Me, Myself, and I

The three of us went for a ride together on Saturday. I told myself it was going to be an easy 30 miles as written on our schedule, but myself objected and said we should go more since it's so nice out. I was not hearing any of it but me popped up and voted with myself and I was overruled. So I looked up the loop that we've done in the past and it was 36 miles. All of us agreed that was enough and out we went. I was a bit cold and I was bitching up a storm the first ten minutes. But finally I warmed up and got into an easy rhythm. The first 20 miles was a southeast route and the wind was out of the west south west so it was easy going and we averaged 19 miles an hour and kept our heart rate down. I knew we were going to be in deep doo doo on the way back but just kept it to myself.
When we hit the left turn and started the ride back our speed dropped from the 20's right to 15. The way back is also slightly uphill. Me told us just to put are head's down and just try to keep the ave speed over 16 so I hit the lap button on my watch and started to push. Myself, whose idea it was to do the extra 6 miles was in charge of the open areas where the wind was full on. He would get down into the drops and be as aero as possible and push as hard as possible. When he got tired, me would take over and sit up to recover before I would take over on the break heads and pedal a consistent pace. Me was in charge of the hills. There isn't a lot of hills on the way back, just some bumps, but with the wind, even a bump is a hill. The three of us would split time, at about mile 7 of the 16 I was dying and ready to quit. Myself had just given it all for a mile and still the average dropped from 16.4 to 16.1 and the wind just wouldn't stop. Just then me took over and did an easy pull and let our average drop. Somehow we manage to keep it at 16 and came to an easy spot. This gave us some hope and at mile 10 we must have hit the end of the climb because I was able to keep the pace over 16 without hitting to high of an hr. At mile 10 myself took over and did a hard pull to get us back to 16.3, then each of the next 3 miles the average went up .1 until we were at mile 14 and at 16.6. I knew we would make the goal of over 16 mph ave for the return trip so we sat up and coasted in the last mile or so.
It just so happened that the last mile was not into the wind anymore so we ended 16 miles at 16.6 and combined with the first 20 at 19 gave us a 17.9 ave mph. I was worried there at mile 8 on the way back that evil bill was going to show up and ruin everything, but we were able to keep him under wraps, at least for the time being.
It was tough ride at the end of a tough week with 4 bikes and 3 swims, and then 12 hours of yard work/staining was still ahead. I think I should have taken Monday off from work as I really needed a vacation from my weekend