On the Rivet with Randy

Back Up North

2012-01-29T20:55:00.002-06:00

The almost-normal winter weather around here has been pretty rider-friendly lately. Granted, the mornings have been chilly, but things have been warming up into the 60s later in the day. So Saturday morning I rode out to the Giro Ride knowing that half of what I was wearing would be coming home in jersey pockets. Hanging out at the coffee shop before the ride, Rob was busy recruiting riders for a long Giro out to Slidell. A handful of the guys were up for it, but a number of others were already planning on doing that on Sunday instead. As we rolled out toward the lake I was glad I'd dressed so warmly.

Although there was a big group, the pace was a bit restrained, at least by Giro standards, and although there were a few fast stretches, for the most part the group stayed together pretty well, at least until the last kilometer before the turnaround. Those who were "going long" were trying to avoid doing too much work too early, and those who were planning to "go long" on Sunday were, I guess, keeping that fact in mind.

One thing about the Giro sprints that really bugs me is that there are always a few riders who are up near the front and look like they are going to go for the sprint, and then without warning just sit up in the middle of it, usually when I'm on their wheels. So as usual I ended up behind a big gap and didn't sprint. It still feels a little too early in the year for me to be going for the sprints, but I was feeling pretty good on Saturday and had been thinking I might give it a shot. Oh well. It was a good ride anyway, and I finished it off with a good effort to the top of the Seabrook bridge. My legs reminded me of that effort the next morning.

Even before starting Saturday's ride I had already decided that I was going to do the Sunday northshore ride. It had been quite a while since I'd been able to make it "up north" for that ride, but I was getting pretty overstocked on Giro rides and really needed a ride in the country. So Sunday morning I got up early, walked the dogs, loaded the bike into the car, stopped at Starbucks as they were opening the doors, and drove over to Puccino's to see who was going to show up. I picked up Mario and we headed across the lake right on schedule. By the time we were ready to roll there were 23 riders, including Mike Lew and John Dias. It felt pretty cold, probably because I had kind of compromised in the wardrobe department. The sky was clear, and although it was quite windy I knew it was going to get a lot warmer. Most of the group was obviously looking for a fairly easy winter ride, but as usual there were a few who were having a lot of trouble with that concept. One thing about a ride with so may people is that you know people will get dropped and there will be a lot of regrouping stops. Just after Enon this ride has a traditional "nature stop" at Dummyline road. A few of didn't need to stop so we just kept rolling easy. I found myself chatting with John as we soft-pedaled along and soon realized that we were going a little too fast. I sat up and looked back to see riders scattered all down the road. Unfortunately, each little group was now chasing the other. It was quite a while before everything came back together, and I think a few riders really had to chase hard.

After a while John and a couple others rolled off the front and everyone else just let them go. The next time we saw them was in the parking lot. So anyway, there was a bit of stop-and-go for the next twenty miles or so, but a number of riders took shortcuts or headed back early, so eventually we ended up with around a dozen. We'd been fighting nagging headwinds and crosswinds most of the day, and it wasn't until we were past Plainview before we finally got a little break. Naturally the pace picked up a bit, but for the most part I'd have to classify the overall ride speed as "moderate" with a few brief forays into "fast" territory. Anyway, that all worked out fine or me because I was dealing with achy legs for the whole ride. Nothing very severe, just a subtle reminder that I had done a little hard riding the day before.

A Friday Morning

2012-01-27T11:01:00.001-06:00

It was a nice morning for a ride. The temperature was comfortably in the 50s, the wind was light and the sky was clear. If the dog hadn't awakened me at 4:30 am (I swear he's on EST) I probably would have been a little more energetic, but at least I got myself out the door more or less on time. I pulled on some long tights and a long-sleeve jersey to cut the morning chill, although neither were stictly necessary, and made my way down Carrollton Avenue's bike lane and then Willow Street. The streetcar barn there is still not quite empty at that time of the morning, although many of the streetcars are fired up and ready to go with their fancy new headlights and LED blinky lights. Up on the levee there was only Scott, and as I approached he clipped in and rolled down the little hill at the pipes. There aren't usually many riders on Fridays, and quite often it's only Scott and me for most of the ride. Today was no exception. There was a slight breeze coming out of the northwest and I tucked into Scott's draft as he started his first long easy pull at the front. As we came to Ochsner Hospital I saw him point down the levee toward the river. There were two coyotes trotting along the batture in the area that was cleared a couple of years ago. I said, "I've got to get a better look" as I turned around, but Scott didn't hear me and continued on. I considered trying to take a picture, but it was still fairly dark and they were pretty far away, so I decided it would probably just be another of those fuzzy UFO-style photos so I didn't. I watched them for a little while, as they watched me, and then continued on, slowing down for a bit when I saw someone walking down toward the river. I wanted to be sure he wasn't accompanied by a little off-leash dog since that would have made a nice breakfast for the coyotes. Scott, of course, eventually figured out that I wasn't behind him any more and doubled back, so I met up with him again a little while later.

After a while we met up with Taylor, slowing down so he could make a U-turn and catch up to us. We rolled along the rest of the way out to the turnaround at a comfortable 20 mph or so. Heading back downriver we picked up more of a tailwind, which kept the speed closer to 22 or 23 mph which was pretty typical for a Friday morning levee ride. So I'm hoping I might finally make it across the lake on Sunday if something doesn't come up. The temperatures are returning to seasonal normal, or just slightly above it, which means a ride-time temperature around 40 and a high of around 60. Not too bad for the last weekend in January. Anyway, the Tulane team just got approval to purchase a trailer. That should be interesting. Anyone have tips on outfitting an enclosed trailer for bike races?

Back to Normal

2012-01-26T22:15:00.002-06:00

After a week of seasonably abnormal weather, a cold front finally limped through the area this morning, bringing with it a rain storm perfectly timed to wipe out any chance of a morning ride. Instead, I drove The Wife over to the Tulane shuttle stop, and in the process got good and wet and then spilled half a cup of coffee onto the seat of the car. Even worse, I was sitting in said seat at the time. It was not pretty.

Of course the clouds cleared and the sun came out when it was time to go to work. Anyway, I guess I shouldn't be complaining about a few days of riding in summer kit in January. For some reason, although my camera came along for practically every ride in the last week, I never managed to fish it out of my pocket to take a picture. Uninspired, I suppose.

One thing I did manage to accomplish was to install a new security system at the house. I still need to run the wire for the exterior siren, and I think I'll add a motion detector for the basement, but essentially it's up and running with door and window sensors, smoke detector, motion detector, remote keyfob, etc.. It even has that same British lady's voice that my Garmin does, and when it's tripped she calls me on my cellphone. I'm still a little bit up in the air about whether or not to sign up for an alarm monitoring service. I guess I'll eventually cave in on that, but I might wait a while so I can see how it all works first.

Change is in the air, however, and it looks like we'll be a little closer to seasonal normal by tomorrow morning. Perhaps I'll be inspired to pull that camera out of my pocket. The Tulane team is making its new 2012 team kits available for purchase via WePay, so if you want to support the team, pick up a couple of items.

Mileage

2012-01-17T12:20:00.003-06:00

The three-day weekend started out in the low 30s and ended in the low 70s. Not bad for January. I met the Giro Ride group at Starbucks and by the time we were rolling down Lakeshore Drive the group must have numbered around 50. The pace picked up early and pretty much stayed there. I was planning on doing the northshore ride on Sunday, but couldn't seem to interest anyone else in it. Instead, a lot of riders were talking about doing a long Giro Ride out to Slidell. I was officially on the fence about that.

The Saturday Giro was fairly fast, but the wind wasn't too much of a factor so it was easy to sit in and recover when necessary. I had installed a new chain the night before, and as often happens, it was skipping under heavy loads on my three favorite cogs. I made a mental note to order three replacement Miche cogs so I wouldn't have to buy a whole new cassette. It's not something I'd do for a racing wheel, but for the cassette on my training wheel it's definitely worth it even though the Miche cogs are clearly not up to Campi specs. Later that evening I started leaning more and more toward Sunday's long Giro. The forecast for the northshore was calling for a morning low around 33-34F, but considerably warmer on the south shore. When I woke up Sunday morning and checked the thermometer, it was an easy decision. I figured I could use the extra miles anyway. The regular Giro Ride usually nets me around 60 miles, of which maybe 30 are fairly hard. The long Giro out to Slidell and back typically brings me in with around 95 miles, and pretty much all of the last thirty at least feel hard.

Sunday's ride started out a whole lot faster than I, or most of the other riders, would have expected. With so many riders planning on doing the long ride, you would have thought it would temper the pace a bit. There seemed to be a few riders at the front who were determined to keep the speed up no matter what, and they didn't exactly wait until we were halfway down Hayne Blvd. either. I remember looking up along Lakeshore Drive and seeing just a long single-file line of riders and thinking, "what are they thinking?" I guess the warmer temperature, clear sky, favorable wind, and upcoming racing season was responsible. I made a decision right there to conserve my energy until at least Fort Pike because the one thing I know about the Slidell ride is that the same distance always seems to be twice as long on the way back.

There's a fairly long and high bridge over the Rigolets, just past Fort_Pike. It's a very deceptive climb up to the top, which always seems to be quite a bit farther away than it looks. Of course a few of the guys had to race to the top, so I tried to stay smooth and keep them within reach, pushing a little bit to close it up on the long downhill. Now typically the group will ease up and regroup after the bridge before making the left turn for the final few miles to Slidell. That didn't exactly happen on Sunday. In fact, I had the distinct impression that I was in some kind of breakaway group as we flew through the turn in the oncoming traffic lane. I took one or two pulls in the rotation, but then decided to sit on the back and at least give the rest of the group, which was by then in full-on chase mode, a chance. Unfortunately, taking me out of a breakaway rotation doesn't do much to slow it down.

The return trip was pretty fast as well, although I think a bit smoother and more consistent. I think there were around fifteen that rode the full distance, and most were rotating through nicely. I was actually quite impressed that so many riders were in such good shape this early in the year. It seemed there were only one or two who were in trouble. I rode back with some of the Tulane guys, stopping at the Blue Dot on Canal where I inhaled a couple of glazed donuts, eventually arriving back home with 95 on the odometer. The long weekend wasn't over yet, though.

Since I was off on Monday I decided to join the Tulane team, at least those of them who were in town (classes don't start until Wednesday, I think), for an "easy" westbank ride. We met up at the very civilized hour of 9 am and rode downtown to catch the Canal St. ferry over to Algiers. The original plan had been to ride the westbank bike path, but Kenny took over as tour leader, and we ended up, not surprisingly, heading directly for the General de Gaulle bridge over the intracoastal. This bridge is a lot like the one over the Rigolets in that it's fairly long, quite new, and features a nice wide debris-strewn shoulder. We made it over the bridge, regrouped, and headed over to the Belle Chasse ferry, crossing the river back to the eastbank side, and then heading down toward Pointe a la Hache for a few miles before turning around. After a stop at the store in Scarsdale while waiting for the ferry (where I indulged in a Hubig's Lemon Pie) we returned more or less the way we'd come. Although I was starting to feel a little worn down, Monday's 55 miles were done mostly at a conversational pace, so I arrived home feeling a bit better than exhausted.

When I awoke this morning I debated for a moment whether to sleep in or head out for the long Tuesday levee ride. It it had been cold, I probably would have pulled the covers back over my head for another couple of hours of sleep, but the temperature was around 60F, and although it was windy I figured I'd best do the ride because there was some possibility of rain in the forecast. The levee ride turned out to be fairly hard, especially on the way out. There was a pretty strong wind coming from the southwest, which meant a number of long crosswind stretches. Naturally one of those split the group. Once Woody turned back at The Dip, the pace eased up a little bit, but by then the group was down to about half it's original size. The ride back started out pretty easy - I think there were more than a few tired legs in the group - but things got difficult again when we hit another long stretch of crosswind. I was at the back for that, and basically had no draft at all for a few miles despite the fact that I was behind Big Richard and was doing my best to ride the outside two inches of asphalt without falling off the path. So, a bit over 250 miles since Saturday morning. My condolences to all those riders up north who spent all weekend in basements riding trainers and watching old Tour de France videos.....

Missing Link

2012-01-12T11:14:00.002-06:00

It was looking like this morning would be the last day of "springtime in January" for a little while. It was already getting windy ahead of a second cold front that should be taking us down from 60F to 34F this evening, and with the morning temperature somewhere in the mid-50s I found my wardrobe decisions rather perplexing. As I usually do in such situations, I intentionally over-dressed. Hot I can handle; cold, not so much.

As I rode up the levee in the dark I could see that the meeting place was deserted. I checked my watch. Four minutes early. For the 6:15 am ride, four minutes is an eternity. I rode around in little circles for a while as riders started arriving from both directions, and by 6:20 we were heading upriver and upwind in the moonlight. Brian (I think that's his name, right?) went to the front and pulled all the way to the bridge at a pretty good pace, I came through briefly, and it looked like a nice little paceline might get going. He reached in his pocket and handed me an inner tube that Louise (I think that's her name, right?) had given him to give to me since I'd given her one the other morning when she'd double-flatted on the wet bike path. Of course, with Rob on his TT bike, and Woody and Howard near the front, I figured an all-inclusive paceline wasn't going to survive very long. Naturally, Howard went to the front and pushed the pace up by three or four mph. The rest, including me, were reluctant to follow. A couple went around to bridge but with the headwind there wasn't much enthusiasm there. Three of four rolled away and the rest of the group finally settled down into a paceline with a few sitting on a the back.

The return trip was going to feature some significant tailwind stretches. I always find tailwinds more difficult than headwinds on group rides like this. For the first few miles the group was in conversation mode and I was starting to think we might have a fairly steady 20 miles back to civilization. Well apparently that wasn't what everyone was thinking. Next thing I know, I'm in a group off the front with Rob, Woody, Howard and Rolan and we're going around 28-30 mph. OK, so I figure I'll try not to take any long pulls and see how it goes. Howard surges at the front. I come through behind him and take a really short pull. Dropping back, I glance over my right shoulder as I prepare to get on the back of the paceline and there's a big gap where Howard should be. I look under my arm and catch a glimpse of Howard coming back to the group so I back off a bit rather than fill the spot. Well, that was a mistake! Rob's on the front so the pace up there is increasing. Howard is accelerating up to the back of the paceline, and I'm basically coasting. Not good. Howard flies past me onto the last wheel and suddenly I'm gapped off the back by five bike lengths. I accelerate up to 28 and close a little of it but they're still hammering at the front and I'm still too far back to get the draft. I see Woody dropping down the paceline after taking a pull and he glances back at me as he tacks onto the last wheel. I struggle along for a couple of minutes more, but I've been out in the wind too long and I have to back off. After that, I spent a few miles in no-mans-land, holding a sustainable pace but of course still gradually losing ground on the paceline up ahead. Soon, I hear a wheel coming up from behind and Brian pulls alongside. Yea! I get on his wheel for a little rest as he takes a long pull.

We worked together the rest of the way back, and for a while we were closing the gap, but in the end the best we could do was to limit our losses as we both started to fade after the Country Club bend. We had been going 27-30 most of the way with the tailwind, but it was a little inconsistent, so the gap was probably a little over a minute by the time we finally backed off a mile or so before the bridge. Good workout, though!

So I've been having some problems with my trusty commuting bike lately. Some time back, after a few particularly rainy days, I'd forgotten to re-lube the chain and found it starting to rust. This is a standard cheap single-speed chain, and that was enough to cause it to "stretch," which is what we call it when the links start to wear to the point where the chain doesn't mesh so well with the cogs. Being a beat-up commuting bike, I didn't worry about it much, but as time went on I started having a problem with the chain coming off. This was due to the fact that the little bit of "stretch" had made it impossible to get the chain tight enough on the old horizontal dropout bike. Every now and then, when I'd be riding down a bumpy road, which pretty well describes all of the roads on which I normally commute, the chain would come off and I'd have to stop and get my fingers dirty. This happened twice yesterday on my way home, and I made a mental note to pick up a new chain the next time I had a chance. Well, as it turned out, I forgot to put my bike lock key in my pocket this morning when I went to work. This isn't really a problem since I can easily roll the bike right into my office and lean it against the wall. So there I am, sitting at my desk, and I glance up at the bike and notice something doesn't look right. Upon closer inspection I realize that one of the link plates is completely broken. It's rather amazing that the thing is still working. I guess my next stop will be the LBS (local bike shop). The only question is whether I'll be walking part of the way there.....

Off-Season 65 Mile Jam

2012-01-08T16:40:00.002-06:00

It may be only January 8 elsewhere, but around here it's 76 F with a low tonight of 60. I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised, then, to have found somewhere in excess of 25 riders out at the Lee Road Junior High for the regular Sunday northshore ride this morning. It has been a very long time since I'd been able to do this ride, and coming off of two weeks of minimal activity, four days of riding, and yesterday's Giro, I didn't really know what to expect -- of myself. I did know quite well, however, what to expect of this group. A warm-weather training ride in January with 25 riders? Yeah, it was definitely going to get fast. Some of the guys like Woody have lately been racking up mileage like grad students at a free buffet. We weren't two miles into the ride before the speed started creeping up and the paceline started thinning out. There were a couple of people on this ride who were apparently getting famous for starting out on training rides at crazy speeds and then cracking later in dramatic fashion. I decided right away on a simple strategy: stay out of the wind until we were halfway through the ride. I have to admit, it was a little bit of a challenge not to go with the flow and attack the first of the hills, but I knew this ride pretty well and there would be plenty of opportunities to inflict muscle damage farther down the road.

We lost just a few people before getting out to Highway 10, a little before the half-way point. I was surprised by a couple of things. For one, this group was not particularly interested in taking prisoners. For another, there was considerably less collateral damage than I would have expected, considering the pace. For all practical purposes, the second half of this ride starts with a long climb up from a little stream. Way up at the top, around a bend, is a sprint line painted on the road. Fortunately, only a few went for it, so everything pretty much stayed together. There are a couple more similar climbs along that road, and both were done pretty hard, but they weren't quite all-out efforts. Each time a few people would lose contact, and then a few of those would catch back on, so by the time we reached the next turn there were only maybe four riders off the back. We took it easy or a couple of miles after the turn so everyone could regroup. As we rode south on Hwy. 60, I looked over at whoever was next to me and commented, "this next stretch is going to get fast." I could see that we were about to get a nice tailwind for the rolling five or six miles after turning west, and although a few riders were starting to fade, most still seemed to have a lot of gas in their tanks. I was right, and the pressure stayed on all the way to the turn back onto Lee Road. As we rounded the turn to head back south toward Enon I heard Mignon comment, "Oh...my....God!"

The group, however, was still not ready to give in, so the pace stayed pretty fast, interrupted only by a little slowdown at Enon where a couple of riders refilled water bottles while the rest of us soft-pedaled. The last significant little climb on this route is the Watchtower Hill, aka the Firetower Hill. It's not really such a difficult climb, but since it always seems to come at the end of a long training ride, so it often causes a split in the group. A few miles after that there's a turn onto Tung Road and then a long flat straight 4-mile run against the wind back to the cars. It was a really good ride - perhaps a little early for me to be jumping into the deep end under the circumstances, but most of us survived pretty well. I guess these guys must be getting shape already. They're already talking about Rouge-Roubaix. It's time to put down the King Cake and ride.....

Rolling On

2012-01-07T21:51:00.001-06:00

I was up a little early Saturday morning for the Giro Ride. Jon Tenny was in town for a visit and so on Friday John Chauvin had dropped off a bike for him to borrow. Steve Martin was also in town, so the plan was to all get together for the ride out toward the lakefront. This sort of thing doesn't usually work out perfectly, of course, so I figured I'd get up a few minutes early so that I'd at least have my own act together. Amazingly, though, thanks to the miracle of text messaging, the plan came together perfectly and the three of us were on the road shortly after 6 am. Our unexpected efficiency put us at Starbucks a few minutes before 6:30, so we had plenty of time to sit and chat while the other riders filtered in. I had been expecting more of the dense fog that has been plaguing the area recently, and had dressed a bit more warmly than usual for the very unusual upper 50s temperature. As it turned out, there was essentially no fog, and only a light wind.

On the way out, as we climbed over the Bayou St. John bridge, someone pointed at the sky behind us. Three of us actually stopped to try and get a photo of a rather spectacular cloud that was rolling over the city. I hoped it didn't have much rain in it, but it certainly looked ominous anyway.

Although the turnout was pretty large for this one, a lot of the riders were planning on doing a long ride out to Ft. Pike or Slidell, and I think that helped to keep the speed down just a bit on the way out. I was just happy to be back on the bike. I'd been able to get out on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but had overslept on Friday. Anyway, the ride out to the turnaround was pretty normal - a fair amount of steady paceline with a few surges thrown in at random. I spent a fair amount of time stuck near the back before finally biting the bullet and moving up to where there was still some rotation. For the most part, we had a tailwind on the way out, and I was already starting to feel sorry for the guys who were doing the long ride. It's easy to be seduced by a little tailwind, only to discover that by the time you are on your way back and fighting the headwind you don't have anything left. It was a pretty good ride. We missed nearly all of the rain, and there was leftover King Cake waiting for us when I got home.

I think I'll try and make the northshore ride tomorrow. It's been a really long time since I've done a ride that wasn't essentially flat as a pancake. Hopefully the 30% chance of rain won't throw a monkey wrench into the works.

The Road Home

2012-01-03T11:55:00.000-06:00

After saying goodbye to The Daughter and The Dogs, we rolled out of Olympia some time after breakfast and hit the road home around 9 am. The plan for the return trip was to take a more southern route in order to avoid having to drive the rear wheel drive Jeep across the northern Rockies where the roads didn't look to be quite so good. Besides, I'd never driven that route before, and who really wants to do a 2,900 mile out-and-back anyway? Of course, that would add a few extra miles to the trip, so I resigned myself to a 4-day drive. Day 1 was a long trek down I-5 through Washington, Oregon and into California, of which the first 300 miles or so was in a steady rain. That's when I discovered that there was definitely something amiss with the brakes on the Jeep. They had just been checked out the week before by the local Jeep dealer who turned the rear drums, installed new pads and "inspected" the front brakes, declaring them to be fine. Well, I guess one of the rotors must have been warped because you could feel the brake pedal pulsating, and any time hard braking was required meant a shaking steering wheel and questionable stopping power. For the rest of the trip I tried to avoid having to use the brakes - sort of like riding a criterium.

Unfortunately, as night fell we found ourselves driving over a few mountain passes, including Grants Pass and Mount Shasta, both of which were completely enveloped in dense fog. This made for some slow and cautious driving, and gave me a whole new appreciation for fog lights. Anyway, we made it down into California safely for the night, logging somewhat fewer miles than I'd hoped, but considering the weather I couldn't really complain.

The next day's drive had us on state highway for a long time as we dropped down through Modesto and Bakersfield, picking up I-40 for the long drive East. The rest of the day and most of the next involved long stretches of desert interrupted by relatively short mountain crossings. By then, though, the weather was clear and the temperatures were mild, so it was pretty easy going even though there was quite a bit of snow on the ground at the higher elevations. Much this stretch through Arizona and New Mexico was between 3,000 and 5,000 feet which I guess I would have to call "high desert." A fair amount of the way, the interstate ran more or less parallel to, or actually replaced, historic Route 66. For the last few hours I was battling dangerous crosswinds that were reported to be in the 35-45 mph range. That required constant attention to the steering wheel but compared to our earlier drive over the continental divide at night in a snowstorm, it was a piece of cake.

Our final stop was in Wichita Falls, TX where we spend New Year's eve in a hotel alongside the interstate. I was asleep by 10:30 pm. The last day's drive down through Dallas put me finally on familiar roads and was uneventful as we cruised through Shreveport and down past Alexandria to meet up with I-10 at Lafayette. We made good time and arrived at home around 7 pm showing 2,957 miles on the trip computer. It was an interesting trip for sure.

Naturally a cold front came through that night and so Monday morning was cold and windy. I didn't really give much consideration to riding on Monday. I had a lot of stuff to take care of and needed a little recovery time anyway. This morning, despite the cold and wind, I forced myself out the door for my first ride in a week. I didn't expect to see anybody else up on the levee, and really didn't want to jump in the deep end, training-wise, anyway, so I was glad to come across Donald and Luke near the playground. We kept a nice easy pace out to the parish line and back, which was just what I needed. I guess I'll find out how much damage my nearly two weeks of sitting on my butt really did.

A Cross-Country Christmas (long story)

2011-12-25T14:15:00.002-06:00

We headed out from New Orleans right on schedule at 6 am Tuesday morning. Christmas presents were stashed underneath the bike in the back of the car. Emergency winter supplies, blankets, food, water, etc, were on board. The weather was great, but we were going to have to make it past a developing cold front somewhere in Colorado or Wyoming. Even so, that route seemed, at the time, the best of the three possible choices. The plan was to drive a new car up to The Daughter in Olympia, Washington, and then to drive home in her '02 Jeep. A little crazy, perhaps, but it promised to be a minor adventure nonetheless. The first day went smoothly and some time around 9 pm we checked into a motel in Salina, Kansas. We were back on the road early the next day, hoping to make it to the Salt Lake City area that night.

The drive through Kansas and eastern Colorado was pretty routine, and we decided to take a little shortcut from Denver up to meet I-80 near Laramie, Wyoming. As we drove north I could see some bad weather and snow rolling over the high mountains to the west and wondered if we'd be far enough north to miss the worst of it. As we pressed on to the west along I-80 we started picking up some light snowfall, but I was still optimistic as the sun went down. I doubt it was half an hour later when things started to go from bad to worse .... really quickly. We were in the middle of the mountains of the Wyoming Great Divide. We were also in the middle of a snowstorm. Suddenly, it seemed, the lane markers on the interstate disappeared, and I was straining to see where I was going through the blowing snow. As I slowed down from 70 mph to 60, and then to 45, the passing trucks would blow up enough of the dry snow to make it completely impossible to see where I was going. It was exactly like trying to drive with your eyes closed, except everything was white instead of black -- complete disorientation. The word "harrowing" kept coming to mind.

Eventually I resorted to hazard flashers, fog lights, full-on defroster, and windshield wipers complete with frozen blocks of ice on them. We pulled into a closed rest area along with a couple of other cars to consider our options. We learned that they shut down I-80 behind us later that night. We sat there for about half an hour as cars, trucks, and a Greyhound bus full of desperate cigarette smokers came and went, considering whether it would be better to stay at the rest stop and get buried in snow or continue on and possibly drive off the road. I decided that driving solo wasn't a particularly good idea considering my limited snowstorm driving experience, so I waited for a little convoy to come by and tacked onto the end. It was 35 white-knuckle miles to the next town, Rock Springs. As other cars dropped out of the caravan, I was soon the only car left, clinging to the tail lights of a big pickup truck whose driver seemed to be reasonably consistent. About half of the time, my only points of reference were those two red lights and an occasional glimpse of the post-mounted reflectors at the far edge of the shoulder. As we would pass other cars I'd drift left behind the pickup, feeling for the rumble strip.

Finally we made it to the main exit at Rock Springs where I gladly pulled off in search of a motel. Once we checked in we felt like we'd won the lottery and decided to drive down the street to find something to eat and pick up a scraper and de-icer at the gas station. As we left the parking lot I stopped to chip away some of the accumulated ice from the windshield wipers. Then, as we walked into the restaurant I realized I didn't have my phone. I looked everywhere, and figured it must have fallen out of my coat pocket. After an extensive search retracing my steps, I found it lying face-down in the snow where I'd stopped to clear the windshield. Of course it had been rolled over by a car, probably my own. On the plus side, it still worked. We went to sleep hoping the roads would be safer in the morning. It dawned on me that the timing of our drive had us traversing all of the really mountainous areas at night. Maybe not such a good plan?

(Much better driving in the morning!)

The next morning the sun was shining and despite a few warnings about black ice farther down the road, we left the local Starbucks around 8:30. We had originally been hoping to make Olympia in three days, but the snowstorm had put a pretty big dent in our plans and our ETA would have been after midnight, so we went to Plan B, which was to basically stop some time before I started falling asleep at the wheel. At least the interstate down to Salt Lake was almost deserted, and negotiating the icy road was a lot easier in the daylight after the road crews had done their work.

Olympia bike path

The drive through Utah and Idaho was pretty routine and thanks to the 75 mph speed limit went fairly quickly. After some long delays because of accidents and road construction we got into Oregon by mid-afternoon. Oregon seems to take a certain amount of pride in doing things differently than everyone else, regardless of whether or not it makes sense. For example, you can't pump your own gas in Oregon. You have to wait or an overworked attendant running around in the freezing cold while trying to handle three cars at once to do it. The 75 mph speed limit that seems to be fine in the neighboring states drops to 65 in Oregon.

Naturally, once it got dark we still had to drive through some of The Blues where the road wound around in the mountains making for some exciting driving until we finally decided to pack it in at The Dalles, leaving just a few more hours of driving for Friday morning. Fortunately, the weather was warmer and there were no issues with ice or snow. Through it all, the new all-wheel-drive Volvo V-70 remained remarkably sure-footed. Along the way it got a very thorough road test that challenged pretty much everything from the heated side-view mirrors to the stability control system. How the Jeep Liberty will handle the return trip remains to be seen, but a longer alternate route down south is definitely still on the table.

So we finally made it to Olympia around mid-day on Friday where I celebrated with a pint of the local Porter. By 11:00 on Saturday the weather was looking pretty good and I decided it might be my only window for a good ride. The temperature was in the upper 40s, the wind was light, and although the streets were somewhat wet it didn't look like there would be any rain for the rest of the day. Here in Washington most people ride with fenders all winter because the roads are wet pretty much all the time, I think. Moss actually grows on the asphalt around here. The Daughter's place is right alongside a bike path, so I headed out onto that and ended up riding nearly 60 miles without ever getting onto a city street. Although I'm sure there are more scenic rides to be had, it's always nice to have a network of bike paths available when you're in unfamiliar territory.

Should be an interesting ride back to New Orleans.

LSD and Hollicross

2011-12-19T09:06:00.000-06:00

It's that time of year again. December always stresses me out. The bicycle half of my brain keeps nagging me about all that Long Slow Distance (LSD) I'm supposed to be doing, but there are so many competing complications. There are cyclocross races, a half-finished re-write of the LAMBRA bylaws and LCCS rules, and of course the stress of the arterial bleeding gushing from my checking account. On top of that, there are always some things at work that really need to be done before the holidays, which is even more of a problem this year because of a planned early departure for a winter road trip to what is nearly the farthest place from New Orleans you can go without a passport. In light of what may turn out to be nearly a full week of driving with only the slim possibility of a couple of cold and wet rides, I decided on Friday night that I really needed to go with the "long Giro" group out to Slidell on Saturday for what promised to be 95 miles worth of flat and windy paceline riding. I figured a long Saturday ride would diminish my LSD guilt sufficiently to allow for a little cyclocross fun on Sunday.

Saturday was cold, windy and cloudy. It somehow seemed perfectly appropriate for a long winter ride. There was little hope that the temperature would warm up much during the ride, so I dressed a little bit heavier than usual. You never know what to expect of the Giro this time of year. The worst would have been a small group of four going out to Slidell with one or two who didn't know what the "S" in LSD stands for. Of course, you never really know who will be doing the long ride until you're actually all the way out to Venetian Isles, otherwise known as "the point of no return."

Fortunately, there were lots of other riders thinking the same as I. On the way out to Venetian a few riders rolled off the front. That would normally have resulted in a bit of a hammer session down Hayne Blvd., but this time the rest of the group was having none of it, knowing that payment for such an early effort on a 95 mile ride would be extracted with interest somewhere around mile 80. As it turned out we had about 25 riders who continued out to Fort Pike, and then about a dozen, including three Tulane riders, one of whom has just been recruited onto the Herring team, who stayed with us all the way to Slidell. Despite my best efforts to suck wheels and resist temptation, I was definitely starting to feel the mileage as we sprinted up the overpasses about ten miles from home. By the time I got home I was pleasantly sore and tired. Yeah, you know what I mean.

So Sunday I made the short trip out to the Spillway near Norco for the Holli-cross races where I figured I could help out with officiating and then ride the "A" race for fun. The race location was at the start of a popular mountain bike trail, so I kind of knew there would be a lot of singletrack, but the organizers had done a pretty good job of incorporating the levee road and a big field near the boat launch, complete with a couple of good barriers and a run-up back to the top of the levee. I have to admit, on the first practice lap I rode I thought I'd missed a turn because I'd been on winding singletrack for so long, but I hadn't. As it turned out, I really enjoyed the singletrack part because it was mostly hard-packed, flat and technical. Anyway, we had a pretty good sized field for the race, which I started from my usual position near the back as the real 'crossers sprinted into the headwind on the levee road. I finally settled in behind a rider who was on a somewhat over-geared single speed. About mid-way through I passed him and then promptly crashed when I somehow flubbed my re-mount after the levee run-up. I chased back and caught him again within a lap or so, and then on the next lap dropped the bike a little too hard after the barriers and had to stop to re-seat the chain. Once again I chased back, ultimately passing him again with a couple of laps left to go. So anyway, it was a lot of fun, the turnout was about the best we've had yet, and I only crashed once. Well, I'm sitting here at home and the roofer just finished a little chimney work that he'd forgotten to do last week, so it's back to work.....

Warm Weather and Falling Leaves

2011-12-15T14:08:00.002-06:00

The seasons tend to be pretty confused around here. Just a few days ago I was bundled up in full winter kit. This morning I would have ridden in just shorts and jersey, but I know better than that. Even though the air temperature was registering in the upper 60s at the house, I knew from experience that up on the levee there would be those occasional cold blasts of moist river-chilled air rolling across our path. As it turned out, there was another reason I was glad to have worn the arm-warmers today. As we waited at "The Pipes" for the rest of the crew to arrive, Max rode up and commented that a few miles upriver the road was soaking wet in a wheel-spray kind of way. Go figure. The forecast had included only the usual precautionary 10% rain chance, but it was looking like all ten percent was going to be on top of us at some point. So despite the cloudy sky and dampness, we had a pretty big group this morning. Starting out with a bit of a tailwind, I was worried things might get out of hand again, but for some reason the pace remained brisk but steady. I don't know who all was up at the front, but whoever they were, they weren't rotating back to where I was. I guess someone up ahead must have been short-circuiting the paceline because we were probably fifteen miles up the river before I finally found myself near the front. All morning we'd been riding through patches of wet road and misty drizzle, but it wasn't until we were halfway back that the misty stuff turned into what you'd actually call rain. A couple of miles later I could feel the water starting to come through my shoes. That's really the point of no return when it comes to riding in the rain. Once your shoes and socks get soaked, you may as well just keep going until you get home because slowing down or, heaven forbid, stopping will just make you colder. Fortunately most of the riders were happy with a fairly smooth pace, although there were certainly a few momentary instances of passive paceline aggression on the way back where someone ramps up the pace a notch and then nobody will pull through afterward. Situation normal, however.

So here we are officially halfway through December and the Ginkgo trees have finally decided it's Fall. They are easy to spot with their neon-yellow leaves, but you have to look fast because the next time there's a bit of wind all the leaves will fall at once and the display will be over for another year.

A Warmer Ride

2011-12-13T17:03:00.002-06:00

Finally things have warmed up a bit around here and I was able to leave the jacket and long tights at home when I headed off to meet the Tuesday morning group today. It was overcast and therefore dark and relatively damp, making the upper-50s air feel like it was going right through the long-sleeve jersey I was wearing. I wasn't complaining, though. I'll take damp and 60F over dry and 38 any day of the week. The ride started off a little faster than usual, stringing everyone out over the first mile or so as a couple of riders baited the group, but soon it all came back together and settled down a little bit. The whole way out the wind alternated between crosswind, tailwind, and something in-between, so although the speed might have been a little higher than normal for this time of year, the effort level wasn't too bad as long as you still had enough asphalt to get a draft on the crosswind sections.

I was feeling pretty good, so I spent some time in the wind here and there in order to give a few more riders a little draft because the very front of the group didn't seem to be rotating very often. When that happens in a crosswind it makes it really hard for everyone beyond the first five or six riders. As we got farther upriver there were a few surges that caused trouble. I tried to kind of buffer them when I could, but still had to seek shelter sometimes just to keep from getting dropped. The group, of course, eventually split, so we were missing a few riders by the time we got out to the turnaround at Ormond. I had been trying to conserve a little bit because I knew it was going to be a long ride home, mostly into the wind.

The return trip started out fairly easy as the group mostly ignored a couple of riders who were riding off into the distance. It wasn't too long after we finally got really rolling again that Matt flatted. We were still pretty far from home, so while some of us stopped, some continued on. It wasn't the world's fastest tire change, but as we stood around criticizing Matt's tire-changing technique, which is of course the main reason we all stop when someone flats, Richard spotted a bald eagle flying overhead. I think that makes five that I've seen in the last couple of months. Just on the other side of river road there was one house that had a boat decorated with Christmas lights being pulled by a couple of equally decorated plastic alligators. Right next door was a Christmas bonfire that was about half-completed. I've never made the trek up the river to see the bonfires on Christmas Eve, but they have gotten to be a big deal in some of the towns that build little mini-festivals around them. Anyway, after we got the tire fixed our group got a really nice little rotating paceline going for quite a long time, although eventually it started to falter as the wind got stronger and the riders got more tired.

Chocolates and Cold

2011-12-11T19:30:00.001-06:00

Saturday morning was pretty cold and fairly windy, and as usual I was running a few minutes late after debating what to wear for the Giro Ride. There wasn't really a chance I'd miss the ride itself, but I was definitely going to have less time to sip my pre-ride coffee. Fortunately, I got there early enough to put a pretty good dent into my cup of Christmas Blend before we rolled out.

Considering the cold and wind, I was expecting a fairly smooth ride with a lot of rotating paceline work. I couldn't have been more wrong. The first clue was the relatively fast pace along Lakeshore Drive. I heard some time later that there were some rider who had missed the group entirely because we were ahead of our usual schedule. The cross/headwind along Hayne Blvd. kept most of us pretty close to the gutter while a small contingent at the front pushed the pace. Once we made the turn onto Paris Road, the wind was more at our backs, though, and the speed ramped up. When we came to the place where we cross over two lanes of interstate traffic, though, things didn't go too well. (We really should be using Bullard on the way out to avoid this!). The front of the group cut across in front of a Semi that had slowed down for us, but then, coming around the truck on the outside, was a dualie pickup that was not slowing down. So the back part of the group, including me, had to back off and wait until it was safe, which opened a large gap.

The front of the group continued hammering away down the road, so Howard went to the front and pushed our pace up to 30-32 mph. After a little while on his wheel I checked my December training plan and couldn't find anything on it about going 30 mph chasing down ill-gotten breakaways, so I backed off a bit as the rest of the riders who'd survived went around me. I figured that things would probably come back together on the service road anyway. Wrong again. Looking up ahead I could see Rob attacking off the front of the group as it made the left turn to cross under the interstate on the way to the service road. I knew I was, well, in trouble. Although I was holding the gap for a while, there was no way I was going to close it once we got onto Chef Highway, so I ended up riding the rest of the way out to Venetian Isles alone before turning around and getting back into the group for the return trip where the irregular pace continued. On the ride home I commented to someone, "The Giro is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get." It was still pretty cold by the time I got home. I doubt the temperature had risen more than five degrees.

So Sunday was an NOBC group ride that was planned to be a no-drop 50 miler at a fairly easy pace. It was still pretty cold this morning and even colder across the lake, and it didn't look like we'd be seeing much of the sun, so I piled on the clothes for the well-attended ride that had attracted nearly twenty riders to the Abita Springs start. I guess it was somewhere in the 38-40 degree range at the start, and although I knew I'd probably get a little sweaty underneath my nice warm NOBC winter jacket, I had a feeling it wasn't going to warm up a lot and I'd rather be warm and wet than cold and dry. Cold diuresis was in full effect and a nature stop was called for not to long after we'd rolled out. There's nothing like the combination of coffee and cold to precipitate a group nature break! Anyway, it was a good ride at a good pace, and after the ride, many of us headed across the street to the Abita Brewpub for lunch. In my case that was an oyster loaf, fries and a pint of Turbodog (I wasn't driving).

Cold and Lonely

2011-12-08T12:18:00.001-06:00

This morning felt, officially, like the real thing -- Winter. The temperature was in the upper 30s with a mild but noticeable wind, and the sky was uniformly grey from horizon to horizon. In a word -- dreary. To make matters worse, I'd set my alarm for the wrong time, and when, after the dog nudged me with his nose a few times, I finally looked over at the clock, it read 6:00 am. If it had been summer I might have had a chance to make it out to the levee by 6:15, but Winter carries with it a large amount of wardrobe overhead and I knew it would be impossible. By the time I was layered up enough to keep the ride from being miserable it was probably around 6:15, and so I guess I arrived at the meeting spot about ten minutes late.

There was a light tailwind on the way out today, which made it easy to spin along at 18-20 mph. The bike path was predictably deserted for the most part, except for a lone coyote who I startled near the Construction Aggregate place. He had been walking casually down the middle of the bike path as I approached him from behind, and I was quite close by the time he heard me and bolted off toward the batture. Once he was sufficiently out of reach he stopped for a little while to watch me. I did the same for a few seconds until he finally dashed off into the bushes. I guess I saw a couple other people out on the levee on my way out to the Little Dip, where I turned around, but otherwise it was just a cold and lonely ride. I'd been hoping to see a rider or two from the morning group, but I guess that anyone who showed up either went all the way out to Destrehan. More likely, though, nobody else showed up.

I fought a little bit of headwind most of the way back, and since I wasn't really in the mood to push myself, that brought my speed down into the 15-18 mph range. The combination of wind and easy pace resulted in some seriously cold feet (I was using only those little toe-cover things) by the time I got back home, but thanks to my favorite NOBC winter jacket and tights, the rest of me was pretty comfortable. It looks like a couple more chilly mornings before things start to warm up a bit around here, but it still beats the heck out of someplace like Minnesota.

Oh, SNAP!

2011-12-06T10:18:00.001-06:00

Another cold front shuffled through the area last night, leaving us with a chilly, windy, and overcast morning today. The outdoor thermometer read something like 48F as I rolled out of bed, but glancing out the window I could see the wind blowing the trees around and knew it would feel a little colder than that. By the time I rounded up an appropriate wardrobe for the morning ride I had fewer than ten minutes to make it over to the levee to meet the Tuesday morning group at 6:15. The cloud cover made for a particularly dark morning as I rushed down Carrollton and Willow streets hoping I could at least minimize the damage and maybe have a chance to catch the group before it really got rolling. As I climbed the bike path up to the levee I could see the meeting spot was deserted, although my watch told me I was only a minute or two late. I looked up the road into the darkness searching for blinky red lights, but there were none. It was entirely possible that the whole group had bailed out, because the chances that everyone would have left early on a morning like this were somewhere between slim and none. A moment later Richard rolled up from behind, commenting, "It's not really all that cold!" I replied something to the effect of, "If they think this is cold they're in for a big shock a few weeks from now." So anyway, we settled into an even pace at 21-22 mph, picking up Luke at the playground and eventually a couple others along the way. There was no question that we were going to shorten the usual long ride, considering the wind, number of riders, and resulting slower than normal speed. The only question was whether to turn around at the Little Dip or the Big Dip. We decided on the Big Dip, since most of the wind was of the crosswind variety, and with only four riders there was ample draft available in our mini-eschelon. Somewhere out near the turnaround we caught the guy on the white Cannondale whose name I can never remember. He was pushing the pace a little harder than the rest of us, and until we caught him I think he was assuming he'd missed the group and was in chase mode.

We were past the country club on the way back when he went to the front and ramped the pace up another notch. I'd been spinning along happily in the small chainring all morning, but once the pace crept up to 25 or so I decided it was time to deploy the 53. I shifted and felt something odd, and then my chain dropped off the inside of the small ring, accompanied by a rather nasty scraping noise. I coasted to as stop as my front derailleur cage, which had slipped down and twisted to the inside, started scraping long shreds of aluminum off of my rear rim (glad it wasn't one of those expensive carbon ones!). I didn't really know what to make of it all. That derailleur had been sticky lately and a couple of times I'd had to reach down and give it a push to get it to go from the big to small chainring. I figured it had really gotten bad and when I'd gone to shift, the cable had pulled the derailleur clamp down instead of moving the derailleur. Anyway, I had to pull out the multi-tool and re-position it, but something still felt odd. When I got home I took a good look at it and realized that the seat tube clamp that was part of the Campi record derailleur had actually snapped at the hinge. Oh well. Good thing I happen to have another front derailleur on hand. I would have taken a picture, but once you've seen one piece of broken aluminum, you've seen them all.

Hills and Hay Bales

2011-12-05T11:49:00.001-06:00

Saturday was our annual LAMBRA business meeting during which we hash out the preliminary race calendar, proposals regarding the LCCS points series, amendments to Bylaws, etc. This year there were a number of changes that were approved for 2012. We finally formalized the composition of the LAMBRA Board, made some rather extensive changes to the way LCCS points are awarded and accumulated, etc. It all went pretty smoothly, and hopefully I'll find some time this evening to send out the preliminary calendar and bylaw changes and a summary of the LCCS changes (the language for which still needs to be finalized). LAMBRA continues to make incremental steps in the right direction as the LCCS points format moves slightly more in the direction of rewarding race results rather than race attendance. It should be interesting to see how it all works out. Points totals will reflect each rider's top 5 races in each discipline (RR, TT/TTT, Crit). Master 40+ races will be restricted to Cat. 1-4 only, points schedules will be extensively modified so that points awarded increase in relation to field size, etc. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to actually be able to track all of that without pulling my hair out after each race, but philosophically it's the right direction to go. Since there was a cyclocross race near Jackson where the meeting had been, I had loaded my not-quite-a cyclocross bike into the car before leaving. As it turned out, I'd forgotten things like gloves, tools and a few other minor items, but nothing that would stop me from riding.

Sunday morning I left the La Quinta early in search of coffee and found that the Starbucks on County Line Road that had been closed a few years ago was now a very nice Cups espresso shop, so I had a nice Americano for my ride out to the race location. Unfortunately, the race location had been listed on the flyer as the intersection of two highways. I spent a while driving up and down the roads there before finally spotting the race site. I had wanted to get there early since I had the registration/results spreadsheet, and I wanted to help out with officiating the B race if needed (which it wasn't). The temperature was in the 60s and the ground was dry, so that eliminated most of my worries. Of course they were still setting up the course when I arrived, but eventually I pulled out the bike and rode a couple of laps of the course before the first race got underway. This was going to be a fairly hard course, mainly because it was all through rather thick grass and almost all up and down, so basically there was almost no place to recover.

Turnout for this race was quite small. A lot of the cyclocross enthusiasm comes out of the Baton Rouge area, but a conflicting LSU football game the night before must have taken precedence for those guys. One surprise that the course offered was the chance of getting a flat because of thorns. The first race had, I think, three flats as a result, but luckily the organizers found the spot on the course where it was happening and removed most of the offending plants.

I started the A race with my usual cyclocross goal, which was to finish in one piece. At the start, I was surprised to find myself suddenly in the lead, so against my better judgement I pushed the first couple of laps, which resulted in three of us opening a fairly significant gap. This course was very much a roadie type of course, in that there was only one small barrier on the course and everything else was basically rideable, even though there were a lot of fairly steep climbs that would take you down to walking speed. The one exception was a steep hill about two-thirds of the way around the course. I was able to ride this one for most of the race even though I was dramatically overgeared for it. For all practical purposes, I spent all of the race in the lowest gear on the bike, which is a 44x27, I think. By the end of the second lap the climbs were starting to wear on me and Jim and Randy went by pretty easily as I backed off a bit in order to ensure my own survival. For a couple of the last laps I decided it would be easier to dismount and run up the steep hill rather than try to ride it in my overgeared and underpowered state. I doubt I lost much time doing that, but it didn't matter anyway because by then there was nobody near me anyway. Despite the small field, it was a lot of fun and exactly what I was looking for - a good hard 45 minute workout.

Eagle Season

2011-12-02T11:12:00.001-06:00

Morning temperatures have been remarkably consistent this week, hovering around the 40F mark. This has had a few consequences. For one, I've been riding with long tights, shoe-covers and jackets. For another, it's been getting harder and harder to get out of bed in time. I was so late on Thursday that I didn't even make an attempt to meet the group. Instead, I resigned myself to a solo ride up the river until I could see the group on its return trip. Not a bad thing, this time of year, anyway. As it turned out, the group I saw was small and had turned around early, so I probably rode only twenty miles, maybe less. This morning it was more of the same. Beautiful weather, really, just a bit on the chilly side in the morning. I'd turned on my "early" alarm by mistake the night before, so when it woke me up half an hour before I really needed to get up, I went back to sleep. Well, of course that meant that I woke up late again. I rushed out to the levee, arriving a couple of minutes late, to find only Scott, so we headed off for a nice Friday ride, taking long steady pulls at 20-21 mph and enjoying the scenery. On the way back, just where the bike path loops around the "stacks," something big caught my eye. A bald eagle had just landed atop the telephone pole. I had my sunglasses on and had to ask Scott if that was really what I thought it was. Once I took off the glasses and could see the white head, though, it was obvious. We stopped for a minute, and when we did a few of the Tulane riders arrived from the other direction, so we all rode back together. This was the second eagle I'd seen in two weeks, the first having been the one that nests near the I-10/I-310 junction. I'd seen that one on the way to the cyclocross race in Natchez, and then again last weekend on the way back from Baton Rouge. It's nice to see those big guys making a comeback.

Tonight is a holiday/business party down at the Westin, and then tomorrow the LAMBRA meeting, followed on Sunday by another cyclocross race just north of Jackson. I'm glad to see that the weather will be a little warmer for that. Meanwhile in blogger land, something is broken at blogger.com that is causing some of the links in the "pages" gadget to redirect to my own blogger home page instead of the correct page. It seems to be affecting only the links that are blogger.com links. It's been going on for a week or so, and they're "working on it."

Winter

2011-11-29T11:16:00.001-06:00

So I guess it's finally winter here, at least for a couple of days. By "winter," of course, I mean nighttime temperatures of 40F and below. Long tights, shoe-covers, helmet liner and jacket were all deployed when I left home this morning. It was a little darker than I'd expected and I was glad I had the front blinky light for the ride over to the levee where I found, well, nobody. I stopped for just a couple of minutes, hiding from the wind behind the big pumps, hoping someone would show, but nobody did, so I rolled out alone. A mile later Big Richard came up from behind, and a few minutes after that Howard joined in around the playground where we then picked up Donald. As we plodded along at about 20 mph, taking long pulls as the wind kept switching from one side to the other. I was already contemplating an early turn-around. It was just one of those mornings when I just wasn't having any fun at all. Besides the cold and wind, I had a number of distractions bouncing around in my head and was rather unsure about how I was going to get everything done that needed to be done this week. There is something about this time of year that I always find particularly stressful. It always seems like there are just too many things that start piling atop each other, all competing for limited time and even more limited energy. This week The Daughter is in Hawaii, we're taking care of The Sister's dog, I'm meeting a roofer about a chimney leak, there's a cyclocross race and the LAMBRA business meeting over the weekend in Jackson, and of course there are the usual things to do at work. My feet are cold, and I'm on my second, and inadvisable, cup of coffee in hopes that it will help clear the stuffiness I'm feeling in my head. We're about to buy a car for The Daughter, which will likely entail a cross-country expedition from New Orleans to Olympia and back - basically a week's worth of non-stop driving.

Interestingly, it's the LAMBRA meeting that seems to be weighing most heavily on my mind today. The preliminary race calendar needs to be assembled, I want to draft a proposal for some fairly significant organizational changes to address changes in the way USAC is moving, there are a bunch of recommendations to consider for the 2012 LCCS points series that I need to really think through, and a host of "deferred maintenance" administrative issues to deal with related to tax-exempt status, bank accounts, uncollected surcharges, etc., etc. It was all so simple back in the (very) old days when we'd gather around the dining room table at Greg Gulotta's house with a calendar and put together a year's worth of races that, collectively, probably cost half as much to produce than any little local race does now. There were no police, usually no follow cars, homemade race numbers, no cash prizes, insurance, or video cameras, and $2 entry fees. Oh well. It's about time for a webinar entitled, "President Obama's Initiative on University Research Commercialization: How Universities Plan To Respond." I know, I know. You wish you were here, don't you?

Three for Three

2011-11-28T13:21:00.001-06:00

So yes, I made it out to the Giro Ride on Saturday. In fact, I think most of those who had made the Thanksgiving ride and the prior day's Slidell ride were also on hand. Surprisingly, I was feeling just a little stiffness in the legs, but otherwise I was ready to make it three for three. The slightly warmer weather made for a fast and well-attended Giro Ride. There was still a fair amount of wind around, so naturally that resulted in some fast sections. It wasn't until I was most of the way back that it all started to catch up with me a bit, and by the time I got home all I wanted to do was sit on the couch, eat chips, and watch reruns of Star Wars. A long Sunday ride was still on the table, but because I had to leave for Baton Rouge around 10 am to help with some last-minute pre-Act of Sale packing for my niece. I'd already set my sights on the Sunday Giro rather than the Northshore Ride.

A cool front had started coming through and when I peeked out the window at 5:45 am on Sunday I could see that the street was still rather damp. I got dressed anyway, buckled on the helmet, stepped out the door, and was surprised to feel a light misty drizzle falling. I took it as a sign from the Recovery Gods and instead took the dogs for a walk. It was probably a wise decision because the weather remained chilly, windy and damp all day. Last night the effects of the cold front really started to take hold and by this morning the temperature was down to the lower 40s and the street was still just a little wet. I figured it was time to bite the bullet and get started on my winter acclimatization, however, so I pulled on the long tights and winter jacket and went out for a short spin, more as a character-building exercise than actual training ride. Looks like a few days of cold mornings ahead, though. When I got back to the house I fired up the heater for the first time this season, letting it run just long enough to burn off that smell you always get when you do that.

Out-n-Back

2011-11-25T15:31:00.001-06:00

After yesterday's faster-than-expected Thanksgiving Day ride, it would have been easy to go with a nice easy ride today. But then I saw Woody's email. A 7 am ride out to Slidell and back. My legs didn't feel all that bad, and a 95 mile ride couldn't possibly be worse than a shopping trip to the mall. Besides, it's my birthday and I should be able to go for a long ride if I want to, right? So at 6 am I stuck a couple of PowerBars in my pocket, pulled on the arm and knee-warmers, and took off to meet whoever might show up at Starbucks.

The weather was nearly perfect, except for the east wind, as our little six-rider group rolled out down Lakeshore Drive. Everyone was pretty much on the same page as far as the pace was concerned. With the headwind, "moderate" translated into a smooth paceline at 21-23 mph except for a brief surge to chase down Howard. By the time we crossed the Chef Menteur bridge the group was down to Woody, Rob, Chuck, Judd and me, and although we were mostly riding straight in to the wind, traffic was mercifully light and the pace remarkably smooth. The temperature had warmed up a bit, and I was already planning stash the knee-warmers in my pocket for the return trip. Woody started taking somewhat longer pulls, along with Rob and Chuck, while I was being careful to keep my own pulls a little on the short side to ensure I'd make it all the way back without needing cab fare.

The return trip, once we turned back onto Chef Highway, was really nice. With a steady tailwind, our moderate effort level was yielding speeds in the 26-28 mph range, although by then most were starting to feel the effects of the distance, especially considering the fact that we'd all, I think, been part of the prior day's hammerfest on the levee. We finally backed off a notch toward the end of Chef Highway, but the pace nonetheless remained respectable for the duration. Woody split off at Leon C. Simon to ride back to the West Bank (he'd been at Lakeside Mall with his wife at 2:30 that morning and had ridden from there to meet the ride at 7:00). His day would tally up to at least 100 miles. By the time walked in the door at home the odometer was showing 95 and my legs were pretty well toasted. Now the question is, "Giro tomorrow??"

Not What I Was Expecting

2011-11-24T10:47:00.001-06:00

This morning's ad hoc Thanksgiving Day ride certainly didn't turn out the way I'd been expecting. Mignon has sent out an email earlier in the week suggesting a nice civilized 7:15 am start time, to which she'd received maybe two replies. I thought maybe we'd have a nice little group of six or seven, but apparently everyone got his turkey into the oven early today because when I arrived to meet the group up on the levee there were already fifteen or so there. A cool front had come though last night, leaving us with a clear blue sky and somewhat gusty northeast wind. By the time we rolled out and met up with some more riders at the playground, our group must have numbered at least twenty-five.

There was a pretty good little tailwind that came and went as the river wound its way toward Ormond, and although I'd expected a nice conversational pace, I soon found myself down on the drops in the big ring as the pace hovered in the 26-29 mph range. There were more than a couple of riders who were determined to get in a good workout today. I was trying to stay near the front and in the rotation for a couple of reasons, one of which was the occasional crosswind section that would leave twenty riders lined up along the edge of the asphalt pretending they were getting a draft. It was a good day for the power riders. Brady filtered up to the front at one point and pulled the whole bunch along at 28 mph for what seemed like miles. He wasn't the only one, either. Anyway, by the time we were past The Dip, things seemed to have settled down a bit. I don't know how many were left in the front group by then, but I guess we must have broken up into two or three groups by then. Eventually, Woody, who had been cruising along in the middle of the group, must have gotten frustrated with the "inconsistent" pace, which is to say there was a lot of surging going on, and blew past the paceline. Of course, the guys at the front weren't going to let that stand, and next thing I know there are gaps all over the place. When Scott blew up ahead of me I made a half-hearted effort to bridge. Up ahead I could see that the front group had eased up a bit, but just then Rob jumped past me and motored up to them. I thought, "This can't be good." Sure enough, Rob went to the front and when I saw the riders at the back come off their saddles to accelerate I knew my chase was over.

So that was the ride on the way out to the turnaround. The ride back wasn't a whole lot different except that we had a lot more headwind than tailwind, and we spent the first five miles chasing Woody and someone else who had slipped off the front. On the plus side, I wasn't feeling all that bad. The chest congestion is finally starting to clear up, so although I'm feeling a bit out of shape, at least I'm not afraid to make a few hard efforts. I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow. Maybe just the usual morning ride on the levee unless someone suggests something more interesting. Rob was talking about some guys planning to ride out to Slidell, but I don't know if I'm quite ready to jump into what would probably be a 90 mile day right now.

A Little Psycho

2011-11-21T21:32:00.001-06:00

By Friday afternoon I'd just about had it with this chest cold. I knew it was kind of a crazy idea, but I decided to go up to Natchez for the PsychoCross race. It was time to roll the dice and see what happened. I still had that deep chest congestion, but took some comfort in the knowledge that the temperature would be in the 70s by the time any heavy breathing would be required. Allie was planning on going, so I hitched a ride with her, loading my not-quite-a cyclocross bike into her car at the quite civilized time of 7:30 am, leaving us plenty of time make the drive before the 11:00 am start time. Considering my delicate condition, I planned to keep my effort level low, my head up, and my ass off the ground -- not necessarily in that order.

We arrived to find the usual small but enthusiastic turnout, and after riding one lap of the course I knew it would be a challenge regardless of any plans I might have had to take it easy. The course wound through a park with some rolling terrain, which was nice, but each lap included two sets of artificial barriers plus a very deep sand pit. As if that wasn't enough, the first set of double barriers came right before an iron pipe fence that was so high that I could barely step over it from a dead stop. The fast (and tall) guys would run at it, plant one foot on top, and leap over it. And then there was the sand pit. Each lap there would be one or two deep tracks through it that had been made by someone ahead of me. If I charged the sand pit and somehow managed to stay in the track all the way across I could make it through.

That happened exactly once. Most of the time I'd get halfway through before coming to sudden stop, and the would have to try and clip back in before riding straight up a steep incline. A few times, the best I could do was to shoulder the bike and run up the hill. The last set of double barriers was the easiest, and I was usually able to keep a lot of momentum through those. Anyway, I started the race last, passed Allie at some point, and pretty much stayed there for the whole race. A couple of laps before the finish I caught the rider ahead of me and was considering going for it on the last lap, but when I completely flubbed the sand trap on the last lap, the gap a bit longer than my motivation was willing to close. Anyway, it was a fun diversion and I didn't think I'd done too much damage.

Sunday morning I boldly headed off to meet the Giro Ride. It was fairly warm and quite foggy, so I clipped on both head and tail lights. They would stay on until the fog cleared around 9 am, which was about when I flatted right after turning off of Chef Highway onto the service road.

I felt pretty good on the Giro Ride until we were about halfway back when my earlier cyclocross exploits began to catch up with me. By the time I got home I was feeling pretty well cooked, but had only a couple of hours to recover before walking down to the Oak Street Po-boy festival. We made kind of a quick run up and down the street, experimented with some new po-boys, had a beer at the secret St. Andrew's location (where's it's half the price they charge on Oak St.), and picked up a big cup of iced mint tea at Zotz before heading back home. The festival was just getting started when we were there and since the weather was great I'm sure it was a big success. By then, however, I was starting to feel like was losing ground to the chest cold and my voice was not sounding too good, so I guess I was due for a little recovery time anyway.

Seasons

2011-11-18T11:40:00.001-06:00

Cold and flu, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Holiday, Cyclocross - this is the season of seasons, and as usual they all seem to pile on top of each other, competing for my time and energy. The last couple of weeks have been pretty much a disaster, riding-wise. The chest congestion is stubbornly hanging on, and together with the off-and-on cold temperatures, rain and wind, I've had ample excuses for skipping training rides. I'd fully intended to ride this morning, but when I woke up to a cold and windy morning, accompanied by a dash for the kitchen to stop a coughing fit caused by a "tickle" in my throat, I decided that discretion was indeed the better part of valor. I always take those little coughing fits - you know the ones where your eyes water and you can't stop coughing until that tickle in your throat goes away - to be a sign of healing. Anyway, it remains to be seen whether I will go up to Natchez for our second cyclocross race of the year. I'll be shelled immediately, of course, but on the other hand it would be nice to get away and do something different. There are a lot of competing alternatives, of course. The club is doing an easy no-drop ride on the Giro route, so if I didn't want to do the regular Giro Ride, there's that. On Sunday there's the Giro, and I suppose a northshore ride, for the morning. In the afternoon there's the Oak Street Po-boy Festival within walking distance from home. There's even a pre-festival city ride that ends at the festival, complete with "bike valet" parking sponsored by Bike Easy.

This morning it was pretty chilly and when I rode up to the local Starbucks I found them brewing Thanksgiving Blend, which I like, and the shelves full of Christmas Blend, which I also like. Since I'd just finished off my last bag of Bike Fuel, I figured it was time to stock up on Christmas Blend, even though it's not even Thanksgiving yet. Lots of stuff to catch up on today before the pseudoephrine wears off.....

Cold and Coffee

2011-11-12T15:09:00.001-06:00

The conference went well, capped off with the usual Tuesday night party. This year, however, they had a DJ instead of the traditional live band. That wouldn't have been too bad, except that they were playing mostly crappy 2000s music - the kind with the monotonous over-amplified bass. They even included "dancers," which were a couple of guys like you'd find break-dancing any day of the week in the French Quarter. Anyway, we made the best of it. I finally headed back to my hotel from the hospitality suite around 1 am, although things in there were still going strong. The next morning's sessions were kind of tough, as usual. Unfortunately my flight didn't leave until after 7 pm, so after meeting a colleague for lunch I still had a lot of time to kill before hopping on the Metro for DCA. Arrived back in NOLA from DC a few minutes after midnight on Thursday with a bag full of dirty laundry and a need for sleep. It should come as no surprise that I wasn't out there on the levee at 6:15 that morning, especially considering the fact that it was around 40 degrees with a brutal north wind.

After what essentially amounted to two weeks off the bike, and a lingering chest cold, I decided that trying to start training again in the cold air probably wasn't worth the risk and set my sights on today's Giro. It was still pretty cold when I rolled out of bed today, but it was time to get back in the saddle, so I pumped up the tires, pulled on the knee-warmers and headed off for some pre-Giro French Roast. I was really looking forward to that cup of hot coffee. On the plus side, it was certainly nice to be riding out to meet the Giro with a little light in the sky for a change. There was the usual cast of characters on hand at Starbucks, although they were all hanging out inside instead of outside today.

Since I'm still feeling some chest congestion, I'm not planning on doing anything too hard until next week, so I spent most of the ride hanging out around mid-pack. The temperature was on the rise throughout today's ride, and there was a steady wind blowing out of the southeast. The pace was fairly reasonable, so things stayed together for the most part. I dropped off the pace well before the turnaround for a little nature break, thanks no doubt to the combination of cold and coffee. I wasn't the only one.

Tomorrow I'll be taking a pass on the northshore ride so I can help out with the timing for an informal time trial that the Tulane team is doing out on Lakeshore Drive in the morning. I'll try and get back to a more normal routine on Monday.

Up in the Air

2011-11-06T23:30:00.002-06:00

I’m writing this at 31,000 feet, somewhere between Colorado Springs andChicago, en route to D.C. with a couple of hours to kill and a couple morehours to lose, and wishing I was on the bike. The USAC Local Associations Conference went well, and somewhere in myoverstuffed gate-checked carry-on is a long list of things to think about,investigate, and hopefully get done. Forthe first time in a couple of years, there was almost no discussion ofchip-timing systems. The sessions weremore focused on the business of improving the racing environment, attractingmore riders, and especially streamlining the interactions with USACycling. They are trying hard to go electronic,and at the core of that push are their online registration system and theirresults and rankings program.

For 2012, there will be some new incentives for promoters,and possibly also the local associations, to use the registration system. Although it’s already the least expensiveoption, albeit only slightly, they plan to give rebates amounting to 80 centsper registration next year. They’re alsodeveloping a registration and results tool that race organizers will be able touse for their events - probablysomething along the lines of the one that Sportsbase Online had. Those of us who have been using BikeReg foryears are just a little hesitant to turn our backs on the system that’s beenworking so well for us, but the cost difference, especially for larger events,will be hard to ignore. They havealready deployed iPhone and Android apps that allow riders to show raceofficials their current license status (and also notified the officials thatthey have to accept it). Down the line,perhaps not all that far in fact, may be the ability to register for an eventthrough the USAC registration system and then on race day just whip out yoursmartphone at the registration desk. Thething that has really made that all feasible is a new system they are about toimplement that will allow them to accept digital signatures from USAC memberswho register online (only through the USAC system, of course). It’s interesting.

Online post-event reporting and paymentsystems that were supposed to be deployed earlier this year are still likely toneed a few more months of development, but they’re also on the way. In the Results and Rankings world, we maysoon be able to use a rider’s ranking to do things like seed time trials or docall-ups for criteriums. They’re alreadyplanning on using it to do call-ups for cyclocross nationals. If you look at an event that is using theUSAC system for online registration, you will see each riders predicted placingbased on data in the results and rankings database. Apparently it was pretty accurate at mastersnationals this year. So anyway, I’m still popping Sudafed and will be off the bike until Thursday at the earliest when I return to New Orleans. Right now I’m on the way to the NCURA annual conference and kind of looking forward to getting some more information on STAR Metrics and the Data Act, and hoping that if and when the universities have to start providing even more reporting data we might somehow be able to do so in a way that would allow us to actually make some productive use of it, which I’m pretty sure the government won’t.

Back at home, I was sorry to have to miss today’s NOBCcoffee shop ride, but I may have to break out the old not-really-a Cyclocrossbike for the upcoming race in Baton Rouge. No doubt I will be woefully out of shape for it, and entirely devoid ofmost necessary skills, but the beauty of cyclocross is that nobody will reallycare, including me. In the meantime Ineed to send out an email about the planned LAMBRA annual meeting, which willbe Dec. 3 in Jackson MS, along with a request for proposed 2012 eventdates. I also need to get jersey sizesfor all of our LCCS and track championship winners, pick up and ship out boththe extremely late 2010 awards and surprisingly early 2011 LCCS awards.

I won’t be arriving at my little D.C. hotel until around 10pm tonight, I think. Perhaps I’ll getthis all uploaded to Blogger before tomorrow. Then it will be two and a half rather full days of sessions and related“networking opportunities” before a late night arrival back in NOLA onWednesday.

Involuntary Fall Break

2011-11-02T12:36:00.002-05:00

It was Tuesday evening of last week and I was sitting in a rather crowded conference room in the AAU office up in D.C. when I started to feel the scratchy throat. Perhaps it was just coincidence, but I'd just spent a couple of hours at 30,000 feet breathing dry communal air. I was trying to be optimistic, hoping that it wasn't what, deep down, I knew it probably was. Later that night I searched the little ziplock bag I'd brought to hold my toothbrush and stuff, hoping to find a couple of decongestant tablets, tylenol, aspirin, oxycodone - anything - but I'd packed light for this quick trip and hadn't brought my usual travel supplies. The next morning I stopped at the local drug store before heading back for another six hours of workshopping. Although I didn't feel terribly sick, I had a pretty good sore throat and low-grade fever, held somewhat in check by the generic CVS cold medicine. By the time I got home late that night it was taking its usual course. The sore throat was going away and the bronchitis was starting to kick in. I already knew it was going to be a week or so before I'd feel well again. Naturally, The Daughter was also arriving that night for a visit.

I spent the next two days at home nursing the developing chest cold. It seems there is always some combination of events, usually including work, illness, and other things beyond my control, that puts me off the bike for a while this time of year. It's one reason I never actually plan to take a week off. For one thing, I just don't train hard enough to justify a week or two of extended recovery. For another, I know something like this will force me to take a break anyway. One thing I know for sure. You don't go out and try to train in the cold when you have a chest cold. A bout with pneumonia will put a big kink in your fitness plans. Been there, done that.

So although I wasn't feeling quite up to riding, I was reasonably busy over the weekend, went out for an easy little spin on Monday morning, and made it in to work with a pocket full of pharmaceuticals. That evening we had our usual Halloween open house. That tradition started the year of Katrina. Halloween was the first weekend that most of the block was back at home, and we all ended up out on a neighbor's porch drinking wine, telling our Katrina stories, and waiting for the lone little trick-or-treater who ultimately showed up. This year the street was packed with kids and lots of people stopped by the house for gumbo and pasta salad and related snacks and adult beverages. I still had a nagging little cough and some chest congestion, but have been more or less on the road to recovery since then. Even so, since there was no real urgency to get back on the bike, I figured I'd give it another day or two just to be on the safe side and set my sights on Wedesday. As luck would have it, I ended up with an 8 am conference call appointment this morning, so rather than blow off yet another ride, I hit the road in the dark and put in 25 miles or so, arriving back at the house well before 7:30. Riding solo on the levee in the dark with nothing but a little blinking LED headlight is remarkably stressful. If I had to do that often I'd definitely be in the market for a real headlight that allows for seeing in addition to being seen. Anyway, I survived it. Hopefully I'll get in another ride tomorrow before heading off for the annual USAC Local Associations conference in Colorado on Friday and the NCURA conference in D.C. from Sunday through Wednesday. Like it or not, I'll end up with essentially two weeks off the bike. Situation normal.

Get the picture

2011-10-28T07:24:00.003-05:00

Worth a thousand words.....

Bonus Miles

2011-10-24T08:01:00.001-05:00

It was around 6:30 am when I left the house, and I didn't make it more than two blocks before turning around. I was signed up to do the annual Tour de Jefferson ride which started at 9 am, and I knew the temperature would up around 70F by then, so despite the chill in the pre-dawn air, I'd gone out with just a jersey and arm-warmers. It didn't take me long to decide that I'd rather do the ride with a wind vest in my pocket than be cold for the next hour. A bunch of us were planning to meet at the local Starbucks for 7:00 in order to get about twenty bonus miles by riding to the ride. It would be nearly twenty miles, including a ferry ride across the river, so even with two hours to spare, the timing would be a little tight.

I was pleasantly surprised to find over a dozen riders in our group as we headed off down St. Charles Avenue for the Canal Street ferry landing. Although we had plenty of time to make the 7:45 ferry, I wanted to make sure we kept rolling just in case we were delayed by a flat or something. Fortunately, the ride downtown went smoothly and we got to the foot of Canal Street with a good fifteen minutes to spare. I was glad I'd decided to wear the wind vest, but knew I'd be stuffing it into my pocket pretty soon. The nine or ten mile ride from the ferry back upriver to the ride start went pretty well. I had been a little worried about getting delayed at the Harvey Canal if there had been a ship going through the lock there, but there were no problems at all, unless you count the fact that we overshot the spot where we needed to turn off of the bike path and had to ride back half a mile or so.

We arrived at Bayou Segnette park with almost half an hour to spare, so we had just enough time to sign in and make our way to the front of the big group waiting for the start, which we accomplished by doing a little cyclocross style riding.

This ride is a 50-mile group ride that is kind of a west-bank Giro Ride since a lot of the usual Giro riders participate. There's a stretch early in the ride that includes a few miles on the narrow levee bike path, and so it always gets a little fast as riders try to stay toward the front before hitting that. It's like trying to make the hole shot at the start of a mountain bike race.

Once we were off the bike path and out on the open road again, the pace ramped up pretty quickly. I guess were were still less than twenty-five miles into the ride when I dropped back down the paceline only to be surprised when Jeff looked over and said, "I'm it." Somewhere along the way the group had split and there was already a front group of twenty-five or so.

It was easy sitting in the draft, since there wasn't really much wind, but the speeds were definitely up around Giro Ride territory, spending lots of time in the 26-30 mph range. For myself, I was feeling pretty good, but the knowledge that it would be an 87-mile day for me was sufficient motivation to keep me off the front. Besides, it was an absolutely perfect Fall day and I didn't really know where I was going anyway. Although I've lived in New Orleans all my life, much of the West Bank remains foreign territory for me.

So we got back to the start just as they were getting the crawfish etouffe and red beans and rice ready to serve. Our original group, of course, had gotten a little split up since some riders were planning on riding easy, some were planning to stay with the front group, and others were scattered in-between. A few took off for home early while the rest of us waited for the last riders to arrive before heading back downriver for the return trip. As we rode the ferry back across the river I noticed a pirate woman standing at the rail. No doubt on her way to work in the French Quarter on a day that included a Saints game. I finally rolled up to the house around 2 pm with 87 miles on the odometer. It was a nice long ride on a nice Fall day.

Fallin' Behind

2011-10-22T17:31:00.001-05:00

Well, we have gotten our first taste of Fall down here in New Orleans, and I can't say I've heard anyone complaining. Last week's Saturday Giro had a good turnout and stayed pretty fast for the most part, and the weather was warm and breezy. The Wife's sister was in town from Dallas, so we spent some time down the French Quarter, stopping for coffee at Envie, walking down to Frenchman Street (named for the Frenchmen that the Spanish governor with the Irish name "Bloody O'Reily" executed), and later heading over to Magazine Street for a somewhat lengthy wait for lunch at Cafe Rani. Sunday's Giro turnout was relatively small. It was just as well, since I had to turn around early to get back in time for a quick brunch at the Ritz.

Last week was more or less a blur, riding-wise. A cool front came through and by Tuesday morning the pre-dawn temperature had dipped just barely below 50F. In order to minimize the shock, I went out with long tights, two jerseys, arm-warmers and a wind vest. I can't say I was ever particularly hot. The next couple of mornings were similar, although I skipped Wednesday and turned back early on Thursday because of time constraints, and went out fifteen minutes late on Friday for a nice solo ride. It's nice to do a solo ride once in a while. They always seem to turn out the same, though. I tell myself I'll just do an easy spin, but after a few miles the speed starts creeping up and eventually I have to sit up a coast for a while so it doesn't turn into a time trial.

At some point during the week I updated the NOBC History page with some old photos that Bob Perrin dropped off. This was stuff from the Tour de Louisiana and La Boucherie Gran Prix French Quarter criterium, circa 1973. It was a little disconcerting to find myself in one of those looking like I was a college student (which I was). Seems like just yesterday. I remember the wool jersey and how it felt, and smelled, in the middle of the summer; I remember the leather helmet; I even remember the socks. A few teammates, including Boyd Fink, Chris Todd, Randy Holmes, Mike Schramel, Jim McFadden, and Dave Weatherly are in there.

So anyway, by Friday afternoon I was pretty much ready to call it a week. Fortunately, we had tickets to the annual Red, Whites and Blues wine tasting over at City Park where there was a lot of food of which I didn't eat much, and a lot of wine that I sampled fairly liberally, only one of which I couldn't make myself swallow. Whoever got the idea that wine could be improved by flavoring it with chocolate must have been drinking some really bad wine. The whole thing is really just a couple of hours long and is highlighted by a raffle for a ton of wine, which once again none of us won. Out in the garden they had Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns, which I really enjoyed. They may not be classically trained musicians, but they sure sounded good to me.

Tomorrow morning I'll be doing the Tour of Jefferson ride, which should be fun since the weather will be close to perfect. Some of us are planning to ride to the ride, which involves taking the Canal St. Ferry to the foreign land known locally as The West Bank, which is not, technically, west, at least around here. We may have to make a last minute change in our departure time - still working on that.

Passive-Aggressive

2011-10-13T12:01:00.001-05:00

It's been a bit of a dull week so far. The weather, while quite nice, has been virtually identical each day, as was the dull sinus-type headache that plagued me for the first three days. I think I had a little touch of a head cold going on. This morning I rolled the bike out the door and looked up at the stars wishing I didn't have to ride in the dark again. Alas, Congress has decreed that we must ride that way until November before finally making the switch. My regular route takes me down Carrollton Avenue where there's a nice bike lane. Unfortunately, the city has been digging up and replacing a long section of streetcar tracks for the past couple of months and all of the street lights along that stretch have been off for the duration. On the plus side, they finally fixed the water leak and resulting hole along that stretch. Unfortunately they still haven't fixed the other water leak where it's been coming up through a manhole cover for the past few months. Since there aren't any street lights there, I sometimes don't see it soon enough, or if I do, there's a car coming up behind and I'm forced to ride through the water. It's not much, but somehow I just really hate having that little spray of water hitting my legs that early in the morning. I can't imagine how on earth those guys can possibly be taking so long to fix such a small section of tracks. If the first transcontinental railroad had been constructed at the same pace, California would still be a frontier. Anyway, my dirty bike and I arrived promptly at the levee, blending into the cluster of blinking lights a few minutes before we rolled down the "hill" for the Thursday long ride.

I chatted for a couple of minutes with Mignon about the NOBC group that she is registering for the upcoming Tour de Jefferson ride, but after a couple of miles the pace started to rise as we accumulated more riders and settled into a long paceline. I guess two-thirds of the group wasn't interested in being on the front today, which is kind of typical this time of year, so the speed remained relatively steady, which is more than I can say about a few of the riders who seemed to be having balance issues. People really need to put more emphasis on riding a straight line. While I'm on my soapbox, let me also remind everyone that the red blinky light flashing in my eyes while we're in the paceline isn't really serving any purpose other than to make it hard to see where we're going, so please reach back and turn the thing off. Nobody's going to be coming up on us from behind. Anyway, things seemed shaky enough this morning that I spent a lot of time riding an extra bike length behind the wheel in front of me until the sun started to rise.

On the ride back today, somewhere around River Ridge, which seems to be the home of some sort of underground anti-bike, take-back-the-levee activist cell, we were rolling along at a nice steady pace of 22-23 mph as we approached a woman walking her dog. Coming the other way on his bike was Bob Perrin, so we at first eased up, and then braked since everything was coming together at the same place. The woman wasn't budging from the middle of the bike path, nor was she keeping her dog close to her, so by the time we all converged, Bob had come to a stop and the paceline was down to walking speed as we threaded our way past. I didn't see it as a much of a problem, thinking that the woman was either clueless or stupid (or perhaps both). As we went past, I saw Donald turn around and tell the woman, "That's why we yielded to you!" It turned out that the woman, possible stupidity notwithstanding, was just being passive-aggressive and must have said something about pedestrians having right of way, not that any of us were arguing the point. (Passive–aggressive behavior, a personality trait, is passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following through with expectations in interpersonal or occupational situations.) So that slowed things down for a little while as we collectively scratched our heads and wondered why someone would think such behavior was necessary, or helpful. Eventually, of course, things got going again and I found myself spending a whole lot of time sitting in VJ's draft.

Last weekend Bob Perrin stopped by and gave me a few really old local racing photos from the early 70s. This one shows me in one of the La Boucherie Gran Prix races that the club promoted down in the French Quarter around '72 or '73. Eventually I'll get them all scanned and up on the NOBC archive website. I still remember that old helmet and even those socks.

Too Early

2011-10-08T22:33:00.003-05:00

The radio came on at 5:45 am and I promptly drifted off to sleep again. A moment later, apparently, I jolted awake, thinking, "Damn, I'm late!" I threw on riding clothes, rushed downstairs, filled a couple of water bottles and took off for the lakefront. I was still half-asleep. Somewhere out around Bayou St. John I looked up and thought, "It sure is dark." I glanced down at my watch as I rode under a street lamp. Crap! I'd left home a good twenty-five minutes early. I hate it when that happens. Harrison Avenue through the park was basically pitch black. So as I rode up to Starbucks almost an hour before the start of the Giro Ride, I was a little surprised to see Daniel already there. On the plus side, I had lots of time to sip my morning coffee.

It was windy this morning, but otherwise the weather was nearly perfect. The group was pretty large as we rolled down Lakeshore Drive, but aside from the wind I wasn't expecting a particularly hard ride. For one thing, a few of the usual instigators were missing. For another, it looked like we'd have a direct headwind or tailwind for most of the ride. One thing about the combination of a direct headwind and a large group is that, unless you're at the front, sitting in the draft can feel really easy. In fact, the pace did get fairly fast here and there, but in general things were rather inconsistent today. After battling the headwind all the way out, we finally turned around. Things were slow to get going, however, and so I rode ahead to catch a couple of riders who were already up the road. Of course, I knew the group would eventually get back up to speed, and considering the tailwind, I knew they'd be going pretty fast when they caught us. Once that happened, I think we went a few miles without the speed dropping much below 30 mph. So anyway, there were a few really fast stretches until we got back to Hayne Blvd. where things slowed down to conversational mode before the final surges over the bridges.

Off Balance

2011-10-05T22:49:00.002-05:00

It seems that everything has been just a bit off-balance lately. The weekend started out with a nice cool morning ride out toward the lakefront on Saturday. It was cool enough to warrant a little extra wind protection as I made my way to Starbucks looking forward to a hot cup of coffee. With the days getting noticeably shorter by the day, it was still quite dark as I rode across City Park on Harrison Avenue. There wasn't a car in sight, so I rode in the traffic lane rather than the bike path since there's sometimes a bit of debris on the path that my little blinky light wasn't going to pick up early enough to avoid a nasty surprise. The Saturday Giro had a brisk northeast wind to deal with, making for a hard ride on the way out and a fast one on the way back. I was feeling pretty good and got in a good workout.

It wasn't until much later in the day that I learned that Robin, who had dropped off of the group on the way out, had been hit from behind by a truck that was reportedly going around 50 mph. The truck crushed his rear wheel and he was thrown up onto the hood. The driver, who hadn't been looking where he was going, looked down at him on the ground and asked, "What do you want me to do?" Robin responded, "Call 911." No kidding? At least the driver, who apparently didn't have insurance, stuck around. Robin spent the next two days in the hospital with fractures in three vertebrae and a whole lot of pain. Of course, it could have been a whole lot worse, so we can at least be thankful for that. Since it was the MS Tour weekend around here, turnout for the Giro was a little lower than usual, especially on Sunday. We still got in a pretty good workout, but toward the end the group really split up a lot. I came over the Seabrook bridge with one other rider who continued on Leon C. Simon when I turned onto Lakeshore Drive, and then soft-pedaled for quite a while so I wouldn't have to ride back home alone.

I've felt like I've been in a fog since Monday, however. I think I may have a little sinus infection or something, as often happens this time of year. I always seem to have trouble adapting to spectacular weather. This morning I woke up with a stiff neck and stuffy nose, just like the last two mornings. Of course, I went out to ride anyway. The Wednesday group was relatively big, with a dozen or so riders in attendance. The ride itself was fairly typical with moderate speeds and long pulls, and although I felt a little better by the time I got home, something still seems a bit off-balance. On the plus side, I finally picked up the LCCS awards for 2010 about eight months later than I should have, and in the process placed the order for the 2011 ones. Maybe I need to get a little more sleep.....

Planning to Plan

2011-09-30T14:46:00.004-05:00

So I spent this week's riding time more or less in recovery and sightseeing mode. With only the track championships (which I'll probably be officiating anyway) and local Tour de Jefferson "ride" on the horizon, it seems appropriate to be winding down just a bit. The truth is, however, that I haven't really been all that wound up this year anyway, so it's more a matter of roadie tradition and habit than anything else. The air this morning was dry and cool, and it's looking like we'll have a little taste of Fall for the next couple of days, at least in the early morning hours. Around here, that means a temperature of 70F, or even (brrrrrrr!) down into the upper 60s. I'm thinking about plans for the next few months, which are always rather busy for me. Somewhere in there I absolutely need to replace my worn-through saddle and maybe pick up some new gloves and shoe-covers to tide me through the winter. We will have a couple of visits from family members, a little Halloween open house, some travel, etc. Some travel arrangements have been made, others not quite yet. Plus, I need to schedule the annual LAMBRA meeting, make sure the awards get ordered on time this year, officiate the track championships, hopefully sell a property of my mother's, etc. I actually just this week got the awards and team trophy for last year's LCCS! Better late than never, I guess. I'll probably order the ones for this year when I go pick them up tomorrow.

Words to live by

Speaking of awards, USA Cycling has worked out a deal with Voler for state championship (and I assume BAR/LCCS) jerseys that looks promising. We've never given out state championship jerseys before because of the cost and order minimums involved. The deal with Voler, however, would allow LAMBRA to come up with a standard LAMBRA championship design, and then the winning riders in all of the championship classes and categories could buy championship jerseys, if they want to, via an online ordering system after confirmation from LAMBRA. It is essentially the same system they now use for the national championship jerseys, and the cost per jersey is really low - under $40. LAMBRA would even get a small "royalty" on each one ordered. Once they have the design set up, they can print jerseys as needed and ship them out within three or four days.

This morning's Friday ride was smooth and easy -- a lot of time at 20-22 mph taking long pulls with Scott, David, Zack and Taylor. So anyway, I guess I'll be riding the Giro this weekend (possibly with arm-warmers?). The rides may be a little smaller than usual because this is the MS Tour weekend, so a fair number of the local riders will be battling the north wind from Hammond to McComb tomorrow and then reversing the route on Sunday. I did that ride one year and it was a lot of fun, but I will kind of have my hands full this weekend anyway.

Six Gap Recap

2011-09-27T14:51:00.002-05:00

Me, Keith and Steve - still pretty dark!

Keith, Kris and I hit the road early Saturday morning for the long drive up into the foothills of Georgia for the annual pilgrimage to the Six Gap Century. Compared with last year, the weather forecast was looking quite encouraging, with a low of around 50, a high in the low 70s, and virtually no chance of rain. We arrived at Dahlonega in the early afternoon, giving us time to pick up our packets and watch the Juniors and Masters criteriums. If we'd gotten there a little earlier and I'd have had time to find out how many masters had registered, I might have convinced myself to enter. As it turned out they had only about 13 in the combined 35+/45+ race, so winning back my entry fee would have been a distinct possibility. Anyway, we met up with Steve and Pat and headed over to our host's house for dinner and vino. Kris had made a last-minute decision to switch to a compact crankset, which FedEx had delivered that morning, so we swapped that out in the driveway before it got dark and he took it for a very brief test ride. It was a little too brief, as it turned out, because he dropped his chain a couple of times the next day. Afterward, we stayed up to watch the LSU game on their enormous TV before hitting the sack ... or couch. I didn't sleep well at all, as my stomach was giving me grief for some reason.

As usual, Sunday morning was kind of a rush. Even though we arrived at the school where the ride started about an hour ahead of time, there were about a thousand cars ahead of us as we inched our way into the parking lot. I put a flask of HammerGel in my pocket, made sure my two water bottles were full, and contemplated the temperature. By then the sun was starting to peek over the horizon, but I was already pretty chilled. Knowing I'd probably regret it later, which I did, I put on two jerseys and arm-warmers, and headed down to the starting line about 15 minutes before the 7:30 start. They had a little area roped off at the front for people who had gone under 6 hours, so I stepped over the tape and waited there, shivering, as the overly enthusiastic announcer tried somewhat successfully to raise the general level of early morning excitement. He started asking people in the sub-6 hour corral what their last year times had been and asking the crowd if they were "worthy." I wasn't paying much attention when suddenly he stuck the microphone in front of my face. I said "5:50-something" (I looked it up later, it was 5:56), and for some reason he seemed doubtful (more on him later). I was tempted to respond to the big guy with a Yoda-esque "Judge me by my size, do you?" but just let it slide.

The ride started right on time (I'm in the video!) as over 1,000 of us rolled off into the Georgia countryside for 103 miles of long slow climbs and scary-fast downhills. The first ten or fifteen miles went pretty smoothly, and I was a little surprised that the pace wasn't any faster than it was, not that I was complaining. Although I can't help wanting to finish with a respectable time, for this ride mere respectability would have to suffice. I was hanging out somewhere in the front 40 or 50, mainly to stay out of trouble, as we rode up and down the rollers leading up to the first significant climb, Neel's Gap, at mile 19 or so. Once we started up that climb I looked up ahead and could see a fairly big group of maybe 35 riders already pulling away rather quickly. I settled in to a nice steady pace of 7-10 mph and stuck with the riders around me. Attacking Neel's Gap was definitely not in my game plan. After a fast but welcome downhill, I found myself in a nice steady group of 30 or so that was rolling along at a brisk but comfortable speed. We went up the next two climbs, Jack's and Unicoi, more or less together. The descent down Unicoi is probably my favorite, but this year it was interrupted by traffic. I had just gotten the speed up into the 45-50 mph range when I came up on a truck that couldn't pass a couple of slower cyclists on the narrow winding road. It was very frustrating to be dragging the brakes where I'd normally be flying through the curves, but there was just nothing that I or the driver could do.

We finally came to the start of Hogpen at around mile 44. For that long climb it's pretty much every man for himself as each riders quickly settles into whatever pace he thinks he can maintain. In my case, I was alternating between standing in the 39x25 at about 9-10 mph and sitting in the 39x27 at 7-8 mph, mostly sitting. I could see riders all up and down the road, all crawling along at about the same speed, but was careful not to look up the road too much. Every time I'd look ahead and see the seemingly endless climb I'd hear this little voice in my head saying, "Why don't you just stop and take a break?" Fortunately I'd taken the time this year to write down the start and finish mileages of the big climbs on my handlebar tape, so at least I knew how much farther the pain would last. By the top of Hogpen things were pretty well shattered, but there were still a number of riders around, so after the quick downhill we still had a little group as we approached the Wolfpen Gap climb where I was expecting to start unravelling. By the time I got over that one, which involved avoiding the slower 3-Gappers since we were all back on the same route, a little group of six to ten had pulled away and I was pretty much on my own for the rest of the ride. After coming over the last big climb at Woody's Gap, I was looking forward to the fast and fun downhill, but was once again frustrated by slow-moving traffic and ended up spending most of the time on the brakes as I followed a couple of cars that were cautiously leapfrogging from one rider to the next. The rest of the ride was just a lot of rollers where my speed fluctuated from 12 to 40 mph. I didn't really have much left in the tank at that point, so I was taking it fairly easy on the climbs.

I ended up finishing with a time of 5:50, which was right in line with my other times. In fact, it's kind of amazing that after doing this ride four times in four years, my finishing times have not varied more than about ten minutes. As I rolled past the tent at the finish the announcer, who looked exhausted, recognized me and asked me my time. I stopped to chat with Donald Davis who had finished around 5th, or 3rd, a full half hour ahead of me. As I rolled off to seek liquids and food, Donald headed back out onto the route to ride it backwards back up to the top of Woody Gap so he could cheer for his friends and teammates. The results, as of this writing, are a little screwy since they include the times for riders who obviously didn't do the whole ride, but anyway they're on the Epic Sports Marketing website. If you want to see what it takes to ride this thing really fast, go over to Brian Toone's blog to see his extensive and annotated ride data and read his reports of the Criterium and Century Ride. Brian and one other guy, Jimmy Schurman, whose timing chip was obviously not working well, were the first to finish, just under the course record. Jorge finished at 6:35 and Steve finished at 6:37. Keith was at 7:20 and Kris, who was pretty dehydrated and exhausted for a while, finished at 7:43. Sadly, I never got over 52 mph because of the traffic, but Keith had a maximum speed of a bit over 56 mph.

We were on the road by around 3:30 or 4:00 and finally arrived back in New Orleans right around midnight. It's Tuesday afternoon now and my back still aches! Apparently those climbs up to the top of the levee aren't doing it.

Gearing Down

2011-09-23T17:12:00.001-05:00

After a fairly relaxed week of riding I'll be heading from where I am, here in the South, about nine hours northeast to where the rest of the country thinks is the South, namely Atlanta, or to be more specific, Dahlonega, which is north of Atlanta. Late last night I rummaged through a box in my basement, finally extracting a little box marked "Six Gap." Inside was my 12-27 cassette that hadn't seen the light of day since this time last year. I installed it on my trusty old Rolf wheels with those new pink tires, stuck a huge water bottle into the cage, and planned on an easy Friday morning ride to make sure the off-brand Miche cassette wasn't going to require any derailleur adjustments.

The Six Gap Century has become in recent years the closing bookend for my road season, the opening bookend being Rouge-Roubaix in March. The intervening seven months usually represent roughly 6,500 of a typical 11,000 mile year. This year, however, is looking like it will be closer to 10,000 miles for me. It's just been one of those years. Anyway, the 103-mile ride is always memorable, usually painful, and sometimes humbling. I rode it the first couple of times with a low gear of 39x25 before finally springing for that 12-27 cassette. Even so, most riders opt for gearing substantially lower by going with a "compact" crank setup, typically with a 34-tooth small ring. The route itself features, as its name would imply, six "gaps" or passes, but a couple of them are short enough to pale in comparison to the others. The first long climb is Neels Gap that starts at about 19 miles and peaks out t miles later at 26 miles. The last 4 miles of that one are pretty damned steep. After that one there are a couple of relatively short climbs up Jacks and Unicoi gaps, followed by the excellent 5-mile descent down from Unicoi. Finally, at about 44 miles, comes THE BIG ONE, Hogpen gap. This is essentially an 8.5 mile climb that climbs over 1,000 feet, with the steepest sections nearest the top, of course. There's a nice descent after that one, a bit of flat, and then the 4.2 mile climb up Wolfpen gap starting at 72 miles. This one actually has some of the steepest grades, and will take whatever you might have left in your legs, if anything, right out of you. Then there are a couple of short climbs, a nice fast descent, and a long, long rolling stretch to the finish. Sounds like fun, eh? The Wolfpen and Hogpen climbs are timed, thanks to the chip-timing system, and I think there's a prize for the winners of that. Of course, as the organizer reminds everybody at the start, "It's not a race!" Yeah, right.

Anyway, we'll be heading out around 6:30 tomorrow morning for the long drive, which should provide ample time to contemplate the possibility of riding the new criterium that they're having the evening before.......

At the Beach

2011-09-19T22:57:00.001-05:00

I'd been looking forward to the Pensacola Classic Stage Race with a mix of excitement and trepidation. The extensive pre-event promotion, generous prizelist, and attractive destination promised a good turnout, even for a late-season race. I figured it would be a good race. I also figured I'd get may ass kicked. So naturally I signed up. After a flurry of emails and text messages I was all set up to drive up with Tim, stay at the luxurious Holiday Inn, right on the beach, with a voucher from BP picking up the hotel tab. So Friday afternoon I headed home from work a little early, put the racing wheels with their pink Michelin Pro Race 3s on the bike, cleaned off a week's worth of dirt, lubed the chain and waited for Tim to pick me up. Our timing was going to be pretty tight. The trip GPS was estimating our arrival for 9:05. Packet pick-up ended at 9:00. As we approached Pensacola, the estimated arrival time started dropping. We arrived about ten minutes before they closed down for the night, just in time to pickup our numbers and timing chips and put our names into the door prize jar for a chance to win a Specialized Tarmac. Then we headed for our room and the minute we walked in the door Tim's phone rang. It was the organizer calling to tell him he'd won the bike! Sweet.

I was riding the combined 35+/45+ race, and Saturday morning offered a 50 mile road race on a pretty good 25 mile course with one long climb about two-thirds of the way around. Unlike the previous year, the finish wasn't right after a nice little climb, but was pretty much a flat drag race - a last-minute change that was made when the folks who controlled the original start location decided they needed a pile of cash from the promoter. The race started off a little slower than it had the year before, but there were still a few attacks and short-lived breaks. Everything was together when we hit the one really tactically significant climb, and as I'd expected, or perhaps feared, Donald Davis attacked hard at about the mid-point. Things got strung out immediately and although I was able to stay in the mix, I didn't think that I needed to go full-bore. After all, there were a lot of people in the pack and no other big hills nearby, so I thought that surely there would be a chase once we got over the top and the break would get pulled back in a few minutes. Well, I was wrong. Up at the top of the climb, which was more like a false flat, a group suddenly came together and the gap just kind of exploded. The rest of the group didn't really respond. This was not good. Before we knew it the gap had gone up to about 30 seconds. A couple of teams had guys in the break, so that took a number of people out of the chase. Eventually the break, which had seven riders in it, got out of sight. At one point I got into a small break that I thought might at least stay away from the pack, but after a few miles it was pulled back and the stage was set for a sprint for 8th place overall, which meant nothing since all of the stage bonuses were in the break anyway. Even so, you would have thought we were sprinting for the world championship the way riders started crowding the front from about three miles out. There was definitely some needlessly dangerous riding going on and I couldn't get close enough to the front to have a good shot at the line without doing something stupid. Since I had no faith whatsoever in the officials giving pack time to everyone (they can never resist when there's chip timing) I sprinted anyway, coming in somewhere around 7th or 8th in the pack which put me in 8th in the 45+ race. Oh well. On the plus side, I didn't feel like the road race had taken much out of me.

The afternoon time trial was just a few miles down the beach road from the hotel, and the start times had been posted to the event website, so I carefully figured out when I should leave in order to get in a nice warmup without having to hang around in the sun very long before my start. I knew something was wrong by the time I was halfway there, because by then I should have seen riders coming toward me. It turned out they were running 35 minutes late. So much for my plan. There were no road race results at the time trial, or on the website, and of course the posted start list was now off by about 35 minutes. The one-way time trial had a fairly good tailwind, which I knew would favor the real TT fanatics, among whom I am not. I did a nice steady time trial at about 85% effort, maintaining a reasonable 27 mph, which would have been more like 25 mph without the tailwind. My 30-second man passed me about four kilometers into the five kilometer TT. That evening we met up at Flounders where I was somewhat embarrassed to find that my legs weren't the least bit sore. I guess I really need to start taking these time trial things more seriously.

So I stayed up until 10:30 or so Saturday hoping to see the TT and GC results, but no luck. The next morning the GC standings were supposed to be posted, but if you tried to go to the website from a smartphone you got redirected to some photography site instead. There was never a results posting that showed stage times, finish bonuses, at GC all in the same place. It would have been virtually impossible to protest anything. Anyway, we headed out to the criterium course where the masters were scheduled to start at 11:00. We arrived in time to see the Women's race in which Debbie Milne and Allie Hurst spent much of the time off the front. The rest of the Cat. 1-3 women's field, which included NOBC riders Vivian and Angie got a little split up but were still very much in the race until the last five laps or so. Debbie attacked hard at one point, opening a 10-second gap on Allie, but withing a lap or so Allie had pulled it back and things were set for a 2-rider sprint. Unfortunately there was some confusion about the finish lap - perhaps they heard the bell for a pack prime and thought it was their bell lap, or perhaps the bell they heard after that sprint was the bell for some lapped riders, but anyway they ended up sprinting twice with Allie taking both of them.

Things were running about half an hour late, but apparently they shortened the race before mine, which meant that I didn't get the warmup I had been planning for. At the start I totally flubbed clipping in and spent the next couple of laps trying to move up to a more comfortable position. Aside from some rider rolling off the front who was apparently one of the Cat. 1/2/3 riders who the officials had allowed to race with us (really??), most of the race was fast but not exceptionally so. Since my GC possibilities were pretty much in the dumpster because of my time trial, I was just hoping for a sprint finish and a decent shot at the line. With four laps to go things started to get kind of crazy. The pace at the front wasn't fast enough to string things out enough, so there was a lot of sketchy riding as things got bunched up. At one point some big guy tried to repeatedly push me out of his way with his hand on my hip. Seriously? Anyway, a little attack with at the bell finally strung it out a little bit, but I couldn't get as close to the front as I'd have liked before the last couple of turns and probably came around the last corner around 10th wheel and ultimately finishing around 7th or 8th, which was 4th in the 45+. It was at least some small consolation for an otherwise unimpressive weekend performance.

So afterward I peeled off my wet skinsuit, changed, and headed off with my camera to watch the Cat. 1/2/3 race that was already underway. I took a few photos and then suddenly remembered I'd forgotten to return my chip, so I had to go back to the car, cut it off, and turn it in behind the officials' stand. Then I decided to go take some photos at one of the corners on the back side of the course. As I started walking in that direction I heard someone calling my name. I looked back and it was a police officer. He said that one of my friends had crashed. I rushed over to the corner where there was now a fire truck and found Tim sitting on the sidewalk leaning on a brick wall and holding a bandage to the side of his head. I asked the fireman if he had answered all of the questions correctly, and, satisfied that he didn't have a concussion, asked him what had happened. It sounded like a rider ahead of him had hit the manhole in that corner, which lifted his rear wheel and caused him to slide out. Tim had no choice but to try and go around on the outside, but after hopping the curb onto the sidewalk he ran out of room, brushed along a brick wall, and then slammed sideways into a brick column, putting a pretty good gash in his ear and causing a fair amount of collateral damage to arms and ankles. He had dislocated a finger but popped it back into place before I arrived. Anyway, we got him cleaned up and headed for home shortly after the race ended. I think we were somewhere in Alabama when the bleeding finally stopped. So I ended up coming in 9th in the 45+ race, although I really have no idea exactly how that was calculated. It was really a pretty well put-together race and the only real issue, as far as I was concerned, was with the results posting. I put a few photos up at http://flic.kr/s/aHsjw5K5kr.

Tapering Off

2011-09-15T21:38:00.002-05:00

The Pensacola Classic is this weekend. Now in its second year, I'm expecting they will have a pretty big turnout, especially since it is part of both the LAMBRA and Florida points series'. It's also the end of the LAMBRA road season, unless you count one possibility that may or may not happen in December in New Orleans. For the last few weeks I've sensed the racing season starting to taper off a bit as it always does this time of year. It's kind of hard to detect the change, actually. The fast parts of the training rides are still just as fast, but things start up just a little bit more slowly and the fastest stretches are just that little bit shorter. I'm thinking about track and cyclocross and century rides and trying to remember what articles of winter riding gear need to be replaced before it gets cold. Fortunately we have a few months around here before the real chill sets in. And then there's November. I just finished making a week's worth of travel arrangements, including the USAC Local Associations Summit in Colorado Springs, followed immediately by a research administration conference in Washington D.C. Neither involved much in the way of recreation or, for that matter, exercise. So yesterday was the last of Kenny's bandit Lakefront time trials (there's a video!). There was a good turnout and some fast times, so although the official road season may be tapering off, it's clear that not all of the riders are.

This morning's levee ride was surprisingly well-attended. It's quite dark now at 6 am as I ride out to meet the ride, and the riders are starting to show up a little later than usual, but that's OK because we really don't want a 25-rider paceline blasting down the levee in the dark. By the time things start to ramp up, usually somewhere out past the Huey P. Long bridge, there's a lot more light. I was feeling a little sluggish today, so it was a struggle to stay with the pace, which just seemed to get faster and faster. Out near The Dip a number of people backed off and turned back, but there was still a good-sized group that did the whole ride. That kept the pace fairly high and we spent a lot of time, both coming and going, in the 27-30 mph range. I think there were three or four times when I pulled off after a short pull, only to have Howard come storming past on his TT bike three mph faster. Anyway, although I was trying to take it just a little bit easy, considering the fact that last weekend took a lot out of me and this next weekend is coming up fast, I'm not sure I succeeded. My goal for the Pensacola race is just to hold my own and have fun. Down the road are things like the Six Gap Century later in the month, and then the local Tour de Jefferson ride, followed by our Track Championships at the end of October. Just today I got an email from the Dahlonega folks announcing a criterium the evening before the Six Gap ride. Tempting.

Back to Natchez

2011-09-13T00:11:00.001-05:00

I'd been debating what to do about the LAMBRA Road Championships for a couple of days. I've never felt like I was really in shape this year, and since, for one reason or another, I'd missed so many races already this year I was actually considering riding the Master 55+/60+ race instead of the 35+/45+ race. The downside there, aside from the unavoidable acknowledgement that I was actually old enough to be eligible, was that the field would probably be quite small and the distance rather short at a bit over 36 miles. On the plus side, the chance I'd be dropped was considerably lower. I was still on the fence about it as I walked out the door late Wednesday night to walk the dogs. A few seconds later I was on the ground holding my sprained ankle and suddenly thinking that maybe that shorter race would be the right choice this year. I taped the already swelling ankle and went to bed, hoping I hadn't done too much damage. The next morning it was better, as long as I didn't twist it, so I went out to meet the Thursday ride. I needed to make sure my recently reassembled shifter was working anyway. As often happens, the ankle felt just fine while I was riding, although I was careful not to spend any time out of the saddle. Just to be on the safe side, I turned around early.

The alarm went off early Saturday morning. I had to get up to Natchez before registration opened to drop off the LAMBRA clock and generator and, if needed, help out with registration. I would be driving a rental Kia Soul (the one with the commercial featuring giant rats and rap music), which the agency called a minivan, but which is in fact a mini-minivan. On the plus side, it had satellite radio and audio input, so I had a nice commercial-free drive, arriving as the crew was setting up the huge tents they always have for this race. The first races started at 9 am, although my 55+/60+ race didn't roll until 2 pm. I spent some time fixing up the registration/results spreadsheets and eventually plugging in the Junior race results and watching the Cat. 5 and Masters Women's races before pulling the bike out of the car and getting things together for my own race. As it turned out, we would have a small field of only nine riders. The 35+/45+ race, which would start a few minutes ahead of us, had twenty. I'm not really sure why we don't get larger fields for this race. The course and venue are great, although it is certainly possible that the hills on the first part of the 5-mile loop scare some people away. This course starts out with a steep but short climb up to a dam. A mile later there is a fairly long stair-step climb that is steeper at the top than at the bottom. That's followed by a quick, short downhill and then a short but very steep little climb that seems to get steeper every lap. We'd be doing seven laps. Things started out pretty smoothly, but by the time we were halfway through the first lap it was becoming clear that half the field was not going to be doing any work. I was feeling fairly good and spent quite a bit of time at the front along with a couple of other riders. I guess it was on the third lap when I came over the steep hill, pulled for a little while, and pulled off to find only one other rider with me. He came through and said, "It's just you and me, Randy." I figured I'd work with it and see where it went, knowing that Mike Williams could probably close the gap by himself once.

As hard as the first couple of miles of this loop are, the last few miles are really fun with long sweeping downhill curves, smooth asphalt, and tree-shaded roads. I took another pull and saw that my breakaway companion was already having trouble. I backed off a bit so he could catch back up, but a little while later he was off the back again. I could see the rest of the group just behind, so I finally just put my head down and went for it. By the end of the lap I was pretty much out of sight with, I think, four laps left to go. I wasn't too wild about the prospect of a long time trial on this course, but by then I was pretty much committed. I never had any time checks, so for the rest of the race I didn't really know what might be going on behind me. From what I heard afterward, Mike initially closed most of the gap but when nobody was willing to share the work he sat up. This was, of course, all complicated by the fact that there were essentially two races going on at the same time, so the 60+ riders really didn't have much of a reason to chase me. Anyway, I ended up doing a rather long time trial and finishing quite a few minutes ahead of the rest of the field.

That evening Curtis invited me over to his house where he and Tommy and a number of the Natchez crew who organized the race were cooking dinner over a interesting outdoor grill kind of thing that was basically a cast iron cylinder with one flat side and a fire inside. It was both fun and delicious, although I was careful to limit myself to a single beer because by then I was seriously considering doing the Cat. 1/2 race the next morning.

Sunday morning, feeling rather sore, I signed up for the Cat. 1/2 race, mainly just for the exercise. My goal for this race was to stay with the field for at least six of the 14 laps. Based on past experience, I figured that would be about when they would start attacking the climbs and the effects of my substandard training program would really kick in. This race turned out to have a field of only nine riders, which did not bode well for me. On the other hand, most of these guys were smart enough to know that they wouldn't need the whole 72 miles to make something happen. As a result, the first few laps were pretty smooth. We were only a couple of laps into the race when Woody, who had been a bit off the front, flatted. His teammate Frank, who had ridden the masters race the day before, stopped to help pace him back to the pack after the wheel change. In the meantime, the other teams kept the pace up a bit. After a couple of miles I started looking back for Woody and Frank, and shortly after we made the right turn at the Natchez State Park entrance, I caught a glimpse of a solitary rider chasing. Frank had apparently blown up early in the chase and Woody was now on his own. He ended up chasing for a full 5.2 mi. lap before making contact. So as I'd expected I was starting to struggle a bit on the hills at lap #5, and then around lap 7 there was a surge up over that steep little hill that gapped me and another rider off the back. After a brief chase I had just made contact when another attack went. I just sat up at that point and thought, "I don't need this today!" So the rest of the race, maybe 35 miles or so, was more of a training ride for me. It was fine, though, because that's exactly what I'd been expecting. Don't you just love it when a plan comes together like that?

Afterwards I gathered up all my water bottles and walked down to the feed zone to hand up water bottles to teammates and a few other riders in the Cat. 4 and Women's races. All-in-all, it was a pretty good weekend. Now I'm thinking about going to the stage race in Pensacola next weekend.

Blind Faith

2011-09-05T12:26:00.000-05:00

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Thus, I found myself in a light drizzle heading out to the levee early yesterday afternoon astride the trusty old rain bike, wearing the trusty old rain jacket. Meeting up with Mignon who was on her vintage mountain bike, we rode in the off-and-on rain out to The Dip, battling the 20-30 mph winds on the way back. Although the idea was to do an easy ride, the head and cross winds made that rather difficult, but even so, I was glad I'd ridden. It had been warm enough to make a two hour ride in the rain relatively enjoyable. By evening I was already thinking about what kind of ride I might be able to put together for Monday. I figured the weather would have to be better by then.

So this morning I flew down Carrollton toward the lake, pushed along by a strong south wind left over from the rapidly retreating Tropical Storm, arriving at the Starbucks to find ..... nobody there. Hmmm. Considering the fact that it was still extremely windy and the roads were quite wet, I hadn't been expecting many, but then I hadn't been expecting to be alone either. Fortunately, a few minutes later Tim, Woody, VJ, Daniel and Mignon arrived. A minute after they sat down it started to rain. We waited for a while, and then when it looked like it was ending we headed out. Of course, it immediately started raining again. The lake was quiet with the south wind as we rode down Lakeshore Drive. I thought that with only six riders, pouring rain, and 20 mph winds we'd be taking it kind of easy. As usual I was wrong. Tim and Daniel were making sure we didn't waste the day's ride by going slowly. By the time we on Chef Highway we were going 27-30 mph in a steady rain. My glasses were fogged up, but taking them off would have meant exposing my eyes to the wheelspray, and since I was mostly sucking wheels by then, there was a lot of it. With the combination of water spraying right into my face, foggy and dirty glasses, and rain, I really couldn't see much of what was in front of me. For all practical purposes I was just riding on blind faith, taking at least a little comfort in the knowledge that the other riders in our little group were all experienced and predictable riders. Somewhere along Hayne we'd lost Mignon, so we were down to five riders. Four and a half if you consider how many pulls I was skipping.

We weren't sure if we'd make it out to Venetian Isles since all reports were that the road was flooded out there. Indeed, when we came over the levee and through the open floodgate the road ahead looked like a lake, so we made a u-turn and headed back. We weren't halfway back before it became obvious that the wind had completely shifted and was now coming strongly out of the northwest. By then, although the rain had stopped, the wheelspray hadn't, and it was starting to feel cooler. I could feel road grit in my teeth, ears, and basically everywhere. The return trip down Hayne Blvd. got harder and harder as the wind became more and more gusty. Coming over the Casino bridge there were a couple of times when the wind almost took my front wheel right out from under me. I don't know what would have happened if I'd been riding deep aero rims, but when we crossed the Seabrook bridge a few minutes later I was careful to stay low and close to the right side barrier where there was at least a little protection from the wind. Looking down at the lake it was hard to believe it was the same lake we'd ridden along an hour or so earlier. The lake level had already been a few feet higher than normal because of the tropical storm, and now the wind had shifted around to the north, pushing all that water up against the seawall. When we came over the levee onto Lakeshore Drive at the bottom of the Seabrook bridge we found the road to already be flooded and had to detour back to Leon C. Simon.

It was a long, wet ride, and by the time I got home my legs were a little sore, I was soaked to the skin, hungry, and chilled. Not quite an "epic" ride, but close.

Unpredictability

2011-09-03T22:00:00.000-05:00

I just lost a couple of paragraphs I'd written here. It's got something to do with this fancy touchpad thing, but it seems to be rather unpredictable. Oh well. So anyway, I really didn't need to miss another day of riding today, but Tropical Storm Lee had different ideas. Things got really windy and rainy early this morning, and by 6 am I knew I was definitely not going to be riding. As it turned out, that was about the worst weather we got an my house today. Unfortunately it kind of screwed up my morning, leaving me with nothing to do but make coffee and watch The Weather Channel. By mid-morning I was really starting to get desperate for something to do, but with the weather still rather unpredictable and the roads still quite wet and covered with leaves and branches, I was still hesitant to get on the bike. So then it hit me. What better time to take apart that balky right shifter and confirm my suspicions.

For a couple of months it's been acting a little strangely, and the Ergobrain computer has consistently been showing the rear cog as being one lower than it really was. I suspected a broken spring carrier, but taking a Campi shifter apart is not for the faint of heart, so I'd been putting it off. Well, with the prospect of three days of steady rain I figured, "no time like the present." Naturally, no soon than I'd started the clouds parted and the sun came out, at least for a while.

After peeling back the stinky handlebar tape, pulling out the brake and derailleur cables, rolling back the rubber cover to expose the old sweat, and removing the rusty bolt holding the shifter to the handlebars, I pulled the shifter off. As I'd expected, it was pretty gunky. I sprayed it all down with silicone spray and started taking things apart. I could already see that, as I had suspected, the post that holds the big spring was either broken or cracked. I removed all of the various parts and springs, cleaned everything up, and ordered a new $10 spring carrier. Guess I'll be riding the old Cervelo for a few days. Meanwhile, the tropical storm was turning out to be something of a disappointment, not that I heard anyone complaining. Still a little bored, I decided it was time to re-wire the old 10-light brass chandelier that I haven't installed yet. That turned out to be quite a task, ultimately requiring me to disassemble the whole thing in order to thread the power cord through the impossibly narrow sections. It took me nearly an hour to take all of the sections apart because they were pretty much welded together with rust.

I think I'm going to ride tomorrow -- somehow.

Depression

2011-09-02T14:39:00.000-05:00

Well, our little tropical depression has already achieved Tropical Storm status, and has thereby had an official name bestowed upon it. I didn't go out to ride in the rain this morning, although in retrospect it might have been the best chance I'd have had for the next few days. Tropical Storm Lee is just sitting there churning around in the Gulf, pulling moisture up its east side, which happens to be where we are. The forecast is for rain, rain and more rain, and if we happen to get stuck under one of those trains of rainstorms it's all quite likely to overwhelm the pumping system and start filling up this big bowl we call New Orleans. Hopefully the wind won't be too big of an issue once it finally gets close enough for that to matter, which may not be until Sunday. In the meantime, it's looking like it will be a wet and depressing weekend. I'm already seriously considering breaking out the rain bike tomorrow morning if conditions don't look too bad. Meanwhile, here at work, everything has gone quiet this afternoon, which means that a lot of people have already skipped out ahead of the upcoming long weekend. We have the Tulane Activities Expo this afternoon, so I'll be over there from about 4:00 - 6:00 trying to lure unsuspecting students in to bike racing. Later tonight I guess I'll have to venture down into the basement and make sure anything that can't swim is at least off the floor.

So I once again signed up for Six Gap yesterday. It should at provide a late-season goal to keep me off the couch too much. Ahead of that, there's the LAMBRA road championships in a week, followed by the Pensacola stage race that I'm hoping to make, and later in October we're hoping to have some track racing. This whole season has been kind of depressing for me so far. Having missed so many races, I don't feel like I ever really got into shape. That kind of makes me a bit apprehensive about the races and especially Six Gap, but I guess getting dropped at a race is still better than sitting on the couch watching reruns on television.

Summer Gunk

2011-08-31T22:12:00.000-05:00

I jumped onto the bike this morning, took a few pedal strokes, and realized it was still on the big ring from the prior day's ride. I pushed on the left shifter, felt it click three times, and waited for the chain to drop down to the small chainring. It didn't. I reached down and felt for the cable alongside the down tube to see if it was slack. It was. That meant that, as usual for this time of year, the derailleur or bottom bracket cable guide was all gunked up. This kind of thing seems to happen around the end of the summer each year. After a few months of dripping sweat, and often Gatorade, all over the bike, it's not exactly unexpected. I know the inside of my shifters must be looking a little gunky, but as long as they keep working I'll probably put off doing anything about it until winter. I'm quite certain that if I were to remove my handlebar tape I'd find the aluminum bars marked with dusty white clumps of oxidation despite the anodized finish. Just the other day I noticed that Taylor was riding his old bike and when I asked him about it he said that his good bike was at the shop where they were trying to figure out how to get the crank arm off since it had welded itself to the axle during the summer.

The weather forecasters around here are pretty much throwing their hands up about this weekend. There's a developing depression in the middle of the Gulf right now and it's possible we're in for a stretch of heavy rain. Or maybe not. Meanwhile the next storm is about to become a hurricane out in the Atlantic. Guess we'll know in a couple of days if we're in for some trouble.

Another Forty Kilometers

2011-08-29T23:28:00.000-05:00

I was loading up the car at 5 am and seriously wondering if I really should be considering doing another 40k time trial. I certainly had ample excuses - a bad night's sleep, a likely headwind, and of course the fact that I was also supposed to be officiating. There were also the undeniable facts that I'm not very good at it, and I was basically riding a regular road bike with clip-on aero bars. I suppose if I'd been racing every weekend for a couple of months I might well have decided to sit this one out. As it turned out, however, the NBO guys had pulled together plenty enough volunteers, Mark was there to help officiate, and Robin was there to handle course setup. So I figured, "What the hell?"

After wrapping up registration we got everyone together and started the stopwatches and race clock at precisely 7:50 am and the start line crew headed off to get things going right on time at 8 am. My start time wasn't for about an hour, so I had lots of time to get my act together.

I still wasn't really up for a full-on time trial effort, and was looking at this one more as a good hard training ride, so when they said go, I took off at maybe an 80% effort level. By the time I got settled in, I knew this would be a hard one. The course headed almost straight into a significant north wind for 20 km, and within the first of those I already knew I wouldn't be doing a very good time. The whole way out I kept fluctuating between going hard and backing off, all the while fearing that I might overdo it and blow up before the end. My lagging motivation wasn't helping the situation either, and I ended up spending way too much time in the low 20s. I'd started out at a nice pace, around 26-27 mph, but over the first few miles I saw that speed drop considerably and was soon struggling to hold 24 mph. Even that didn't last too long. I'm sure I saw my speed drop down to 20 mph a couple of times.

After the turnaround it quickly became obvious why I'd felt so lousy on the way out. With the wind at my back I was able to spend a fair amount of time in the 27-28 mph range. Still, I already knew I wasn't going to go sub-hour that day. In the end, I posed a time of 1:00:17, finishing just behind Jorge who had started two minutes after me. After a quick cool-down, I got started on the results. I was pretty impressed with the winning time of 53:50, considering the wind. By 11:45 I was back home working on posting the results.

So last night, or should I say this morning, I was awakened by a loud crash right outside my bedroom window. Looking through the blinds I could see that a police car had run into my own parked car. It was around 4:30 am. Sheesh. I pulled on some clothes and went downstairs as three other police cars appeared. I guess it must have been s slow night. Anyway, I guess I'll be finding out how good the police department's insurance company is.

Little Changes

2011-08-27T13:11:00.000-05:00

There's a whole lot of hot weather still to come, but already I'm seeing those little changes that make me think of Fall. All week, on my commutes up and down Lowerline and Pine streets, there were Tulane students with loaded-up cars and U-hauls moving into the many apartments around here. On Tuesday I had finally broken down and put the headlight onto the handlebar for the 6 am ride out to the early levee ride. Although the temperature hasn't really been noticeably cooler, the shortening days are becoming more and more obvious. People are starting to think about the local MS Tour and our annual pilgrimage to Dahlonega for the Six Gap Century. Today is move-in day at Tulane, which means a steady stream of confused drivers with luggage on their roofs and foreign license plates on their cars. Meanwhile, The Wife is working on making dinner for about a hundred students for the catholic center. I spent some time yesterday evening on the start list and results spreadsheet for tomorrow's LAMBRA time trial championship. It's looking like there will be about zero chance of rain, but a pretty good chance of a north wind. Yes, I said "north." With a big high pressure area drifting to the west of us and the big Hurricane Irene to the east, we're getting a little taste of drier air around here.

This morning I rode out to meet the pre-Giro coffee group with both lights blinking and my sunglasses in my pocket. Since a number of the local riders are planning on riding the time trial tomorrow, including me, I was expecting a relatively civilized Giro Ride today. Since I'll be both officiating and riding tomorrow, I'm not too focused on doing a spectacular time trial. I'll be doing this one mainly for the exercise, and probably without much of a warmup, but since it looks like we'll have enough people on hand to handle the start and finish lines, I think I can get away with it. Based on the Start List that I put up last night, I'll be starting about in the middle, almost an hour after the first rider. Anyway, as I'd expected, today's Giro wasn't too much of a leg-crusher. I spent most of the ride toward the back, and although we spent a fair amount of time in the 27-30 mph range, it was definitely a bit less aggressive than usual. Now I just need to stage everything so I can get out the door by 5:50 or so tomorrow morning -- generator, clock, stand, table, chairs, traffic cones, clipboards, stopwatches, PA system, extension cord, etc. Then I'll need to get my bike cleaned up, tire fixed, and race bag packed.

Lakefront Pile-up

2011-08-25T11:26:00.001-05:00

I was feeling unusually tired all day at work yesterday, which was keeping me kind of on the fence about doing the Wednesday Night Worlds out at the lakefront. By 4:00, though, things had gotten pretty quiet and I had a chance to catch the finish of the US Pro Cycling Challenge on Tour Tracker as they raced in to Aspen. As the pack, mostly all back together after the earlier climb, was closing in on the finish the video feed started getting worse and worse. Finally, it cut off altogether and they started showing video from earlier in the day and pictures of cute children waiting at the finish line. It has started to rain and, since they were probably already at around 10,000 feet, the helicopter apparently started to ice and had to pull up. So finally the video comes back on, much to the relief of Phil Ligget, and we get to see a pretty exciting final few kilometers that rather surprisingly ended with a win by that old guy George Hincapie, once again proving the old saying, "Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill." Not that George is particularly lacking in the skill department. So with that, and an opportunity to slip out of the office ten minutes early, I decided I may as well ride out to the lakefront and jump into the training race.

I rode up Carrollton and Wisner at a nice easy pace, arriving at the Elysian Fields traffic circle at precisely the right time, merging smoothly into the 25-rider group as it started its half-lap warmup. The wind was light at the start and although there were a few attacks and brief breakaways, in general the training race yesterday was staying firmly within the "moderate" range, relatively speaking. I had decided before the start to sit in for the first two (of four) 6-mile laps before putting my nose into the wind, so when we started lap 3 I moved up and did a little more work, occasionally finding myself off the front when the pace would slacken. At one point there was an acceleration at the front and a gap started opening ahead of VJ. As often happens, VJ didn't respond, but for some reason the riders behind him were having a hard time making a commitment to go around. It was as if they were sitting in a nice soft easy chair in a house that was on fire, but didn't want to get up because it was so comfortable. Of course, eventually riders started jumping around from behind and things got caught up, but not without a fair amount of unnecessary effort.

With about half a lap to go the group was still mostly intact and although the pace was getting faster and more aggressive, it still wasn't putting too many people in difficulty. The wind had started picking up and was coming from the lake as we headed east, which resulted in a pretty long line up against the right-hand curb. I was up near the front six or seven with Daniel, Kenny, Francis, and Allie, among others. There had been a little surge that had just subsided and just ahead of me and to the left Kenny and Francis suddenly eased up. Apparently they had both started to attack through the same gap at the same time and when each realized that the other was doing the same they both backed off at the same time. From behind I thought they had actually bumped shoulders or something, but anyway the effect was that a couple of riders went past them on the left and the rest of us, including the rider in front of me, went right, which put us right up against the curb. It all happened very quickly, and just as quickly we got straightened out and everything seemed fine. I had time to say aloud, "What was that about?" I'd no sooner gotten the words out of my mouth when I heard the sound of crashing riders behind me, complete with some rather harsh "vocalizations." We eased up and turned around, and I was surprised to see so many people on the ground. I guess that the sudden slowdown, together with the light crosswind, overlapping wheels, and end-of-race jitters had made for a bad combination. By the time I got back there Charlie D. was sitting on the curb with the back left shoulder of his jersey shredded and what looked like an obvious collarbone break. Robert M. was still lying on the road with blood all over his lower face, and a few others were still trying to untangle themselves from the pile-up. The fire department and ambulances arrived shortly thereafter and a few of us spent some time searching the roadway for a couple of broken teeth that Robert was missing. I think it was Doug who also had a shoulder injury - maybe just an acromyoclavicular joint issue - and Elizabeth had jammed her wrist badly enough that she couldn't pick up her water bottle. In addition, there was a fair amount of road rash and broken wheels all-around. Once the first riders had gone down, it looked like most of those behind them had no option but to plow right into, or over, them. It was a pretty big crash, but it had been caused by a combination of four or five little things that, by themselves, wouldn't ever have caused problems. As I rode with Allie back uptown, feeling like I'd really dodged a bullet, I was glad I had left the blinky light on the bike from the Tuesday morning ride because it was a bit later than usual by the time I got home.

The Blue Shirt

2011-08-23T12:26:00.000-05:00

The Saturday Giro was remarkably civilized this week, probably because a number of the regulars were planning on doing the LAMBRA Team Time Trial Championship the next day. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was scheduled to officiate that one with Mark D. since it was fairly nearby. That meant that I had no reason to conserve on Saturday and was therefore able to ride at the front now and again with reckless abandon. Seriously, though, it was really quite a nice Giro Ride -- good and fast at times and otherwise respectably brisk. The night before I had cleaned the bike, something I seem to do less and less frequently the more I ride. It took some time for me to remove the sticky spots and streaks down around the bottom bracket where HammerGel-laced water had repeatedly dripped and dribbled over the previous week. It reminded me why I don't usually like to put anything except water in my water bottles. After the ride and back at home I charged up the LAMBRA clock, double-checked the registration and results spreadsheet, and staged all of the needed equipment in front of the basement door in anticipation of a 5:00 am departure. Registration was set to open at 7 am down in Labadieville, LA where there is mostly just sugar cane and water, and 37% of the population claims French or French-Canadian heritage.

At 4:30 am the alarm went off and I slipped on The Blue Shirt for a day of official officiating. Somehow I got the car loaded up and was on the road Sunday morning about five minutes ahead of schedule, and with the Garmin lady giving directions made my way across the Luling suspension bridge, coming down onto those long flat lonely highways that connect towns with names like Thibodeaux, Pierre Part, and Napoleonville. The local club, appropriately named Bayou Country Cyclists, arrived in force just ahead of me, and within half an hour we were all set up for registration. This was the club's first race, which they were co-hosting with Tiger Cycling out of Baton Rouge, but since we had been working on the details for a few weeks, everything was working pretty well. Of course there were the usual riders who had forgotten their licenses, or had, presumably, renewed their licenses online the night before, etc. Anyway, things went quite smoothly since there were only 21 teams on hand. Now that the Team Time Trials no longer count toward individual LCCS points, I think we need to combine some categories for these events to make it easier for clubs to put together their teams. Something to think about for next year. Results were done about one minute after the last team finished, so I just had to bring the laptop back to the registration area, print out the results, and hand out the medals. The only problem was that, after spending about an hour in the sun, the laptop's mouse stopped working. It's happened before when it got hot like that. I think I need to be more careful about keeping the laptop, and myself, in the shade. The course must have been pretty fast because the Herring team posted a 1:00:22 time for what was apparently a 29.4 mi. out-and-back course, which means they were rarely looking at anything under 30 mph the whole time. A Cat. 4 team posted the next fastest time. Perhaps some of those guys need to be thinking about upgrades.

This morning's ride was the usual early morning levee route. I was up a little earlier than usual and today was the first time I put the headlight on the bike for the ride out to the levee. I always find it kind of depressing when the days start getting shorter like this. The group was pretty big today and the pace was fast out to The Dip, but about half of the riders turned around there, or before, so after that the pace settled down into the 23-24 mph range for most of the remainder.

Mechanicals

2011-08-18T12:40:00.000-05:00

It all started Tuesday night. Around 9:30, The Wife, who would probably be perfectly comfortable sleeping in a refrigerator with a fan blowing on her, announced, "It's 77 degrees in here." Her tone made me feel like it was somehow my fault. In fact, I quickly realized that the central a/c blower wasn't blowing. Hoping it was something simple, I went down to the basement to check the circuit breaker, but alas, it was fine. Something was broken. Just a couple of days before this the icemaker in my freezer had stopped working and I'd ended up ordering a new one since the part I needed to fix it cost almost as much as a whole new one. Anyway, since the low temperatures around here have rarely been below 80F, it was a rather uncomfortable night despite the ceiling fan. The next morning I called the a/c folks who had installed the unit just two years ago, and by 11:00 or so the technician arrived. He spent at least an hour checking things and making phone calls, and finally narrowed it down to either the circuit board or the blower motor. This did not surprise me, since those were really the only two possibilities. The problem was that in order to run the diagnostic on the electronics he needed a testing device that, at the moment, happened to be on another job in Belle Chasse, so he took off to meet up with whoever had it, and returned a few hours later. Then, after another hour or so of testing, he decided that the problem was indeed the blower motor, which, of course, they didn't have in stock since it's a variable-speed blower controlled by no fewer than sixteen colorful wires. We'd have to wait until Wednesday afternoon for the part to arrive. I stuck my little emergency backup window unit into the bedroom window, cranked it up to high, and closed the door. It was probably around 85F in the house by then. Some time around 1 pm on Wedesday I got the call and headed back home to meet the technician who spent another couple of hours installing the new blower and scratching his head. In the meantime, the replacement icemaker showed up, so I installed it. Things were looking up. Eventually he got the blower working, checked the compressor, checked the air temperature, and took off with my check for $300. Luckily, the motor itself was still under warranty, so that was just for the labor. I was never convinced that he really knew what he was doing, however. By then it was really hot in the house, but I wasn't planning on sticking around long since there was a team time trial out at the Lakefront that I'd agreed to ride.

I'd actually been looking forward to this little Team Time Trial, since I knew I wasn't going to be able to ride in the district championship one this weekend, having, in a weak moment, volunteered to officiate it. So the night before I'd bolted on the aero bars. By the time the a/c guy was gone I was running a little late, so rather than ride out to the lakefront wearing a geeky TT helmet after being stuck in a hot house all afternoon I figured I'd throw the bike in to the car. I got one of the last parking spots across from Kona Cafe, pulled the bike out and took off in search of Charlie. As it turned out, Mark G. couldn't make it, so we were already one rider short, but we quickly recruited Diego who was there looking for a team. We went out for a little warmup, since we were the 27th team to start and had a little time to kill. I was feeling pretty good and the team of Charlie, Squeaky, Diego and me seemed to be really smooth. Finally our turn came up, and we took off, quickly getting organized and rolling along at 27-28 mph, which seemed like a good starting speed. Well, we weren't a mile down the road when I heard the sound of air escaping from a tire -- mine. Crap! If you're going to flat in a team time trial, you don't want it to be in the first mile. You want it to be near the end when you really need the excuse, hanging on for dear life and barely able to get onto the back of the paceline after taking a pull. I pulled out of the paceline and told Diego I'd flatted. Feeling extremely frustrated, I changed the tube, pumped it up, rode back about 200 yards, and realized that it was going flat again. I ended up just riding the rest of the way very slowly on the flat front tire because I was just too pissed off to stop again and change it. When I got home the house was cooler but it still wasn't down to normal. In fact, it was still 77F at 10 pm. This morning the a/c had finally caught up with the thermostat, but I'm a little worried that something got screwed up. I guess I'll find out this evening when I get home.

Escape from the Giro

2011-08-15T21:58:00.000-05:00

During a normal summer, which this has thus far definitely not been, the Giro Ride serves as a convenient training ride on the one or two non-race weekend a month. Just after 6 am on Saturday I headed out from home for another Giro. I'd completely lost count of the number of Giro Rides I'd done in a row. All I knew was that it was a lot. It was a pretty big turnout and things were rolling along as normal as the speed started to ramp up along Hayne Blvd. Suddenly there was a loud bang up ahead and I saw Mignon coasting over to the curb with a flat front tire. A number of us stopped, but since the speed had been pretty high when it happened, I didn't really expect everyone to wait. The tire had blown through the sidewall in a place where the casing had separated from the tire bead. I had a piece of an old Tyvek race number in my bag and we put in a temporary patch, but there was no telling how long it would hold. Mignon headed back with a couple of others and the rest of us got going again. I was surprised to find that pretty much everyone had waited for us. So it turned out to be an otherwise normal Giro. As we were on the way back I asked Jay if the northshore guys were planning on doing the regular training ride on Sunday. For a change, I didn't have anything on my card for Sunday. I was more than ready for a ride on the northshore.

Later that evening, after a few emails, I learned that Jay, Jason and some of the other northshore riders were planning to do the MS Tour training ride route, but that they wanted to start at 7:30, ahead of the official 8:00 start. It was a little early, but I quickly decided to do it. Jordan had mentioned he was interested in a northshore ride, so I arranged to pick him up on the way.

We arrived at the Tammany Trace trailhead with about half an hour to spare, and by 7:30 we had a nice little group of six or so as we rolled north on the bike path. The official route was only 45 miles, but we added a little loop on Kenzie and Section Road to add a few miles. We picked up a few additional riders along the way and in general the pace was what I'd call moderately fast. It felt good to be riding the little rolling hills, but for some reason my legs were really burning on the climbs. Perhaps I'd pushed it a little too hard on Saturday. Anyway, it turned out to be a good training ride and the early start got me back home well before noon.

There's an unofficial 4-person time trial on Wednesday out at the lakefront. I think I'd like to do that if I can find a team willing to have me., especially since I won't be able to do the TTT championship this weekend because I have to officiate it. I spent a good three hours today cleaning up the final results of the Oxford races for which we finally got the license numbers that I need for the club and team information. As usual, there were a number of riders who didn't have valid licenses, had wrong license numbers listed, and even one who was a Cat. 3 but raced in the Cat. 4 race. I still have to format the results of all three races for the USAC database upload, and then score it all for the LCCS, which I really should get done in the next day or two. But not tonight.......

WNW

2011-08-10T23:38:00.000-05:00

I walked out of the office promptly at 5 pm, trying to ignore the stifling heat as I made my way over to the bike rack. For a change, I wasn't running too late for the local Wednesday Night Worlds training race out at the lakefront. The weather around here lately has been pretty warm, and although we've been getting little afternoon rain showers here and there, it hasn't interfered too much with riding. I'd done the long levee ride on Tuesday morning, and then the regular morning ride today, and as I rode the commuter back to the house I briefly considered the wisdom of putting in another thirty or forty miles, but really, the training races are just too much fun to pass up.

Back at the house I filled up the water bottles, put on the still-damp gloves I'd worn that morning, and headed off into the Carrollton Avenue traffic. Somewhere around Canal Street, Jordan rolled up from behind and we rode together (OK, mainly he pulled and I drafted) out to Lakeshore Drive, arriving just in time to catch the group during its half-lap warmup. The next four 6-mile laps were pretty fast, animated in the beginning by Diego's relentless attacks. My plan for the day could be easily summed up with, "Don't get dropped." It wasn't as easy as it sounds, and by the time we were halfway through we'd already shed a number of riders. Of course, despite my best intentions, I still found myself closing a few gaps and putting my nose into the wind occasionally, mostly when the pace wasn't too fast. Amazingly, everything was still together at the end. I think it was Jordan who finally jumped, way too early for me, drawing a few riders with him. I waited patiently, mostly on Kenny's wheel, and finally but in a little 34 mph effort at the end. It seems lately that I'm only good for about 150 meters or so before I blow up. There's actually a little video of the finish on the WNW facebook page.

No Coffee, No Race

2011-08-07T15:08:00.000-05:00

It was another hot weekend of Giro Rides for me, although up until around 8 pm on Saturday I'd still been considering the solo 5.5 hour drive up to Oxford to make the Sunday criterium. Needless to say, it didn't happen. Saturday started out with a slightly diminished Giro thanks to a fair amount of missing horsepower in the group. That horsepower was up at the Oxford Endurance Weekend. I made the best of it, though, and got in a pretty good workout despite the rapidly rising temperatures. I imagine it could only have been worse up there in Mississppi for the time trial and circuit race. That afternoon we packed up and moved most of the remaining contents of my mother's condominium after having spent all of Friday in the company of a couple of movers from "Mr. Move." This wasn't a simple case of taking everything in one house and moving it to another. My nephew drove over from Baton Rouge with a U-haul truck, we picked up a U-haul trailer for the niece in Jackson, and of course the movers had their big truck. We had tagged all of the furniture and boxes so that, ultimately, it all got distributed among three houses in New Orleans, an apartment in Baton Rouge, a house in Jackson, and a storage unit in Jackson (ultimately to find its way to Orlando). Anyway, there was still a lot of stuff at the condo on Saturday afternoon that required attention, including multiple trips to the Salvation Army and the local dumpster, and I think it was almost dark by the time we gave up for the day. When the dust settled around 10 pm I briefly contemplated the wisdom of getting up at 3 or 4 am and driving up to Oxford in time to make the Master 40+ race, but ultimately decided that my chances of falling asleep at the wheel were significantly greater than those of a good placing.

So Sunday morning I was once again making my way down Carrollton Avenue trying to decide between Iced Macchiato (which at Starbucks is really more of an iced Latte) and regular coffee when, just as I passed the Mexican bar at Tulane Avenue (which was still going strong at 6:15 am), I heard the whack, whack, whack, of something stuck in my tire. The first thing I thought was, "Damn, I'm not going to have time for coffee." My rear tire had been impaled by one of those damned sheetrock screws which I had to carefully unscrew from the tire. I changed it out and pumped it up as best I could with my little mini-pump, sacrificed a bit of precious water to rinse off my hands, and continued my trip to rendezvous with the Giro Ride. Once there, I figured I may as well skip the coffee, and instead walked across the street to where Mark G. was parked to borrow his floor pump. The group on Sunday was even smaller than it had been on Saturday, but I guess we eventually accumulated 25 riders or so. Anyway, just as I'm putting my helmet back on and everyone is getting up to start the ride, Mark walks out of Starbucks with a fresh cup of coffee which he ended up carrying with him as we warmed up along Lakeshore Drive. There were at least four riders on TT bikes this morning, so I knew it was going to be a nice smooth paceline ride. One of the TT bikes was piloted by Mike W., who recently returned from masters nationals with a couple of medals in an age group that to which we can all still aspire. He seemed particularly unstable this morning as I watched him swerve from center line to curb along Chef Highway trying to put a water bottle back into one of those triathlete seat-mounted bottle launcher things. Anyway, as I'd expected, the ride was a bit on the inconsistent side, depending on who happened to be on the front. By the time we were halfway down Chef Highway, still on the way out to the turnaround, it seemed like the number of people interested in being at the front had already gotten pretty small, but luckily we had a nice little tailwind that kept the speed up.

After the turnaround where Mike W went hammering off the front with one rider in tow, things got substantially slower. Between the headwind and the heat, the group started to get pretty anemic as the pace hovered around the 24 mph mark. After making a small effort over the Seabrook bridge with Noel, who continued straight on Leon C. Simon to head home, I came around the curve onto Lakeshore Drive and looked back to see the remnant of the group still going up the bridge. So it was a long solo ride back home as I rationed my remaining water and dreamed of vanilla ice cream.

Recovering and Drying Out

2011-08-01T14:53:00.000-05:00

After a couple of very rainy weeks down here in New Orleans, the remnants of that big blob of high pressure that had lately been baking most of Texas is now sitting on top of us instead. Fortunately the local forecasters have not given up all hope of afternoon rain. Even so, when I got out of the car today after running some errands around 1 pm, my first thought was, "Man, this feels just like a Texas shopping center parking lot in August." Everything is going very quickly from soggy to dry around here.

It has been a busy week. With the act of sale on my mother's condo rapidly approaching we have been spending a lot of time over there sorting through a lifetime of possessions, allocating everything among my brother and sisters, making arrangements for moving, dealing with the last-minute legal and real estate issues, and inhaling far too much house dust to which I am rather allergic. Despite all of those complications, I did manage a decent week of riding even if I have, by now, all but conceded any hope of really getting in shape any time this season. Saturday's Giro was fairly typical of a mid-summer Giro Ride. After the usual conversational pace along Lakeshore Drive the speed picked up quickly on Hayne Blvd. It was already pretty hot and exceedingly humid, and I think that tended to keep things more or less under control. Although it was by no means an easy ride out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles, the really fast sections were short and there were a number of places where the pace eased up enough to allow those approaching the red zone to recover. By the time we were halfway back you could tell that the heat was starting to get to everyone and the pace definitely eased off another notch or two. I got home just slightly dehydrated and an hour later was over at the condo packing and sorting.

Sunday morning seemed hotter but maybe a little less humid, and looking around the Starbucks patio I was wondering what kind of ride we'd have. Todd and a small group of riders had left around 5:30 am for a 140 mile ride around Lake Pontchartrain. Sometimes I wish I could do one of those rides. This, however, was not one of those times. Even before we hit Hayne Blvd. my jersey was already soaked with sweat and, looking down at my big water bottle that barely fits between the bottom bracket and top tube, I was glad I'd thought to pour in a big scoop of electrolyte mix that morning. I'd ridden pretty hard on Saturday, a fact that my legs had apparently not yet forgotten. Basically, I was tired, which made an otherwise nice routine training ride just a little bit less nice. As I sometimes do on these rides, I broke the route down into sections and used some to work and others to recover, which worked out pretty well. When we were about a mile from the Goodyear Sign sprint, the front of the group started to surge. They pretty much always start too early for this one, since it's just a long, straight drag race. I was around mid-pack feeling undecided about making an effort. This is always dangerous here because some riders near the front will typically just sit up when the sprint starts, effectively opening huge gaps. That, of course, is exactly what happened. We were still a long way from the Goodyear sign. I hesitated for a moment, went around a few people who were backing off, and looked up ahead. The riders ahead of the gap had momentarily gotten disorganized and started to mushroom across the right lane. I figured, "what the hell," and put my head down, motioning Tim to catch my wheel as I went by him. Ramping it up to 30 or 31 mph I closed on the front group pretty quickly and with my legs starting to load up hammered past most of it on the left, easing over as I started to fade so Tim could attack, which he did. Woody must have been expecting it, though, because he jumped just as Tim came past him and they battled it out for the sprint, which I think Woody won. Apparently having a leadout from someone who's a foot shorter than you is not a recipe for success. When Woody and Tim turned off on Bullard (they had parked out there) the pace eased up quite a bit. I think everyone was getting pretty well fried by then. I limped back home with Daniel dreaming of ice-cold Coke and Popsicles.

So after another afternoon and evening of packing and sorting, followed by a sweaty two mile walk back home, I checked out early with plans for a Monday morning recovery ride. It was nice out there this morning as I spun along by myself, rarely exceeding 16 mph, and contemplating the recent rumor that the Jefferson Levee District is planning on putting up signage restricting group rides on the levee bike path. Ironic. They were the cyclists who originally pushed for the bike path, which is technically a "multi-use" path, but if enough iPod pedestrians make U-turns in front of enough cyclists and crack their earbudded heads on the pavement the risk management people always see restricting, or eliminating, the cyclists as the solution. I suspect that the morning training ride group isn't really the problem, however. Whenever I've ridden up there in the afternoon I've seen a lot more crazy riding, and walking. People on aerobars wearing earphones swerving around pedestrians wearing earphones. Yikes. Accidents waiting to happen.

Same Ol' Same Ol'

2011-07-26T22:23:00.000-05:00

It was yet another Giro weekend for me. I had made a rather weak effort to find some company to make the 5.5 hour drive up to the races in Shreveport, but got no takers. I just couldn't muster up the enthusiasm for a solo road trip, especially considering the cost and the things I needed to get done back at home. So anyway, there I was on Saturday morning sitting at the Starbucks sipping coffee again. It was looking like we'd have a smaller group than usual, and I guess we did, but it didn't seem to have much of an effect on the speed. The sky was cloudy and, as had been the case all week, there was the threat of rain. I was expecting to get wet. The ride out to the turnaround was nice and fast, and as usual the group eased up after the turnaround before putting down the hammer again. The pace was finally starting to wind down as we turned off of Chef Highway onto the service road, as when we later turned to cross underneath I-510 I rode right over some lump of old concrete in the road. "Damn, what was that?" I remarked. Unfortunately, I'd pinched the tube which took another couple of miles to finally go flat just before Bullard. We stopped while I quickly changed it, jumped back on the bike, and immediately discovered that it had gone flat again. I started to change it out with my second tube when Norman handed me a can of some sort of sealant. Well, that worked for about a quarter mile before I had to stop again. By now the number of riders willing to hang around with me was down to a handful. Howard handed me a tube and I finally got going again. Sunday's Giro was similar to Saturdays, just a little bit slower and smaller. I got rained on one of those days, but frankly I don't even remember which one it was. Status quo.

This morning's long levee ride had most of the usual suspects but for the most part the pace was manageable. There were a couple of people who were pushing the pace every time they'd hit the front, but most egos were in check and things didn't really escalate much. On the home front, we've got the sale of my mom's condo pretty much all lined up and on a fast track, which will probably mean that I'm going to have to spend one weekend moving furniture. I'm hoping it won't be the weekend of the Oxford races, but at the moment it's not looking good.

Riding Around the Rain

2011-07-20T23:31:00.000-05:00

So with Monday morning a complete rainy washout, and with apologies to America, I got myself undressed and set my sights on Tuesday. The long ride that day was kind of a strange one. The group was pretty large, maybe twenty or so, and for some reason the levee was particularly crowded with pedestrians, dog-walkers, runners, and other cyclists. As usual, this created a lot of problems as the front part of the group, hammering along at 27 mph, weaved its way through the gauntlet without considering the chaos going on behind them. I mean, just because the first five riders can get around someone easily, doesn't mean the the riders farther back won't need to hit the brakes in order to get past safely. Somehow we made it out to the turnaround without disaster. Then, as we started back a few riders started rolling off the front. I went to bridge up to them and soon found myself going 29 mph without making up any ground. When I realized that I was trying to chase down Matt who was at the front on his TT bike, I backed off and waited for the rest of the group.

This morning's ride was the complete opposite of Tuesday's. The group was small, the wind was practically nonexistent, and the pace was smooth and steady. Later, at work, I started to consider going out to the Wednesday evening time trial out at the lakefront. Today's edition was to be a 2-man TT, and I figured that even if I didn't end up finding someone to ride with, at least I'd get in a few miles riding out there and back. Then, late in the afternoon, I got a text from Jacob, a local triathlete, asking if I might be able to ride it with him. I figured he must be desperate, so I agreed, to which he replied that he hoped the rain would stop in time. Rain?? I walked over to the window and was surprised to see a light rain falling. Naturally, that's when the phone rang and I got tied up with some last-minute work that killed my plans to leave a little early. By the time I was halfway home it was raining pretty heavily and I was glad I had my rain jacket with me. Checking the radar, though, it looked like it was ending, so around 5:45 I headed out for the lakefront. Half a mile from home the streets were bone dry.

There was a big group (Kenny said around 100) on hand for this informal 10-mile 2-man time trial. I found Jacob, who was in full time trial mode, in stark contrast to myself, and consoled myself with the fact that he was big enough that I'd still be able to get a good draft behind him. With a light tailwind we took off down Lakeshore Drive at 27-28 mph, and after taking a few short pulls I knew I was in trouble. There's nothing quite like being the weak link on a team time trial. Even taking short and relatively infrequent pulls, I was having a harder and harder time recovering once I was back in the draft. By the time we were halfway through I was more focused on keeping from being dropped than on taking pulls at the front and pretty much all of the pacemaking had fallen to Jacob. Luckily, he is a really steady and smooth rider, and if there's anything I'm good at it's sucking wheels, so although I didn't contribute much, at least I didn't get dropped and I'm sure I could have taken him in the sprint!!

No Prisoners

2011-07-17T23:21:00.000-05:00

Judging by the riders who showed up for the northshore training ride, I was pretty sure they wouldn't be taking any prisoners this morning. We had a fairly small group - maybe ten or so - but it looked like practically everyone who was there was there for the real deal. With the threat of rain hanging over our heads, both literally and figuratively, we headed out from the Lee Road Middle School, just north of Covington, for the standard 65 mile training ride. The air was warm and really, really humid as we rode up toward Enon. Although the pace wasn't particularly fast, it had that sort of unrelenting, determined feeling that sets a serious training ride apart from the more routine country rides. I was feeling pretty good, but with Woody, Isaiah, John D., and a few others on hand to drive the pace, I figured I'd better not be reaching into the cookie jar too early on this one. After a brisk section along Choctaw Road, we arrived at Highway 10 missing one of John's teammates. The group soft-pedaled for a little while while John and I looked back for him, but within a couple of minutes the statute of limitations ran out on him and, hoping that he knew his way home, we continued on.

The next long section of this ride, from Hwy. 10 to Sie Jenkins Road, is always fast, and along the way there are a couple of sprints to keep things lively. Despite a light tailwind, there were a few times along this stretch where it was all I could do to stay in the draft. I was glad there were a few tall guys in the group providing a good draft. All along this part of the ride, and for that matter all along most of the rest of the ride, there were occasional attacks on the little uphills. After the sprint for the Enon sign, we stopped at the store to refuel. By the time Woody walked out with a bottle of Gatorade in his hand, most of the group was already back on the road and heading for the watchtower hill, so we had to chase for a couple of miles to catch up.

The last five miles or so, along Tung Road, always seem hard to me. It must be because it's always at the end of a long ride, because there aren't any significant hills along that stretch. Today was no different. Isaiah, Woody and John soon started challenging each other, and riders started dropping off the back. I was deep into wheelsucking practice, myself, taking a short pull every now and then, but mostly just hanging on. Anyway, it was a good ride and I was glad that we somehow managed to avoid getting rained on. When we got back to the parking lot I jumped into the car, and headed home with plenty of time to take a shower and make a 1:00 lunch at Landry's Seafood.

Another Fast One

2011-07-16T17:23:00.000-05:00

I opened the door and looked east. The horizon was dark and ominous, but the sky above was better. Double-checking the Ziploc bags that held my phone and camera, I headed off for my Saturday morning coffee and the start of yet another summer Giro Ride. By 6:35 am I was sitting outside of Starbucks contemplating the rapidly increasing amount of horsepower rolling up to the patio. It was going to be another fast one.

We rolled out as usual toward Lakeshore Drive as more and more riders filtered in. Traditionally, the five mile stretch along the lake is ridden at a conversational pace of around 15 mph. Halfway to the end I looked down and we were going 23 with riders already forming up into a long slender paceline. The front of the group was already fifteen seconds up the road. That was the easy part. Once we got to Hayne Blvd. the pace went up to 28, then 29, and pretty much stayed between that and 31 mph all the way out to Venetian Isles. By the end of Hayne gaps were already starting to open here and there, but for the most part the riders in back weren't having too much trouble hanging on because there was a light tailwind and the pace was pretty steady. Even so, I don't think I ever saw the front all the way down Chef Highway. When the whole Giro is strung out at 30 mph and going out into the wind to move up is not a particularly viable option, there's not much you can do except to hold on and stay on the wheel in front of you. I was actually feeling pretty good except for some kind of stomach ache that had been nagging me since I'd started. Even so, I was nowhere to be found when the front of the paceline sprinted for the turnaround. I weaved around the numerous riders who'd blown up early and at least put in an effort, but that was about the best I could do under the circumstances.

The ride back started out with a couple of easy miles, but soon enough we were back into the upper 20s. Things finally started to ease up along the service road(s). As we went underneath I-10 I looked up and saw Mike W right in front of me practically at a stop. Shocked, I locked up the brakes to keep from plowing right into him. Apparently he was having a minor asthma attack. Anyway, I put in some efforts on the bridges and rode back uptown with Brent, happy to have gotten in a good workout before the rain started. Tomorrow I'm planning on doing the northshore ride, even though I'll have to rush back across the lake to make a 1:00 lunch thing with my father and some of the family.

Summer

2011-07-13T12:23:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like a few days in the Northwest, followed by a quick return to New Orleans, to remind you that it's Summer. When I stepped out the door early Tuesday morning it was like walking into a sauna. The long Tuesday ride was mercifully moderate, which certainly helped with the transition, and although I arrived back home a little more wilted than usual, it wasn't really all that bad. Of course I figured my legs would be somewhat worse for wear by evening, considering how long I'd been off the bike. They were. Fortunately the two consumables presently available at home fall into the Merlot and Ice Cream food groups, so all was well.

It was hard getting out of bed this morning, which threw a monkey wrench into my rather tight routine, ultimately requiring me to rush out to make the morning ride before it left without me. On the positive side, that bit of extra effort served to loosen up my legs which needed a little loosening-up. Otherwise, it was a typical Wednesday ride with the group's pace staying within a few mph of 22 practically the whole way out and back. I'm hoping I'll be able to make it out to the training race on the lakefront this evening if I can get past some of the work I have on my plate today. It feels like we're getting into that familiar mid-summer routine now. The 10-day weather forecast looks like it was made with a rubber stamp, and a good portion of my weekday riding time is spent in a kind of mind-numbing heat-induced stupor. Well, at least more of a stupor than usual.

Off the Grid, Off the Bike

2011-07-11T02:49:00.001-05:00

It's been a week since we flew up to Iowa City to help The Daughter move to Olympia, Washington. We cleaned and packed, dropped off a truckload of stuff at the local Goodwill center, locked up the Pods container in the driveway, loaded up the Jeep, drove a bit over 2,000 miles, spent an afternoon hiking in Mt. Rainier National Park, and will be heading home on Monday. It was a trip.

The driving started late in the evening when we decided that rather than sleeping on the floor of the empty apartment we may as well hit the road. The only problem with that plan was that we didn't really know where we'd be spending the night. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be much of a problem, but since we were travelling with two dogs, our options would probably be limited. We ended up driving around 300 miles that night and staying in a very questionable motel in Lincoln, NE.

The next day was our longest, taking us from there all the way across Nebraska and Wyoming and then northwest into Idaho where we spent the night at Shannon's mother's house in Mountain Home. Much of the drive was spent battling crosswinds and headwinds along I-80. As we got into the mountains along I-80 the rather overloaded Jeep Liberty started struggling a bit on the climbs. The combination of weight, headwinds, climbs, and 75 mph speed limits kept the automatic transmission quite busy shifting out of overdrive in order to maintain speed. We arrived in Mountain Home around mid-afternoon and decided to check out Shoshone Falls along the Snake River while we had a chance. With the car still fully loaded, and following some sketchy directions, we turned off the highway onto a road that went straight down into the gorge. I was seriously wondering if we'd be able to coax the Jeep back up the steep slope as we descended. Unfortunately, our directions had taken us down the wrong side of the river and we had to turn right back around and climb back out (in 1st gear). We made our way around to the other side and spent an hour or so walking the trail and checking out the falls and Evil Knievel's famous launch ramp.

The next day's drive was a bit shorter and was going well until we got into Oregon. First, The Daughter misplaced her cellphone and we ended up backtracking fifteen miles and searching through a Chevron station, only to finally discover the phone wedged between the car's seat cushions. Then I got pulled over by a state trooper with bad aim who claimed I had been going 81 mph (the speed limit in Oregon is 65 and you aren't allowed to pump your own gas there). I'd been on cruise control at 65 mph since we'd crossed the state line, and if we'd gotten that Jeep up to 81 mph I think I would have noticed. He refused to acknowledge his mistake with the laser gun but let me off with a warning anyway. The warning I took away from that was, "stay the hell out of Oregon."

Anyway, for the few days prior to this we'd been negotiating a pre-listing sale of my mother's condominium, which had been a little difficult for me since I was trying to do conference calls in-between trips to the dump and at random rest areas along the interstate. However, when you get an all-cash offer that might work before the house officially goes on the market, you can't really put it off. It worked out pretty well and we got the house under contract a couple of days ago, so unless there are any big surprises that may be one more thing I can check off of the list.

So by Sunday, with The Daughter all settled in, we drove out to the Mount Rainier National Park for a really nice 4 hour hike up to Lake George in picture-perfect weather. The last mile of the trail was largely covered with snow, and I was glad I'd packed a long-sleeve shirt. For the most part, this was the most exercise I'd gotten in a week. About half of the hike was along a rocky fire road, but eventually we turned off of that onto a more traditional trail marked by an abandoned bike rack and an old "no bikes" sign. It got a little slippery once we got into the snow, especially since I was wearing regular cross-training shoes, but somehow I managed to keep my socks reasonably dry. As usual, the photos really don't do justice to the scenery.

So I've been pretty much off the grid for the last week, which means that I'll have some catching-up to do when I return, but I think it's good to take a break from the routine now and then. The only real downside, I think, will be the time off the bike and the work it will take to get back into some semblance of shape. I kind of knew this would be a tough year from the start, though, so no surprise there. By Tuesday it will be back to normal, I'm afraid. Thank goodness I'll at least have the Tour de France to keep me interested. Assuming, of course, that they stop all of the crashing and can start concentrating on racing.

Danger at the Back

2011-07-02T22:54:00.000-05:00

The back of the pack can be a dangerous place. In return for a good draft and easy pedaling, you always flirt a bit more closely with disaster. That fact was driven home today no fewer than three times.

Because of an early Sunday ticket to ORD and planned subsequent cross-country adventure to what is practically the farthest point in the contiguous Unites States from New Orleans, I had to pass on the Vuelta de Acadiana races over in Lafayette this weekend. The consolation prize, as usual, would be the trusty old Giro Ride. Friday night was the annual welcoming party for the new Psychiatry residents. It's a nice casual affair with hamburgers, salad, Plum Street snoballs and ad libitum wine and beer. At least one of those ingredients must have been responsible for the difficulty I had getting going this morning. However difficult it was, however, I still dragged myself out of bed and was on the road by 6:10 am, headed for my Saturday iced coffee at Starbucks. Since it was a holiday weekend, and since there was a race in Lafayette, I wasn't expecting a very big turnout. That expectation was confirmed, to a certain extent, but fortunately we still managed to gather the quorum necessary for a good Giro Ride.

I was thinking it might be an easy one, but by the time we were a couple of miles down Hayne Boulevard I knew it wouldn't be. Kenny was really on a tear today. At one point I found myself on his wheel as took a monster pull that must have been three miles long at an average speed of at least 29 mph. When he finally pulled off I pulled for maybe twenty-five pedal strokes before I had to retreat to back of the paceline. That turned out to be a bit of a mistake.

So we're flying down what's left of Paris Road, and come across the I-10 overpass, dropping down to the I-510 spur where we have to two lanes of interstate traffic to get to the right lane and, about a mile later, the exit ramp. I'm sitting near the back of the pack, and glancing over my right shoulder I can see a couple of cars coming around the curve. I yell, "Cars!" The first car goes past, the next is coming. The front of the paceline cuts in front of the car to the right lane. By the time the back of the paceline gets there, the car is overlapping the riders ahead of me and the driver is completely confused. I see the brake lights go on and have to hit the brakes to keep from slamming into the back of the car. Crap. By the time I extricate myself and go around the bewildered motorist there's a big gap to the rest of the field. I pick up Scott and and shift into time trial mode. The group is not slowing down, but at 25 mph or so I'm generally holding the gap steady. We come off of the interstate and make the left turn onto the service road, running through a red light in the process. Somewhere along the service road I lose Scott, but I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel yet because there's a pretty good chance they'll ease up for a little while when they get to Chef Highway. I luck out and don't have to slow down as I turn onto Chef, and up the road I can see the group spreading our across the road. This is my only chance, so I bury myself for half a mile and finally catch them before the pace ramps up again.

Back in the pack I figure I'll stay near the back for a while to recover. Apparently I'm a slow learner. Kenny is driving the pace again and it hardly ever drops below 27,so I'm still hanging out near the back. Somewhere around Highway 11, I hear, and then see, a little dog dash out from a driveway into the back of the pack. I immediately have one of those deja vu experiences. I swear, my collarbone started to ache! The front of the paceline didn't even see the dog, but at the back there is chaos. The dog, suddenly realizing he's in the middle of a pack, panics and starts bouncing around like a squirrel in a pinball machine as riders swerve and slam on their brakes. I've got two handfuls of brake myself, and feel my rear wheel come momentarily off the ground, but then somehow the dog makes it to the shoulder and we're all past him. A short chase and we're back to the group just in time for the pace to ramp up again.

As we made our way back from the turnaround the temperature got higher, the pace got slower, and the conversation sagged. As I rode back up town with Brett all he could talk about was how good that cold recovery drink he had waiting at home was going to taste. Shortly after I got back home, and still in my sweaty riding clothes, I fire up the laptop to watch the live video feed from the first stage of the Tour de France. It's looking like it will be a big pack sprint until, about 7 km from the finish, one of the riders nails an errant spectator and riders start going down like dominos. Only the riders near the front were spared. The rest will get to start Day 2 of the Tour over a minute down on GC.

Wednesday Double

2011-06-30T11:02:00.001-05:00

The thing that kind of surprised me Wednesday morning was that it wasn't quite as miserably hot and humid at 6 am as I'd been expecting. On the way out to the levee I had a few extra minutes to contemplate that little meteorological glitch when I had to stop for a train crossing Monticello Street. Luckily, it was a short one and I didn't miss the group. The ride itself was unremarkable; a steady 22-24 mph out-and-back to the parish line like we do every Wednesday. Fortunately, that wasn't all that Wednesday had in store. After a late afternoon meeting with a real estate agent, I stepped out into the stifling heat, hopped back onto the old commuting bike, and slowly made my way back home, only to change into riding clothes and go right back out into it a few minutes later. The first challenge is to survive the rush-hour traffic gauntlet represented by Carrollton Avenue between Earhart and Canal. After that things eased up a bit and I arrived at Lakeshore Drive just a few minutes after 6:00, so although I missed the start of the Wednesday Training Race (aka WTR), I was able to jump into the pack within the first couple of miles, just as the pace was really starting to ramp up. It took me a few minutes to get adjusted to the faster speed, but once my breathing and heart rate were back under control, more or less, I moved up closer to the front. I ended up doing a fair amount of work for the first couple of laps, alternating between ill-advised attacks and mid-pack recovery.

We were halfway through the third of the four 6-mile laps when yet another break rolled off the front. There was kind of a frantic chase as the pack momentarily splintered, but eventually most of us got back into the draft shortly before the Armory loop, leaving a small break about twenty seconds up the road. At that point I still had a lot of momentum, so I just kind of kept the pressure on around the loop. When I looked back I could see that the group had given me a lot of rope, more than enough, as it turned out, with which to hang myself. I started to fade and was expecting to get back into the pack when it came past, but by the time they caught I'd let myself slow down too much and they had started ramping up the pace. Basically, I got streamed. Right as I turned into a headwind the paceline came flying past on my left. I'd completely missed the draft and the paceline was now in full-on chase mode. I held the gap steady for a little while hoping they would ease up, but it didn't last long, so I backed it down to 22 mph or so and rode with John Egan down to the other end of the course where I turned around and jumped back onto the end of what was left of the group. Indeed, the paceline that had streamed past me had caught the earlier break, so everyone was together for the last lap. I stayed at the back so I wouldn't interfere with anything, and when the sprint started I sat up, at which point I was surprised to see a couple of riders desperately going around me. Sorry about that. I didn't realize there was anyone behind me who was still in the race! Anyway, it was a good workout and a good 60-mile day.

This morning I headed out for the long Thursday ride feeling a little tired. There was a big group on hand -- I'd guess twenty or so. We started out with a couple of riders taking long, long pulls at the front. It was probably ten miles before I finally took a pull. On the way back we suddenly came up on one of the levee police cars parked in the middle of the bike path and everyone had to hit the brakes. The officer actually apologized to us as we made our way around him, saying that he hadn't realized we were back there. Unfortunately, the front of the group put the hammer down again before the back of the group had gotten going again, and the group fractured. It was another mile or so before word of that got up to the riders in front, thanks to Howard who put himself out into the wind and rode all the way up the paceline. At that point they eased up, but it was too little, too late for most.

Greener Days

2011-06-28T14:25:00.000-05:00

Well another week has somehow slipped through the time portal and I have little to show for it except for a few empty wine bottles and six days of missing blog posts. It always seems that when I'm busy doing fun things I somehow find time to update the blog, but when things are kind of on auto-pilot and there's nothing really exciting going on, I just can't seem to find the time. This time, though, I think that the thing that threw the monkey wrench into the works was The Daughter's annual training camp. This year there were, I think, seven gymnasts and a couple of parents (one of which slipped away mid-week). They spent most of the week training across the lake, but returned to the house on Friday for a couple of days of sightseeing before boarding the train back to Iowa City. It all went pretty smoothly, though, and I felt lucky that in a house with 1.5 bathrooms and nine women, I still managed to get into the bathroom when necessary. Also, although I had to reluctantly pass on Sunday's northshore training ride, at least I was able to do both of the weekend's Giro rides.

On Wednesday I rode out to the lakefront to watch and help with the officially unofficial time trial. Since we've gotten back into our more normal summer weather pattern (30% chance of scattered afternoon thunderstorms), the area vegetation has been looking greener and greener. On the downside, one must pay more attention to the weather radar. An afternoon shower, or perhaps a brisk and shifting wind, was probably responsible for a slight reduction in the number of time trialists on hand for the Wednesday night 10-mile time trial, but the turnout was nonetheless pretty good at about 35 riders. Frank Moak happened to be in town that day and just happened to have his time trial bike with him, so he proceeded to take 25 seconds out of Brady's time, and everyone who finished remarked that the wind had been a major factor.

Saturday's Giro ride once again had a pretty big group, and as would be expected, the pace was fast. Even so, it was definitely a notch below that of the prior weekend's Saturday Giro. As I rode home in the rapidly rising summer heat I remember thinking that I should have spent more time at the front. There wasn't much wind, and so it had been oh so very tempting to roll along at 27 mph safely tucked into the draft. Since I knew I wouldn't be able to make this coming weekend's races, I guess I was a little short on motivation as well.

The girls train wasn't scheduled to depart until around 1:45 on Sunday, so I had lots of time for the Sunday morning Giro. Riding out to meet the group at Starbucks I noticed that it already felt warmer and more humid than it had the day before. The turnout for Sunday's ride was relatively slim, likely a combination of the rising heat and the concurrent northshore ride, but that didn't seem to be slowing things down all that much as we headed out along Hayne Blvd. I swear, sometimes the rides with the smaller groups feel harder than those with the larger groups, even though the speeds are usually a little slower. This ride was no exception. After the turnaround we had a brief recovery period before things ramped up again. When someone flatted on the service road, I heard at least two people mumble, "thank God!" By the time I got home I was tired, hungry, dehydrated, and happy to twiddle along in a 39 x 15.

This morning's long levee ride had a good turnout, but when I saw that Rob had brought his time trial bike I knew there would be trouble. By the time we were five miles down the road the number of people taking pulls was down to about four and gaps were opening all over the place. It seemed like nobody really wanted to be going that fast, but they also didn't want to get dropped. It all made for an inconsistent pace. At one point Donald decided to counter one of Rob's fast pulls and basically attacked. Rob responded, and a big gap opened that took a little while to close. That happened a couple of times on this ride, and I think a lot of the riders were kind of sitting at the back of the paceline and enjoying the show. I was glad to see Courtney riding strongly again. In fact, she was getting particularly frustrated by the uneven pace, and eventually motored to the front for a while to straighten things out.

Epidemic Punctures

2011-06-21T11:30:00.000-05:00

The return of southerly winds has finally, hopefully, broken the drought we've been having around here, but along with the rainfall and wet streets has come an epidemic of flat tires. It always happens that way. It's as if all these little sharp pieces of rock just lie in waiting until the streets get wet, and then they stand pointy-side up waiting to embed themselves into your tires. Monday morning I pulled the commuting bike down from its hook in the basement and when it hit the floor I knew without looking that the rear tire was flat. I pulled the tube out and patched the hole that the edge of the Mr. Tuffy had made (I've seen a number of flats caused by them) and all looked good. Then, when I left the office, after waiting out a little rain shower, it was flat again. I changed out the tube with the one I carry around in my messenger bag and made it home OK.

Tuesday morning I got dressed to ride and when I looked out the window I immediately noticed two things. It was a little darker than usual, even for 6:00 am, and there was a light rain falling. I retreated to The Weather Channel. It looked like a little passing shower, and a few minutes later I headed off for the levee where apparently the threat of precipitation had brought out only a handful of riders. We headed up the river on the wet bike path as I searched for that sweet spot where I could keep from getting too much wheel spray up my nose while still enjoying a bit of the draft. Woody, Howard, Scott, Max, Judd and a few others got the pace up into the uncomfortable zone pretty fast, and although I was basically feeling like crap I figured that if I was going to get all wet and gritty I may as well get a good workout out of the ride. Well, a few miles later I felt my rear tire going squishy and pulled out of the paceline, telling the riders around me to go ahead and commenting that it probably wouldn't be the last flat of the day. They took pity on me anyway, though, and stopped while I fixed it, so a few minutes later we were back on the road.

JHS Class of '71, 40th Reunion

As we approached Kenner we could see a dark cloud up ahead and soon a few raindrops started to fall. There was discussion about whether and when to turn back. A few turned back at the little dip, and the rest of us settled on turning around at the Big Dip. We hadn't gotten very far on the return trip when we came upon the first group stopped fixing another flat, which turned out to be their second. A little while later we passed Taylor who was just finishing fixing his own flat. I think there was yet another flat before we got back around River Ridge when it started raining again. By then, Woody was pushing the pace since he was probably going to be late for work. When the speed got up to 31 mph around the Huey P. bridge, I finally backed off, and right after everyone else turned off around the Playground, leaving me on my own, the sky really opened up. My last few miles on the levee were in a stinging horizontal rain that finally seeped through my shoes and soaked my feet. That's when you know you're really wet. Naturally, the rain stopped about a mile before I got home, where I peeled off all of the soaked lycra, threw it all into the washer in the basement, and walked upstairs stark naked to get a clean start on another day.

Wilted

2011-06-20T12:04:00.001-05:00

The City of New Orleans arrived at Union Station a little earlier than scheduled on Saturday afernoon. Along for the 19-hour trip were The Daughter and six or seven of the gymnasts she coaches, plus a couple of their parents. Here for their annual training camp and visit to New Orleans, they seemed none the worse for wear as we shuttled them over to the streetcar stop on St. Charles Avenue for the ride uptown to our house. The temperature was well into the mid-90s by then, but they were lucky on two counts. For one, they didn't have to wait more than a minute to board the streetcar. For the other, the streetcar made exceptionally good time. After loading their luggage into two cars, I decided to take the long way home thinking that we would surely pass the streetcar somewhere along St. Charles Avenue. As it turned out, the streetcar was making better time than the auto traffic, and we all arrived at the house about about the same time. A few hours later I drove downtown to Acme Oyster House to see what my 40th high school reunion had to offer. I hate driving downtown, and if it hadn't been so hot I probably would have ridden the bike instead, but the idea of showing up drenched in sweat was sufficiently unappealing that I opted for the motor. The reunion itself was, as I suppose most are, a little weird. There were well over a hundred people in my graduating class, and my circle of friends was, as it still is, quite small. That, combined with the fact that few of us look a whole lot like we did in 1971, meant that most of the people there were essentially strangers, the only things familiar about most of them were their last names. After five years of wearing nametags on our shirts, even I got to know most of the names. Anyway, although most of the people I knew best weren't in attendance, there were of course a few who were. I just wish it hadn't been so loud in that old upstairs French Quarter room (thanks no doubt to the tin ceiling) that I could have carried on a conversation without alternately screaming and straining to hear. Anyway, after enjoying more than my share of raw oysters, I slipped out after the photo, mainly because of the situation back home.

Sunday morning started out hot and humid, and as I rode out to Starbucks I wondered who would actually show up. The Saturday Giro had prompted a number of emails and facebook posts, all saying something like, "Man, that was the fastest Giro I ever did." I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to see a much smaller group on Sunday. Even so, the pace on the way out was pretty fast, but by the time we were halfway back the temperature was pushing 95F, the humidity was off the charts, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The pack was really starting to wilt in the heat, and the last ten miles were substantially slower. I limped back home, sucking the last drops from my one remaining non-empty water bottle, and spent the rest of the day trying to rehydrate. I was already quite certain that I wouldn't be riding on Monday.

No Race? No Problem.

2011-06-18T12:52:00.000-05:00

When I rolled up to Starbucks a bit before 6:30 am there were already a bunch of riders there, including a visitor from Santa Barbara. That was the first sign. I hurried inside to get an iced coffee and immediately realized I'd left my coffee money at home. Luckily Eddie D was standing right there and offered to cover it for me. Thanks Eddie!

With no nearby races this weekend, there was a lot of pent-up horsepower on the Giro Ride today, and although everything remained cool for the first few miles, as soon as we hit Hayne Boulevard the speed kind of went right though the roof... and stayed there. Next thing I know I'm in the 53x13 and the group is strung out in a long thin line about two blocks long. Erich's in there riding his track bike with something a 49x14 and I'm wondering how he can possibly spin that fast. I didn't know exactly who was up there driving the train, and although I had my suspicions, I wasn't going to be making my way to the front any time soon. I looked over at the rider next to me and commented, "I don't think they're going to be taking any prisoners today." We got to the end of Hayne and the group hardly slowed down. Then, when we turned off of the service road to cross underneath I-510, Kenny flatted. A number of us stopped, but predictably the front of the group was kind of on autopilot and just patronizingly slowed for a little while before resuming the hammer session. Once we got the flat fixed, we got rolling pretty fast, and when we got onto Chef Highway we were in full-on chase mode. I took one pull at around 29 mph and spent the next ten minutes sitting in trying to recover. Kenny put his MyTracks route info. up on Google Maps.

After the turnaround there were a couple of easy miles as people recovered, but we were well back into the red by Highway 11, and although there were a number of places where the pace slacked off a bit, for the most part it was a pretty fast Giro, made just a little harder by the hot and humid weather. Needless to say, I took it easy on the ride home.

Officiating Hats

2011-06-16T11:52:00.000-05:00

It's the Thursday after the Tour de Louisiane and I think I have everything more or less wrapped up. The post-event reports are on my desk at home awaiting the 4-digit check for USAC, results have been uploaded, the LCCS points standings have, finally, been updated, and the big stack of release forms is ready to be filed away for the recommended ten years (really?). This year's Tour was, by all accounts, a pretty successful one, unless of course you measure success by whether or not the event turned a profit. We had a total of 187 riders, didn't need to call 911 a single time, there were no big problems or delays with the results, and it didn't rain. The races themselves were pretty interesting and competitive, and although the Lakeshore Drive criterium course may not be the most technically challenging, it proved to be plenty hard enough and was great for the spectators. Erich Mattei once again served as official announcer/DJ for the criterium, keeping the crowd entertained throughout. The Cat. 1/2/3 road race got splintered by a couple of successful breaks that yielded big time gaps. The Masters race also saw a successful break, that included Jorge and Mike, that took a good six minutes out of most of the field. Of course, from my perspective, it was a long hot weekend of squinting at sun-drenched laptop screens, calling numbers and times into tape recorders, and hauling equipment around from venue to venue. Much of it is still scattered about in my basement until I have a chance to clean and reorganize it. I guess it's been at least twenty years that I've worn my now-traditional and entirely un-official officiating hat for the road race, although in recent years I've switched to a regular officials cap for the criterium. There are links to some great photos by Malcolm Schuler and David L'hoste on the results page.

So after spending last weekend mostly standing still and sweating, I was finally back on the bike on Monday feeling like I hadn't ridden in a week. By Tuesday morning, two LAMBRA races, Meridian-Cuba and Mt. Driskill had been cancelled, and the next day they cancelled Sugar Land over in TX which was supposed to be a LCCS points race. Wow! It sounds like Mt. Driskill might be resurrected for the weekend that Meridian-Cuba originally had, but it's too early to say for sure yet. Anyway, the closest race next weekend is in Tennessee, I think, but I couldn't go anyway because The Daughter is coming to town on Saturday with her gymnastics camp girls.

At least I got in some good training yesterday. After a nice moderate morning levee ride, I rushed off after work, jumped onto the old Orbea, and rode out to the lakefront to catch the 24-mile Wednesday training race. It was somewhere in the mid-90s when I left, and I was feeling kind of dragged out, but the training race is not to be missed. I think we had 25-30 riders for the start yesterday, and so the early attacks got chased down as you'd expect. By the third lap, though, we'd lost a number of people and you could tell that riders were getting tired. I found myself kind of stuck near the back without the energy to go out into the wind and move up where I knew I should be. About halfway through the race we got a little rain shower -- just enough to make a complete mess of the bike and clothes, and not enough to wash away all of the grit. With just about one 6-mile lap to go a small break rolled away. I looked around nervously, wondering why the group's pace hadn't changed. A couple of riders attacked down the left side to bridge, and then Tim went flying past in overdrive. The front of the group didn't respond at all. A few more riders went after Tim and eventually most or all of them made it up to the front group. The rest of the pack was completely dysfunctional. With a gap of around 45 seconds, there was no way a solo rider was going to make the bridge, but rather than organize a paceline, individual riders kept attacking the group. Needless to say, the gap continued to grow. Oh well, at least it was a good workout, and besides, I shouldn't complain too much because I myself spent most of the race sucking wheels.

Hoping for Rain

2011-06-07T15:51:00.000-05:00

I looked down at my computer, and then my watch. 6:30 am and the paceline was already strung out at 28 mph, racing upriver through that light morning haze we get on summer mornings like this. I'd listened with both ears to my body telling me to take Monday off, and I suppose it must have helped because I felt reasonably decent on the bike. Less than halfway out and the paceline was starting to stretch really thin. Little gaps started turning into bigger gaps and then, as we negotiated our way around some pedestrian obstacles, there was a big gap.

Someone attacked down the left to try and bridge, but I had to wait a moment to get out from behind someone. I took a pull, then Jordan went to the front and ramped it up to 31 mph for probably half a mile. I didn't dare look back. The main power sources at the front were planning on turning back early, at The Dip, and as they started to ease up we all came back together for the last five miles or so out to the turnaround at Ormond. Although the pace didn't slack off dramatically, it did drop down just enough to make 26 mph feel like recovery, at least if you were a few wheels back into the paceline. The wind was, for once, negligible.

As usual, the return trip started out easy and then gradually ratcheted up to somewhere between pain and suffering. Situation normal.

Today there are lots of emails bouncing back and forth among the handful of people organizing this weekend's Tour de Louisiane. The latest drama was a new requirement, about which we were informed this morning, that the "Non-Flood Protection Asset Management Authority" be included on the Certificate of Insurance along with the "Orleans Levee District." Never mind that the Non-Flood Protection Asset Management Authority, which is charging us $300 plus police costs for the criterium course, is just an office withing the Orleans Levee District for which we had already requested and forwarded a Certificate of Insurance, which itself is not strictly necessary since they are covered under the event general liability policy whether or not they have the aforementioned certificate in hand. Thanks to USAC, though, because it took exactly 12 minutes from the time I made the request to the time I got the new certificate from the insurance company.

Yesterday a strong thunderstorm rolled through here, bringing a heavy rain that we badly needed. Here at my office the rain was pounding the windows. Imagine my surprise when I got home at the end of the day and discovered that hardly a drop had fallen there, only a couple of miles away. At least it cooled things down a bit. We got a little more rain this afternoon, so I'm hoping some of it fell at home this time.

The Tour Course

2011-06-06T11:50:00.000-05:00

I reluctantly removed a water bottle that I knew I'd later want, cut the top off of it with my pocket knife, and inserted a big can of road marking paint, wrapped in a can-cozy to keep it from rattling. It was 7:30 am and we were getting ready to start our annual pre-ride of the Tour de Louisiane road course up around Stony Point, LA. My job was to freshen up the course markings and arrows that were painted around the 16 mile circuit. Since we've used this same course for a number of years, most of the old markings just needed to be freshened up, so I was hoping that one can would suffice. The road course is a little complicated, so the markings are important, especially for the lead vehicles and the riders who might be off the back. A couple of the turns come up on you pretty suddenly, too, and although paint on the road can be easy to miss when you're in the middle of a race, it's better than nothing.

For some reason I was already feeling kind of lousy from the start. Although there was no valid reason for it, aside from perhaps old age, my legs were loading up and aching on every climb as our group headed down the highway from "Cucumber Corner" where we'd parked to the actual road course. I had this vague feeling that I might be coming down with something. Anyway, the plan for the first lap was to ride easy so that I could stop ahead of every turn and freshen up the spray painted arrows. Unfortunately, I ran out of paint with two turns to go, so a few of us turned back toward the cars while the rest continued on to start the second lap. I picked up a second can of paint and we backtracked around the course, painting the missed turns and then meeting up with most of the group, which by then had split, about half-way around. As we started lap #3, with the temperature rising and Jorge and a couple others pushing the pace, I retreated to the back of the paceline. My legs hurt, I was feeling a lot hotter than I should, and every little climb was starting to feel like a mountain. Something was definitely amiss, and it was time to pay attention to what my body was telling me. Anyway, I hung on for the rest of the lap, at which point most of us headed back to the cars. I don't know if I was dehydrated, fighting off a little cold, or what, but I didn't really feel good for the rest of the day. At least I got most of the Tour de LA race bible finished -- just need to add in a few of the new sponsor logos -- so it should be up on the website tonight.

While I was updating the "winner's circle" list with the names of last year's podium riders, I was looking back over some of the old names and wondered if Dan Casebeer was still around. Naturally, I found him quickly and saw the he was running a bike shop in Minnesota. As soon as I saw the rotating images with the pair of old Maresi shoes, Legnano bike, and embroidered wool USA jersey, I knew I was in the right place, so I checked for him on Facebook to let him know that the Tour de LA, which he won once and raced in a number of times, was now 40 years old. He replied, "I do remember those days with lots of pleasure! I see a few of the characters from those days too...Mike King (who almost got arrested for public exposure (peeing in the trees) Tom Schuler who lives in Wisconsin and FB many others. remember the year I crashed in the TT on the famous bump I flatted and road the wheel to almost the finish line..still got 5th..." I'm sure I've told that story to a hundred people over the years. It's part of Tour de La lore now. I vividly remember him powering down Lakeshore Drive in the time trial on a flat tire that he'd been riding on so long that the wheel was coming apart. He almost made it to the finish line before the spokes went flying and it locked up and he went down. While I was still wandering down memory lane, I got a new Facebook notice that Boyd Fink had posted some old Tour de LA photos from 1975. I immediately stole them and added them to the NOBC Archive!

Watermarks and High Heels

2011-06-04T12:56:00.000-05:00

It was late Thursday night when I finally conceded. There was just no way I was going to make the weekend of racing up in Tupelo and still get the Tour de Louisiane race bible finished in time to avoid a last-minute rush. Although it would have been a long drive, I knew the racing would be great and that the event would have strong fields with riders from Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. And so I came to find myself sitting at the Starbucks on Harrison Avenue at 6:30 this morning, sipping an iced coffee and looking up at the permanent marker on the wall memorializing the Hurricane Katrina water mark. I had made good time from the house, hitting nearly every green light on the quiet early morning streets. I'd been awakened around 2 am by one of the dogs trying to dig a hole in the carpet in response to an unexpected thunderstorm. I spent an hour lying on the couch with the light on and one hand on the dog's collar. It might have all been worth it if the aforementioned thunderstorm had graced us with at least a few drops of badly needed rain, but the streets were still dry and the plants still parched in the morning.

There was a big group for the Giro today, but since the Herring guys were racing in Mississippi I thought maybe the ride would be relatively sedate. I couldn't have been more wrong. By the time we were halfway down Hayne Blvd. I was spinning the 53x15 at 28 mph and my glasses were already obscured with the sweat dripping from my face. As it turned out, 28 mph was just the warmup speed. Shortly after turning onto Chef Highway someone toward the back of the pack flatted. The group slowed for a while, but only a handful of us actually turned back to help. The rest of the pack soft-pedaled for a while, but by the time we got going again they were three minutes up the road and going hard again. So we just pacelined out toward Venetian Isles and caught them on the way back. It wasn't long before we were going 31 mph again, and for the most part the pressure stayed on the rest of the way back. I was really feeling the heat today (it's 94° F right now). Riding back home down Fontainbleau Drive with Jordan I glanced up to see a pair of black high heels hanging from one of the overhead wires. My first thought was, "We must be Uptown!" Definitely more classy than the usual tennis shoes. Anyway, I'm sure there's an interesting story behind that pair of shoes.

So things are ramping up for the 40th annual Tour de Louisiane. It's hard to believe it's been 40 years; even harder to believe I was there with my Pocket Instamatic for the first one. We're doing a ride on the road race course tomorrow during which I'll be re-painting the turn arrows and marking any potholes or other road hazards. At some point today or tonight I'll start working seriously on the race bible so that it will be ready for printing on Monday. Late last night I *think* I fixed the West Feliciana stage race results, which I still need to post to the website. Then I need to score those races for LCCS points, update the LCCS web pages and upload the detailed workbook before reformatting it all for uploading to the USAC database. Hopefully I'll get that done before I get the results from the Tupelo races, at which point I'll have to score those 21 or so separate races for points and do it all over again.

Back to the Lakefront

2011-06-02T14:47:00.000-05:00

Things were not quite back to normal on Tuesday as I reluctantly turned around at the parish line, leaving the rest of the morning levee ride group to continue out to Ormond. An early work meeting was the culprit this time, but at least I resisted the urge to soft-pedal all the way home. The Daughter, whose flight back to Iowa City had been inexplicably cancelled, was scheduled for an 8:30 am departure on Wednesday, so yesterday morning's ride was out the window. Luckily, there was the Wednesday training race out at the lakefront. I'd missed the last one, but from all accounts there was a good group on hand for a return to the old traditional 6-mile circuit that runs between the fountain traffic circle at Bayou St. John to the Seabrook loop at the industrial canal. For reasons that only the Levee District could possibly comprehend, the Seabrook loop itself is closed to traffic, but it's easy for cyclists to get past the big plastic traffic barrels.

So despite my best efforts, I didn't leave work until well after 5:00, which meant I didn't step out the door at home until 5:45 or so. It was painfully hot as I raced the cars and buses down Carrollton Avenue and sprinted across the always-exciting section where it crosses Palmetto, splits off a couple of Interstate highway ramps, and dips underneath I-10 and the railroad tracks. Once through the Palmetto gauntlet, I climbed back up out of the underpass, slipped across Tulane Avenue against the light, and settled into a somewhat less stressful pace through mid-city, eventually meeting Marconi Avenue for the last few miles alongside Bayou St. John. Glancing down at my watch, I could see I'd be just a few minutes late. As I turned onto Lakeshore Drive at the traffic circle I scanned the road for bikes, but saw none. Had the group already come through? It was 6:05. If they'd started down at Elysian Fields a bit later than the 6:00 start, and were keeping it more or less neutral for the first couple of miles, there was still a chance I wouldn't miss a whole lap. I continued on, crossing the levee at the London Avenue Canal, and there they were coming toward me, headed for the traffic circle. I turned around and watched for the group to come over the levee so I could join in. One rider was off the front, and then the whole group, maybe about twenty, starting to string out in chase mode. I put my head down to gather some speed so I wouldn't get swarmed too badly. I figured they were going around 27 mph. Finally I slotted in near the back, already breathing hard from the effort of accelerating to race speed. I'd just missed half a lap.

The 4-lap training race was just what I needed. The group was big enough that there was always some place to hide from the wind, and there were always a few riders willing and able to chase the breaks. After the second lap I was finally feeling sufficiently warmed up, so I figured it was time for me to get some exercise. I moved closer to the front, taking a few pulls and chasing a few things down, occasionally dropping back into the more comfy draft of the group to recover. The last lap started with a good breakaway that I though might survive, but the group ramped it up another notch and finally closed with around four miles to go. In the process, however, a number of riders came off the back. After the Seabrook loop another break went clear and this time the response from the pack was a little slow. I'm not even sure exactly how many ended up off the front over the last mile or so, but anyway, Jordan won, a few more finished, and the pack sprinted for whatever place was left. By then my glasses were covered in sweat and I was glad I'd brought along one of those extra-large water bottles. I rode back uptown with Jordan who was running late for something, which is to say I sucked his wheel most of the way home.

This morning's long levee ride felt hot and pretty hard to me. It's getting to that point in the summer where even the morning ride starts out hot and sweaty. There was a significant wind today, but somehow the group stayed mostly intact all the way out to Ormond. On the return trip, however, the crosswind seemed much worse and eventually things fell apart a bit.

Long Week, Long Time

2011-05-29T16:49:00.001-05:00

Miss me? It was a pretty long week. Complications and deadlines at work, along with family arriving for a nephew's wedding, conspired to keep me off the bike entirely for two or three days. Although I had to skip this weekend's races up in St. Francisville, at least I was able to make both the Saturday and Sunday Giro Rides.

So to back up a bit to the prior weekend up in Alexandria for the Racing Rapides stage race.....

I ended up driving up to this one alone, leaving home around 5 am. The race had a pretty good turnout, and since I am currently running quite low on self-confidence I registered in the 55+ race. We'd be racing with the 40+ group anyway, so I figured at least it would give me a better shot at winning my entry fee back. Waiting for the start of the Masters race felt like an alumni reunion. On hand were Mike Lew, John Egan, John Dias, and Jorge Merle, and if you know Mike, there was no shortage of old racing stories.

The road race was on a long 20 mile loop with one or two moderately significant climbs. Right from the start a break went off the front, and by the start of the second lap of three Donald Davis and Scott Gurganus had a pretty big gap. A while later I was surprised to see Scott coming back to the pack. There was never much of an organized chase, and considering who it was, I figured Donald had a pretty good shot at staying out there. It would certainly help that he had a number of teammates in the pack. At one point, I think the gap went up to a minute and a half, and once he was out of sight, he was out of mind. The last lap got a bit more active, though, and although I didn't know it, the gap was slowly coming down. I'd been staying out of the wind for the most part and so I was feeling pretty decent as we came into the final five miles or so when the pace really started to ramp up. Apparently the guys at the front could see Donald somewhere up the road. There wasn't quite enough time, though, and the pack would end up finishing a bit more than 20 seconds down. The pack started getting pretty nervous over the last few miles as riders crowded the front on the narrow winding road. The Florida team started to organize a leadout, but then the guy in front, along with a few others, inexplicably took an unscheduled right turn off of the course at an intersection. I don't know how they could have thought there was a right turn on the course, but everyone kind of sat up for a moment for a collective "WTF?" Anyway, that kind of reshuffled things a couple of miles before the finish. From there on, it was a battle for position and a sprint that started about half a kilometer out. I ended up around 6th despite having to back off a couple of times to get around people, so I was pretty happy, and a little surprised, with that.

The afternoon's Time Trial felt really difficult, starting out with a little tailwind, and then turning suddenly right into a strong headwind that dropped my speed from 28-29 mph right down to 22-23 mph. It took forever to get rolling again, even after the road turned back away from the wind. I was surprised that my time didn't suck quite as badly as I'd though (it still sucked, though). Donald, despite his long solo effort just hours earlier, put in one the fastest time trial with a 7:06. For comparison, my time was 35 long seconds slower, which is an eternity for a 3 mi. time trial.

That night I stayed at Ed Kendrick's house in nearby Pineville, where they'd made some nice lasagna, for dinner. Sunday's criterium in old Alexandria was fun as usual. I was hanging around mid-pack watching the show when we came to the mid-race hot spot. Criterium host spots are always rather dangerous in that they provide good opportunities for breakaways, so I went pretty hard for it just in case. After we crossed the line the leaders eased up, and I was about to let myself drop back when Ed Novak counter-attacked just after turn #1. I was right behind Donald and sensed a moment of hesitation, instinctively yelling, "Go! He went, and after a bit of a chase we made it across the gap. I would have expected the break of seven riders to start working together pretty quickly, but in fact it took a number of laps before things stabilized. I was a little surprised that we weren't caught in the interim. Eventually, though, things started to come together and the break started making time on the remnants of the pack. I was feeling a little confused since I was the only 55+ rider in the break. My legs were feeling surprisingly good, but I kept wavering between wanting to push the pace and wanting to sit at the back and enjoy the ride. Very conflicted. Although there were a couple of attacks toward the end, the break was still together with a couple of laps to go when the pace suddenly eased. Riders were starting to get nervous about the inevitable sprint. I figured I may as well go to the front, since I didn't really have anything to lose, so I pulled for about a lap and a half. I dropped back to nearly the back of the break as we came around the last couple of turns and pretty much just watched the sprint from behind. I was glad to have won back my entry fee and then some. I ended up sticking around until the bitter end so I could bring the results file back with me. It took quie a long time to get the Cat. 1/2/3 results posted.

This weekend was another double-Giro weekend for me. I was quite sleep-deprived by the time Saturday morning rolled around, but by then I was really looking forward to the Giro. With my daughter and four dogs in the house, plus a rehearsal dinner party, Saturday's Giro was a nice break! I ended up riding pretty hard.

Saturday evening was the wedding at City Park. As we arrived we saw all of the nice little white chairs all lined up, and empty. Everyone was instead standing in the shade, waiting until the last possible moment before sitting down in the 5:30 pm sun. I guess the temperature was in the mid-80s. Fortunately the ceremony itself was fairly brief, after which we headed over to the reception, also mostly outside in City Park. By then the sun was getting low enough to provide more shade, and as the champagne glasses were filled and the sun went down, the dancing started. It was nice.

So this morning was a smaller repeat of the Saturday Giro. Some riders were up in St. Francisville for the West Feliciana Gran Prix, and another small group was doing a long ride on the northshore, but that didn't really make the Giro a whole lot slower. I spent a long time around mid-pack on the way out, staying off to the side where I could get a little extra exercise without actually moving up to the front. Anyway, it was a good Giro and I got a pretty good workout, arriving back home tired, hungry, and with salt caked on my face.

Got, got, got, got no time

2011-05-18T15:40:00.000-05:00

Photos will have to speak for themselves today.

Looking upriver toward Ochsner bend.

Crazy Guy pretending I'm not there but hoping I come too close.

U. Iowa Grad School Graduation.

Wednesday morning and the river's holding steady here.

Saved and Restored

2011-05-11T22:17:00.000-05:00

The Tuesday morning ride seemed harder than usual. Harder, in fact, than it actually was. It was just one of those days when I felt dragged-out right from the start. Tim and Woody attacked as usual. I went with it, but got dropped by a subsequent attack and ended up in no-man's-land until Howard showed up. I started to recover a bit and took a nice long pull that started to close the gap. When I pulled off, Howard attacked. Seriously? I got back home 40 some-odd miles later and seriously considered calling in sick. I suppose I may have been fighting off some kind of bug, or was just suffering the consequences of too little sleep. Whatever the reason, on a scale of one to ten, I never felt better than a five all day. There were other complications, too. The night before, rather late, my laptop's hard drive started to fail. I got a couple of messages informing me of such and strongly recommending immediate backup. I took them seriously and first did a full backup, which took literally hours, filled up about four DVDs, and ended with a message, in RED, telling me that the backup had failed. Huh? So, reading the writing on the wall, I ran out around lunchtime and bought an external hard drive, stopped by the house where the laptop was thankfully still running, and imaged the entire hard drive onto the external drive. That evening when I turned on the computer, it wouldn't boot. Since I had to depart early Wednesday for a plane ride up to Iowa City for The Daughter's graduation, all I could do was pack it up with the external drive and deal with it up in Iowa, which coincidentally is where I'd bought the computer a bit over a year ago.

After arriving up here in Hawkeye country, I went over to the big Coralville mall and picked up a 500 gig hard drive for $75. I remember paying nearly that once for a box of ten 90k floppies back in the 80s. I swapped the new drive for the old one, popped in my recovery CD, and crossed my fingers. It started to load and then hung, eventually showing an error message about a faulty device. Hmmmm. A couple more tries produced the same result. I removed the CD and took a look at it. There were a couple of big fingerprints on the shiny side, so I wiped them off and tried once more. That did the trick and it loaded, bringing up the recovery screen. Of course, it still couldn't see the external drive because it didn't have the necessary drivers, so I had to find and install those, and then all looked good. I had it restore the internal hard drive from the disc image on the external drive, went downstairs to eat, and when I got back everything was back exactly the way it had been before the crash, as if nothing had ever happened. That was a bit of a relief!

Water, Water

2011-05-09T20:37:00.000-05:00

It seemed strange to be watering the plants and grass around the house at a time when the river level is climbing up the banks of the levee. All those disastrous rain storms up the river are now rushing between the levees while we're sprinkling city water on plants that haven't seen rain in a couple of weeks. I rode out to the levee at the usual time, only to find a train blocking Monticello Street. I didn't figure it mattered, though, as I'd been expecting to do an easy recovery ride anyway. Then the train stopped. Then it backed up. Finally, it cleared the tracks and I rode up the levee to the bike path just after I saw David B. go flying down the road ahead of me. Fortunately, he wasn't going too fast because of course I couldn't resist trying to chase him down. I came into his draft somewhere past the playground. I said hello, but I don't know if he heard me. In fact, I don't know if he ever knew I was there. Since I was already running late, I turned back early and took some time to look at the river level. I guess it was only a foot or two higher than it had been on Friday, but there are now a lot of long stretches of batture that look like rivers with a noticeable current. This morning they opened part of the Bonnet Carre spillway and it's looking like they will probably open it fully in the near future. By the weekend they will have to decide whether to start opening the Morganza spillway.

So back at the office I suddenly realized it was 10:30 am and of course today was Stage 3 of the Giro d' Italia. I checked Cyclingnews but it was apparent I'd just missed the finish. Something was odd, though. The last line of the live ticker read, "We're going to close the live report now but we'll keep you updated on the site." A minute or two later I learned that a rider had crashed badly on the descent, and half an hour later my worst fears were confirmed. Belgian rider Wouter Weylandt had been coming off the tail end of the group on a fast descent. He looked back to decide whether to chase or drop back to the group behind. His pedal or handle bar clipped a low wall and he went down hard, fracturing his skull. Despite quick medical attention, he died before getting to the hospital. A very sad day for the Giro.

Weekend Rides

2011-05-08T23:10:00.000-05:00

It was a pretty routine training weekend that started out chilly and ended up hot and sweaty. I'd been expecting Saturday's Giro Ride to be a really fast one. There were no races nearby, the weather was nearly ideal, riders are getting in shape. The ride was fast, but not quite as hard as I'd thought it would be. A few of the key players were absent, and the wind was moderate and only rarely of the crosswind variety, so I guess that helped take the edge off. Down at the end of Hayne Blvd., where we make a sharp turn onto Paris Road, there was water on the inside of the turn. Somebody back around mid-pack apparently tried to test the limits of friction there, and a moment after I'd rounded the corner I heard a commotion behind me. It was just a minor slip and fall, though, and before long we were hammering our way toward Chef Highway.

For the most part, the ride was a lot of fun -- just the right combination of work and play. On the way back I was riding alongside Eddie D. on the service road when his rear tire exploded. I'm not sure what he rolled over (there was a fair amount of broken glass around there), but it was one of those explosive kinds of flats. Half of the group ended up waiting underneath a conveniently located oak tree since it was starting to get pretty warm. After we got started up again, however, the pace never got much past the conversational level.

Sunday's Giro was on Mother's Day, so lots of good boys and girls were missing, but we had a pretty good ride nonetheless. The only exciting part was on Chef Highway when a gap opened and a small group decided to make a run for it. A few of us tried to give chase, but in general, the rest of the pack wasn't really interested. We got the gap down to maybe fifteen seconds, but nobody would pull through and so it opened up again. Oh well. It was fun anyway.

Saved by the Flat

2011-05-05T16:50:00.000-05:00

It was a bit after 5 pm when I suddenly remembered about the first Wednesday Worlds training race that Kennny had announced for 6 pm on Lakeshore Drive. I rushed out of the office, rode back home, changed into riding gear, and headed for the lakefront, arriving just in time to see the group of eight or ten riders still rolling easy. A few minutes later we had the "official" start. Unfortunately, the recent cold front's north wind had washed mud and debris up onto the east end of Lakeshore Drive, so we were back on the same shortened circuit from last year, riding back and forth between the Elysian Fields traffic circle to the Bayou St. John (aka Fountain) traffic circle. The first lap was fairly civilized, and then on the second lap we got off on the wrong foot with the Levee District police when the group tried to blow through the traffic circle (in front of the police station) right in front of a police car that was already in the circle. It was ugly, but luckily the police officer stayed cool, flipped on his siren for a moment, and went about his business without further harassment. I was feeling a little tired from the morning's ride, so my plan was to stay out of the wind for the first half of the short race. There were a couple of small breakaways, but each time they were slowly reeled in by the group. Then, on the last lap, Jordan took off on a bold solo break that nearly succeeded, but everything came back together for the last kilometer, resulting in a bit of a drag race at the end that Tim won. It was really fun -- not too slow and not too fast -- just what I needed. By the time I got home and ate dinner, though, I was feeling pretty worn out.

So this morning I set out with every intention of doing the long ride out to Ormond. There was a moderate wind and it was still chilly enough for arm-warmers, but otherwise the conditions were pretty good. I, however, was still feeling kind of dragged out for some reason. Anyway, the pace got fast as usual and I was hurting as usual, and then there was a flat. That provided a nice little break at just the right time. Once we got going again after that things ramped up again and next thing I know there are just three or four of us off the front. Everyone else in the front group was planning on turning around early, so I figured I'd follow suit, especially when they started attacking about a mile before the "little dip" where they were turning. I survived one attack, but didn't respond quite quickly enough to the second, and rode the last half mile off the back. I've been trying to add a little more intensity to my training rides, so reducing the mileage a little bit isn't causing me the consternation it might have earlier in the year. I've been spending too much time sitting in on the group rides this year, so it's time to change things up a little. For the return trip we picked up an additional rider or two and thanks to the headwind turned into a fairly hard workout. The difference in the river between yesterday and today was fairly dramatic, and I see now that they are planning to open the Spillway on Monday. The photo above is a composite of two photos taken from around the same spot near Ochsner, one yesterday morning and the other this morning.

Double Tailwind

2011-05-04T11:14:00.000-05:00

It was still warm and muggy Tuesday morning when I took off for the regular levee ride. Down here in the real South (as opposed to, say, Atlanta) Spring is pretty much a done deal now and Summer is fast approaching. Last week I dumped all of the winter riding clothes into the wash, looking forward to a summer full of mornings when I don't even bother to check the thermometer. Up on the levee we had a pretty big group as we headed upriver. It's now light enough at 6:15 am that I don't bother with the headlight any more, and strap on a little rear blinky light just for those mornings when it's cloudy.

So with a fair amount of horsepower at the front, assisted by a nice little tailwind, the group was rolling along at a pretty good clip. I was still mostly hanging out near the end of the paceline as we came around the bend a the country club and continued into River Ridge. Up ahead there was someone walking or jogging on the right side of the road, and also a rider approaching from the other direction. As sometimes happens, the timing was working out so that the collision alert warning was about to sound. The riders in front called out, "Slowing" or something to that effect as they started hitting the brakes and the paceline started to bunch up. Ahead of me and a bit to the left I suddenly saw Doug's front wheel go horizontal and knew someone must have touched wheels. There was a moment of warning as he tried to save it, but I wasn't sticking around to watch and immediately bailed onto the grassy side of the levee behind Tim. By the time I got turned around and back onto the asphalt, Doug was sitting there on the river side of the levee looking both beat-up and stunned as he mumbled something to the effect of, "My wife is going to kill me." It took a while before he finally stood up, and I gather that he may have bounced his head off of the pavement on the way down. Mark G. gathered him up and they headed back as the group clipped in to continue the ride. We later learned that Doug had broken something in his shoulder.

So the rest of the ride went smoothly out to the turnaround at Ormond, with a couple of easy miles as we started back, but then we noticed a huge dark cloud building to the northwest. The pace ramped up a bit as riders started doing the calculations. "If a cold front leaves the station at 7:15 going east northeast at 15 mph and the pack departs Ormond at 20 mph, will the riders get wet before they reach the playground?" After a few more miles it was looking like we would easily outrun the rain, but right about that time, somewhere around River Ridge, I think, we suddenly felt a cold, cold downdraft. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees in fifteen seconds and soon the wind shifted around to the north. All of a sudden we had a tailwind on the way back after having had a tailwind on the way out. That never happens, but I didn't hear any complaints. I don't think the temperature got above 70F the rest of the day.

This morning there was a stiff north wind and it was chilly enough for knee and arm-warmers as I rode out to meet the morning ride. I guess the combination of cooler air and strong wind kept a lot of people in bed this morning because we had only Donald, Big Richard, Mignon and myself. Despite the wind, though, it was a lovely morning and we had a good ride. On the way out we ran into Roy Tedesco who was sitting on the side of the bike path apparently waiting for someone with a pump to come along. We stopped and got his tire aired up and he rode with us out to the turnaround where he continued on as we headed back. The river level is rising rather quickly right now and the difference between yesterday and today was immediately noticeable. The nice thing about the rising water, though, is that as it begins to flood the batture we start seeing lots of wildlife. There were at least four or five varieties of herons, lots of wood ducks, whistling ducks, and a big hawk with red shoulders.

On and Off the Back

2011-05-02T21:26:00.001-05:00

I knew it was going to be a long day. I just didn't know exactly how long it would be. I threw the bike into the car a bit after 4 am and headed west toward Lake Charles for the LAMBRA Criterium Championships. The masters race was the second of the day, so I figured I may as well get there early enough to help with the officiating. Besides, I had bring all of the championship medals. I have to admit, I rather like those three-hour early morning drives on the interstate, although it would have been nice to have had a little company on this one. It appears that some New Orleanians prefer Jazzfests to sufferfests.

The masters race had a fairly small field of 20 or so, a quarter of which was Midsouth Masters. Despite its diminutive size, the race had a lot of horsepower and I wasn't expecting an easy ride. We started out with a first-lap prime. I hate first-lap primes! Thus began a fast and aggressive race in which I was basically a non-factor. Part of the reason was that I was gambling that the strong team and strong solo riders might cancel each other out. The other part of the reason was the strong and gusty wind that made moving up difficult and hiding in the pack nearly impossible. There was an early breakaway that got a decent gap, but I could sense they wouldn't be able to stay out there. Indeed, they were caught after a concerted chase. On the next prime another small break took off, and again I didn't get the idea the field was going to let that one go either. By then I was mostly hanging onto the tail end of the group wondering what I'd gotten myself into and feeling a spectator at a dog fight. There were more attacks and more chases, as I played the accordion at the back, sprinting out of each of the three hard corners as the pack stretched and compressed around the course. The worst was a particular right-hand turn into a strong head/crosswind that made getting a draft a real challenge. With six or so laps left to go the pack was once again all together when a couple of riders attacked. This time it seemed that the front of the group hesitated. I was still near the back, as was Mitch. Just as the alarm bells were starting to go off in my head, I saw Mitch get up out of the saddle and knew he'd sensed the same thing. He went flying past the group and started to bridge. I think he made it for a little while, but it must have taken so much out of him that he couldn't stick with them. At five to go I started trying to move up. The break was not looking like it would be caught, but even so it was difficult to make much progress. Somehow, though, my old criterium instincts started to finally kick in and I spent the last couple of laps battling for a decent position. There was a surge on the last lap as I hung in at third or fourth wheel, coming around the last turn third, I think, and passing one rider and almost the other before the finish. So I came in 4th, thanks only to the fact that I sucked wheels most of the time while the strong guys did battle at the front. That felt hard.

So after officiating a couple of races, I figured I may as well go ahead and give them my prize money back and enter the Cat. 1/2/3 race. I was probably pretty dehydrated already but after all, it was obvious I needed the training. Now, of course I knew that my only chance, slim as it might be, in this race would be for a small break to get away, one of the teams like Herring shutting everything down, and then a pack sprint. Well, that was pretty much the opposite of what actually happened. There were some Texas guys on hand, including Carlos Vargas, so I wasn't really surprised. Once again there was a prime on the first lap, so we started out at full gas. By the time we were halfway through the second lap I was already feeling like I'd brought a knife to a gunfight. A break was already off the front but I didn't even know it for another couple of laps. Nobody was shutting this pack down. That break was eventually reeled back, which of course only precipitated more attacks. By then I was hanging onto the back of the race for dear life, struggling to stay in contact after almost every corner. There were at least four times when I seriously considered sitting up and packing it in. Anyway, with maybe six laps to go the pace surged once again and once again I was struggling just to stay in contact. A late break went off the front that included Vargas and two Herring riders who were not likely to outsprint him. I'm pretty sure that wasn't in the Herring race plan, but these things happen sometimes. I was back among the last three or four riders in the pack when all of a sudden it seemed like someone was going backwards through the pack. I don't know if we'd come upon a lapped rider or if someone had just completely blown up, but the net result was that a big gap suddenly opened up a couple of riders ahead of me. One rider near me made it across, but for the rest of us, it was "game over." By then there were only a few more laps left, so I just put my head down and figured I may as well finish it out. I ended up 16th out of 24, 12th in the Cat. 1/2s. I'm hoping that old saying is true. You know, the one that goes, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

Strange Dog!

Overall I thought the races themselves went pretty well, but the turnout was kind of embarrassing. Here we have a district championship criterium with a pretty decent prizelist and the biggest field numbered 24. I don't really get it. Lake Charles may not be in the geographic center of LAMBRA, but it's not exactly in Kansas either.

Wind and Water

2011-04-29T14:47:00.001-05:00

This week's training rides, except for today's, were all about the wind. When I went out Wednesday morning I knew immediately it would be rough. Up on the levee there was just a handful. I guess the smart ones stayed home. After the first few miles, Donald got on the front (There were just three or four of us) and pulled all the way out to the turnaround at the parish line. Every time we'd come out from behind the protection of the batture trees, the wind would slam us hard and we'd have to lean noticiably into it. I really wanted to take a photo showing how much we were leaning, but there was no way I could have taken one hand off the handlebars and survived! Up north in Mississippi and Alabama they were having much worse problems with severe weather and killer tornados, so I really can't complain. Kenny was holding his first training Time Trial out at the lakefront in the evening, but by the time I got home from work it was already a little too late, and if I needed another excuse, well there was the wind. Thursday morning wasn't much better as far as the wind was concerned, except that it was coming from the opposite direction and the air was much cooler. There was a bigger group, of course, but once we got into the first long crosswind section it predictably shattered and I ended up with the front group of five or six riders. Tim and Woody and Matt were pushing pretty hard, and I figured they were planning on turning back early, which they did when we got to the "little dip." There was no way I was going to continue on in that wind without a group, so I turned back with them and never regretted it. I don't think anyone kept going, actually. This morning, finally, the wind was nearly gone as a big high pressure area had moved right on top of us. We had a nice smooth paceline ride. It was one of those rides that's so smooth it makes your crotch hurt because you never change your position. Hard ride - happy crotch. Easy ride - unhappy crotch. Life is a compromise.

I'll be heading over to Lake Charles on Sunday for the LAMBRA criterium championship. It'll be a 3:30 am wake-up and 4 am start for the 3-hour drive in order to get there in time to help out with the officiating of the Cat. 5 race that starts at 8:00. Should be fun.

Missed the Rain but Not the Water

2011-04-26T10:52:00.000-05:00

Sunday was yet another Giro Ride for me. With The Daughter still in town, and since it was also Easter, I figured that would be the best I could do anyway. As one would expect for such a holiday, the group was quite a bit smaller than usual. A small group can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it means there usually fewer strong riders to sustain the pain. On the other, there are fewer wheels behind which to hide. As it turned out, this was not one of those easy sightseeing training rides. There were more than enough riders intent on getting a workout to keep the exertion level high throughout. One of them was me. Anyway, I don't really remember much of interest about the ride. It was just another nice Giro with a good group on a nice Easter morning.

On the way back, as we were flying along the I-10 service road around Crowder Blvd., I suddenly heard behind me the "whack, whack, whack" sound that a broken spoke makes, followed immediately by riders shouting. I looked back and saw Woody at a stop with a number of riders inspecting his rear wheel. I thought, "Wow, I can't believe Woody broke another spoke!" He'd broken one earlier in the week at the Arena criterium. It turned out, however, that the sound I'd heard hadn't been made by a broken spoke at all. It had been made by a nail that had embedded itself in his tire. The amazing part was that the nail had gone through the tread sideways and somehow had not punctured the tire.

The rest of the day was a blur of turkey and wine with entertainment provided by The Daughter's little dog. After taking Monday as a rest day, I headed back out to the levee this morning under a cloudy sky for the regular long Tuesday ride. The weather forecast had been calling for only a 20% chance of rain, so I wasn't expecting to get wet. Well, somewhere out in Kenner we started feeling some big old raindrops, and when we got to the parish line about half of us turned around while the other half kept going. The sky wasn't looking too good, so I didn't feel bad about turning back early. Within a couple of minutes the raindrops stopped, but a few miles later we found the road was soaking wet. There must have been a pretty good rain shower somewhere behind us as we were riding upriver. The rain was gone, but the wet road and wheel spray got us just as wet as if we'd been caught in a downpour. Oh well. I guess we needed a little rain around here anyway, although the Corps of Engineers is already predicting some very high river levels over the next month, cresting on May 17 at the highest level in over ten years because of all the rain up north in the Mississippi river valley.

Back to the Lakefront

2011-04-23T20:11:00.001-05:00

Monday through Thursday were pretty routine training rides for me, although for some reason I felt a little dragged out and sluggish most of the time. It was just one of those weeks, I guess. Perhaps it had something to do with my rather impressive reaction to the bedbug bites on my face and hand that I acquired in Brookhaven compliments of America's Best. On Wednesday evening I rode over to the Arena for a little training criterium, and never felt right the whole time, so I put in a few sporadic hard laps and otherwise just kind of rolled around. Friday was a holiday, which was nice since I was up late waiting for The Daughter's nearly midnight arrival from Iowa City. Nevertheless, I rolled out of bed Friday morning and rode out to the levee, not really expecting anyone to be there, and therefore planning to do a really easy spin. It turned out, however, that we had a nice little group and a ride that was a notch or two above "easy spin."

So Friday night I finally re-installed the second water bottle cage on the Orbea. I'd taken it off for the time trial in Brookhaven, primarily for psychological reasons, and hadn't quite gotten around to putting it back. I figured I'd probably need that second bottle for the Saturday Giro Ride. The weather around here has been pretty warm lately. In fact, Thursday night I'd collected up all of the various winter gear - arm-warmers, tights, jackets, etc. - and thrown them all into the wash. Summer is officially here, I guess.

So word's been going around that Lakeshore Drive is finally completely open after about a year, so I was hoping that we'd be able to get the first part of the Giro back onto its normal route this morning. When I started out, headed for my pre-Giro coffee stop at Starbucks, I was glad to find the air a little cooler and drier than I'd expected. Along the way I set off a couple of the traffic cameras without ever getting into the intersection. Did you know that you can set them off and still stop before crossing the street? Pretty easy to do, actually. Anyway, we had a good group for the Giro, and I think everyone was happy to be back on Lakeshore Drive, especially on such a nice day. It actually took a bit longer than usual for the pace to ramp up once we came down onto Hayne Blvd. I was finally feeling more or less normal again, but it took quite a long time for me to get my butt up to the front, and when I did, I was still skipping pulls now and then, but at least I was spending more time at the business end of the group for a change. As we got near to the turnaround, I think about half of the group turned early -- really early. A number of us who had gone all the way had to put in a little chase to get back, but fortunately the pace was more or less reasonable.

The crash happened on the service road, about halfway between Chef Highway and Lake Forest Blvd. One of the guys in the middle of the group was holding his water bottle with one hand when he nailed a rock that was in the road. I guess it must have thrown his front wheel sideways because he went straight to the ground, mostly face-first. The result was a badly broken helmet, a number of cuts and scrapes, and some pretty significant damage around his left eye socket. I think at least three others went down on top of him. We called an ambulance, but he wasn't showing any of the usual signs of a concussion and ultimately rode back with the group. Of course, by the time we got rolling again at least half an hour had passed and the rest of the ride was pretty sedate.

On the Rivet with Randy

Back Up North

A Friday Morning

Back to Normal

Mileage

Missing Link

Off-Season 65 Mile Jam

Rolling On

The Road Home

A Cross-Country Christmas (long story)

LSD and Hollicross

Warm Weather and Falling Leaves

A Warmer Ride

Chocolates and Cold

Cold and Lonely

Oh, SNAP!

Hills and Hay Bales

Eagle Season

Winter

Three for Three

Out-n-Back

Not What I Was Expecting

A Little Psycho

Seasons

Cold and Coffee

Up in the Air

Involuntary Fall Break

Get the picture

Bonus Miles

Fallin' Behind

Passive-Aggressive

Too Early

Off Balance

Planning to Plan

Six Gap Recap

Gearing *Down*

At the Beach

Tapering Off

Back to Natchez

Blind Faith

Unpredictability

Depression

Summer Gunk

Another Forty Kilometers

Little Changes

Lakefront Pile-up

The Blue Shirt

Mechanicals

Escape from the Giro

WNW

No Coffee, No Race

Recovering and Drying Out

Same Ol' Same Ol'

Riding Around the Rain

No Prisoners

Another Fast One

Summer

Off the Grid, Off the Bike

Danger at the Back

Wednesday Double

Greener Days

Epidemic Punctures

Wilted

No Race? No Problem.

Officiating Hats

Hoping for Rain

The Tour Course

Watermarks and High Heels

Back to the Lakefront

Long Week, Long Time

Got, got, got, got no time

Saved and Restored

Water, Water

Weekend Rides

Saved by the Flat

Double Tailwind

On and Off the Back

Wind and Water

Missed the Rain but Not the Water

Back to the Lakefront

Gearing Down