the headwind got.  I almost scrapped Vista Del Lago because of the 10-20mph headwind on Los Alisos.  I did it anyway just to not puss out.    I made it back and it turned out to be ~73mi.  I'll send stats later.  I don't have my cord here.  Jacuzzi and beers this afternoon.  

Here are the stats from Canyon+Park.  Pretty slow except for the bike path.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/83028986