Long Ride on a Very Bad Blustery Day

Yesterday I decided I'd take the day off from cutting firewood since I finally got all the scrap wood in the yard cut to stove lengths and piled... perhaps even enough to last until we stop having to BURN so much firewood this season.
I've been thinking a ride straight east from our house, on Frost Road, clear out to where it ends at Stanley, might be a good ride.  It turns out to be almost exactly 20 miles (slightly over) one way to Stanley on a much less traveled road than, say, North-14 or NM-344 or Route 66. 
I left about 10:30 AM and it wasn't too bad, although a bit cold.  The sun was clear and trying to warm things up  but the wind kept cooling me off.  Although the wind was breaking mostly across my back, I worried about having to fight it face-on for the return leg.  Sometimes the wind will shift direction later in the day and I hoped for that - but fully realizing I might have a real struggle coming back.
I fully began to realize the struggles before me even before I got to Stanley to turn back west for home.
I stopped at the side of the road for a water/potty/snack break (don't worry, the only viewers were a few cows)  and found I could not stand the bike up by itself with the high winds, so I propped it against a stop sign:

... But I finished my snack break and rode on to Stanley, a "town" with a post office, volunteer fire department, and a good sized church that serves a vast area of sparsely populated territory surrounding it.
When I turned back west on 472 for the fearsome ride home, I was surprised I was able to roll along fairly steadily, albeit in my lower gears.  It's always a depressing sensation to have to pedal, HARD, going down hill just to keep barely moving.  The wind seemed to be howling from the direction of nearby South Mountain, and I hoped the wind would ease off the farther west I rode, but that was not the case.  It continued to worsen until I could barely keep the bike upright - being blown off balance, left and right, swept one moment into the oncoming lane and barely avoiding slamming off the shoulder to the weeds and rocks on the right a second later,.
When I got within 100 yards of the 344/472 junction at Cedar Grove due north of Edgewood, I'd had enough.  I could barely push the bike walking alongside it from the force of the wind, and had trouble standing up.  I walked and struggled with the bike the last 100 yards to the intersection, leaned the bike next to a very solid stand-pipe sicking out of the ground near the road, and called my sexy rescue babe Jacque.  While waiting for her, the wind continued to worsen, and I put on my polar fleece skullcap, my ski mittens, all my outer layers, and did not regret for a moment having carried all that "Stuff" with me.
Planned mileage today:  Just over 40.  Accomplished mileage:  Slightly over 32, 14 of which was facing nearly gale force wind.  And COLD.  It was colder by 4 PM than it was when I left at 10:30 in the morning.