Mardi Gras weekend itself was great. The weather was nice and mild and we made a number of parades in addition to two good Giro Rides. It being the first weekend of March, I had decided to put myself in the wind's way during the Giro Rides. It's time to start adding some intensity to my riding, and the nice weather made that prospect ever so much more appealing. That's not to say that I didn't miss the break on Saturday, however. We were somewhere on Hayne Blvd. when Howard went to the front and, for reasons known only to himself and his psychiatrist, strung out the whole group. A couple of the riders at the front followed up on that and before I knew it there was a big split and things were coming apart all around. Coming around the right-hand corner at the end of Hayne, there was a small break already hopelessly off the front, then a fairly large gap, and a bunch of people like me who had been caught off-guard. I got together with a teammate and we did a couple miles of 2-man time trialing, finally catching the larger group just before the service road. I was feeling pretty good, and once we got onto Chef Highway we got a very nice paceline going that lasted until some dumbass surged and then some other dumbass decided to try and jump across the gap that the first dumbass had created. We had been holding 25-26 mph and the gap to the break had not been growing, but once that happened the riders who were starting to struggle stopped pulling altogether and the whole paceline crumbled. People were already camped out along the Endymion parade route when I had ridden out to the Giro earlier in the morning and there were even more as we rode back home down Orleans Avenue.
Saturday afternoon we headed downtown to Tulane's Tidewater Building around 3 pm so we could park in the garage and wait for the Endymion parade that evening. The weather was perfect, the crowd was thin, and the riders on the extravagant floats were throwing tons of stuff. One of The Daughter's friends from Iowa was in town for a few days, and another from New Orleans was there, so everyone had a great time. We got back home around 10:30 or 11:00 pm, after which I went to sleep and The Daughter and her friends went back out to party until maybe 2:30 am. We had watched the Iris parade earlier that day and a couple of others the night before.
Sunday's Giro was similar to Saturday's and I again felt like I got in a good productive workout. Shortly after arriving home from that one, I showered and changed and rode out to
Apolline Restaurant to meet a few people from the club to watch the Thoth parade. I locked the commuter bike to a little tree on the side street alongside a neighborhood bar. The parade was nice, but as usual it was running a little late and we were planning on visiting Mario at the hospital, so with a few floats still to come we decided to head over there. Well, I walk around the corner and find that some dumbass has locked his bike to the same tree as mine, and in doing so has run his cable lock straight through the main triangle of my bike. I asked around if anyone knew whose bike it was, and this rather drunk guy sitting on the stoop of the apartment behind the bar comes over, looks at the situation, and says, "No problem, I'll just pull up the tree." The tree in question was obviously dead, and he had no problem pulling it right out of the ground, after which we just threaded it through the two locks to free the bikes.
Anyway, over at the hospital, Mario was sound asleep so I never got to talk to him, although after talking with his nurse we decided to go over to the nearby grocery store and get him some chocolate mousse since he is still restricted to non-choke-hazard food. I had to leave, however, because there were plans to watch the Bacchus parade that evening and I was in charge of making dinner. Bacchus turned out to be really, really crowded. We arrived there, near Fat Harry's, just after the first couple of floats had gone by, and it didn't look like there was any way we would get past the wall of ladders, pop-up tents, chairs, and people in order to see much of the parade. We walked up and down a bit until I saw a spot where we could get up closer, just behind some ladders where there was a small gap. We stayed there a little while, and then as people moved or left we worked out way up to the front where we could see the parade and catch some beads. That worked out great, but by then it was getting late and we were all suffering from parade fatigue. We ended up heading back home as the temperature started to drop. Monday was basically a recovery day as a cold front came through and it basically rained for most of the day.
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| Boatner Reily, 7 am, Audubon Park |
Mardi Gras Morning: Danielle and I headed out around 6:30 for Audubon Park to catch the Royal Run, an annual tradition hosted by Boatner Reily who was Rex back around 1982 and has been buying Rex T-shirts and king cake for everyone who shows up since then. Somehow they always get the king and queen to stop by the race for the start at 7 am. Anyway, Tuesday morning was really, really cold, especially since we were not doing any real exercise, but at least it wasn't raining ... yet.
The plan this year, since The Wife was fighting a cold and wisely decided not to go out in the rain, was to ride down Esplanade to the French Quarter and make our way over to Bywater to catch the start of the
Societé de Saint Anne marching club at 10:00. Well, it was already raining by the time we left home with the temperature in the 40s. I had my trusty rain jacket and goretex cap, wool gloves and socks, and a few layers of technical wear, but on my legs were just jeans so I was not expecting to stay comfortable very long. We did find the marching club, but they were still rather disorganized when it started raining more heavily, so we decided to ride back to
Faubourg Marigny, lock the bikes in front of
DBA, and seek out hot coffee in the French Quarter.
By then, I was already pretty cold and wet, so we sat in CC's for a while drinking coffee with the unfortunate result that it felt even colder when we ventured back out into the rain. Although the crowd was still pretty thin thanks to the rain, cold and relatively early hour, there were still a lot of folks parading around Bourbon and Royal streets.
Looking at my watch I realized that we might be able to catch Rex along Canal Street, so we headed that way, arriving just in time to see the front of the parade make the turn on to Canal. We jumped for beads and doubloons as they bounced off of umbrellas and heads and hands, and were able to see the whole parade. By then we were getting seriously cold since we'd been walking around in the cold rain for about three hours, so we made one more pass through the French Quarter before heading home. Naturally we had a flat tire along Esplanade and had to stop and fix that with frozen hands, but eventually we found our way back to the house where there was a big pot of soup waiting for us.
So I didn't ride Monday, and didn't ride Tuesday, and it was still wet and cold on Wednesday so I didn't ride on Wednesday either. I finally made it out on Thursday morning with a group of only four, and that ride was cut short because of flat tires. I should be able to make the Giro on Saturday, after which I'll have to rush over to St. Francisville where I will be one of the officials this year for the annual Rouge-Roubaix race. That means, of course, that I won't get to ride on Sunday either. Mardi Gras photos are at:
https://picasaweb.google.com/108930640350384729358/MardiGras2014?authuser=0&feat=directlink
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