Six Gap for Sixteen

Thanks largely to Tulane's purchase of a bunch of new bikes for the team, together with the addition of Triathlon, the collegiate club's membership count was well into the 40 when the annual Six Gap road trip was being organized. It would be my 16th trip to Dahlonega, and this year we would have a total of 16 riders. We ended up at a huge Airbnb that was large enough to handle such a group but 40 minutes from Dahlonega. On the other hand, these were luxury accommodations compared to the local Motel6, and actually less expensive. Naturally, herding 16 cats, including myself, from New Orleans to Jasper GA in five minivans was a bit of a logistical challenge, but Dylan, Josiah, and Will pulled it off rather smoothly. For the first time, we decided to drive up on Friday, giving us all day Saturday to register, get in a short ride, and prepare all of the bikes and stuff for a 5 am departure Sunday morning.

View from the deck of our Airbnb in Jasper I will spare you the hot tub photos

On Wednesday evening I got the bike set up for Six Gap with the Roadlink derailleur extender and the 12-32 cassette that I pretty much reserve just for this particular ride. I'd planned to check everything out on the Thursday morning ride, but that was rained out. I'd used this setup twice before, though, and was pretty confident there would be no problems, even through I knew the chain was a link or two shorter than it should have been. It's a bit of a kludge anyway since the gear range definitely exceeds the derailleur's actual capacity. Thursday night I packed everything up so I'd be ready to help pick up the minivans at 7:30 am on Friday. Friday morning I loaded my stuff into the Volvo, pushed the start button, and heard just an ominous low growl from the engine. Yep, the battery had chosen that morning to die. So alternate arrangements were made and after everyone regrouped at HQ we all hit the road around 8:30 or so. I was in the van with Ben and four bikes. The drive went as usual, which is to say we all stopped at Buckees in Auburn for too long, and then got stuck in traffic in Atlanta, before finally making it to the house. This place was quite an upgrade from my usual accommodations and included things like a pool table, hot tub, deck, fire pit, and gigantic master bedroom with a walk-in closet the size of a nice New York apartment.

Saturday evening dinner at Pueblos in Dahlonega

The club had a great time Friday night until around midnight while I finished reading a book and worried they might be disturbing the neighbors. On Saturday we headed over to Dahlonega and got in a nice little 20 mile ride just after a tiny bit of rain before picking up our event packets and heading over to the practically traditional pre-ride dinner at Pueblos. Given our 4:00 am wake-up plan for Sunday, everybody turned in earlier Saturday night. Six were planning on doing the shorter Three Gap ride, while the rest were registered for the 104 mile Six Gap ride. The plan was to get to the high school just as the parking lot was opened so that we could park all five vans together. Amazingly, everyone was on the same page Sunday morning and we arrived just as planned, in the dark of course, but with plenty of time to unload all of the bikes and stuff pockets with nutrition. The excitement level was high and the weather nearly perfect as the 6-gappers rolled down to the start area about 20 minutes before the 7:30 am start. The temperature was 59° with an expected high around 80°. There was a short delay to the start as the organizers delt with a tree that had fallen somewhere on the course.

Waiting for the start. There were a bit over 800 doing the Six Gap ride.

As usual the start was a little chaotic, and also as usual I was being hyper-cautious, both about avoiding potential crashes and keeping my effort level fairly low. Back in the day I would have been more in race mode, but I figure I've done my time and deserve to look at the scenery at least a little. It was spectacular, by the way. I had one full flask of Hammergel and one half full flask of Hammergel, plus one bottle with electrolyte and another with plain water. I was feeling OK for Stonepile, the "warmup gap" and Neel's, the first official gap of the six, climbing at a conservative 6-7 mph, tempered by the upcoming Hogpen climb starting at around 34 miles. I should have put a little more effort into Hogpen, but it's hard to guess where your limits are for that sort of thing when you do it only once a year and haven't been racing all summer. I thus spent a lot of time in the 4-5 mph range where the grades were in the 10-12% range. As I have for the past few years, I didn't push it at all on the downhills, and as a result was only occasionally into the 40-45 mph range, never going over 46 mph.

About ten miles after descending from Hogpen you start the climb up Unicoi. This one is a little less steep, so I was mostly in the 7-8 mph range for the steeper segments. By that time I was actually feeling a little better than I had earlier. Again, I took the descent cautiously, never dropping down onto the drops, and mostly coasting. Somewhere after that downhill I somehow shifted my chain off the outside of the cassette where it jammed against the frame, so I had to stop for a minute to dislodge it and put it back where it belonged. The worst part about that was that I had to drop out of a little group I'd been with, and ended up alone for a while.

There was a rest stop somewhere along there that I rolled past, confident that I still had a full flask of gel and a full water bottle. Although it was starting to get warm, most of the morning had been cool enough that I hadn't been drinking a huge amount of water. I was thinking I could probably make it to the finish without having to stop. So I climbed Jack's Gap next without much difficulty since it is mostly more like 6-7% in the steepest sections. After Jack's, around 65 miles into the ride, I reached back for my still full flask of Hammergel and discovered that it was missing. It must have fallen out when I pulled out the other flask earlier. So I stopped at the next rest stop at around 70 miles to refuel because there was no way I was going to make it comfortably to the finish on just water. I didn't see any gels at that stop, so I picked up some packets of gummies and filled a water bottle with Coke.

The last couple of Gaps are relatively short and quite scenic, and although I was definitely starting to feel my legs, I felt pretty good for those. I came flying down Woody Gap, my favorite descent, into the sharp downhill curve a the traffic circle, which is arguably the most fun part of the whole ride for a crit rider, and shortly after that a rider came past me at just the right speed, so I hopped on his wheel. He happily pulled me the last ten miles or so at a nice pace to the finish after which we introduced ourselves and I thanked him for the draft. So I ended up with a chip time of 6:36 and a Strava ride time of 6:33, which is about average for the last five years or so. That put me 13th in the 60+ group. There were only a handful of 70+ riders, of which I finished first for whatever that's worth. My legs were pretty well cooked by the end, and although my neck and back were hurting, they weren't as bad as they have been some years. 

Some of the local riders had spectacular rides.The fastest time this year was 4:38 (these are all chip times). Miguel Davis, who is 16, finished at 5:15 (38th overall), and Connor Prestenback, also 16, came in at 5:29. Nick was 5:36, Sam at 5:45, Apryl at 5:46, Joe Paul at 6:07, and Dustin at 6:12 among others.

The Tulane Six Gap riders did remarkably well for the most part. Liam did a very impressive 6:08 ride time, and Josiah, Ben, and Dylan all finished with faster ride times than I. We did have a couple of casualties, though. Daniel had a little crash somewhere around the turn of death, but got patched up and still finished with a chip time of 8:02. Michael abandoned somewhere along the way and had to wait a long time for a shuttle back to the high school. By the time everyone had gotten back, had something to eat at the cafeteria, got cleaned up, and got the bikes all loaded back into the vans it was probably at least 4:30 pm. The drive back was uneventful except that we all got split up because of varying fuel stops and one missed turn. All of the other vans did meet up at Buckees in Auburn, but Ben and I had needed to get gas prior to that, so we stopped at a Love's and picked up dinner there instead. Still, the late departure had us back in New Orleans after 1 am, and by the time we unloaded at HQ, dropped Ben off at his place, and returned the vans to the motor pool it was after 2:00 am. I finally hit the sack around 2:30 am. 

All-in-all it was a great trip and a big accomplishment for many of the riders, some of which are quite new to challenging rides like this one. For me, I guess it is rather inevitable that this ride seems a little harder every year, but I'm glad I can still do it.

Needless to say, I didn't get up at 5:30 am on Monday to ride. Instead, I connected the battery charger to the car battery and waited a few hours for it to charge enough that I could drive it over to Bergeron Volvo. It was also due for its 120,000 mile service, so I wasn't too surprised the next day when they told me it would be a bit over $4k to take care of everything. Still cheaper than a new car, I guess. 

Of course this sort of expense always comes when you have just bought something expensive that you didn't really need. In this case, it was a new Cervelo Soloist that was still partially assembled at home. It was a bit of an impulse buy, but it was on closeout, happened to be about my size, and was priced a couple thousand off retail, and of course the trusty Bianchi Sempre has now accumulated 132,800 miles and probably needs a rest. I had broken down and ordered a proper saw guide and blade since I had to cut down the seatpost to clear the cutout for the rear wheel. It's a 48 with 165 crankarms and an 80 mm stem, so I'm sure it will take me a while longer to sort out the position and everything. Cervelo uses the same seat tube angle on all their frame sizes, so that makes the virtual top tube longer, as it was on my old Cervelo Soloist. The head tube is considerably shorter than it is on the Bianchi, but I think the spacers with which they shipped it put it at just about the right height. Anyway, I had it put together by last night, so now I need to ride around the neighborhood a bit and fine tune the saddle height, fore-aft position, handlebar position, possibly stem length, and handlebar height if not a touch high. Of course it came with insanely wide 28mm tires that are tubeless ready but with tubes, which is to say they are super heavy, so all of that, plus the Di2 shifting and disc brakes will probably take some getting used to.

Yesterday I cut my ride short when a stick got into my rear wheel and brought me to a rather sudden stop with a broken spoke. I limped home and later called Adam at Bicycle World to see if he happened to have a replacement spoke in the correct length. He found a couple, so I rode there after work and picked them up along with a roll of rim tape, forgetting completely about the fact that the original spoke nipple had mysteriously disappeared. Amazingly a brass spoke nipple that I pulled out of a 30 year old box of Schwinn branded spokes that I'd been given by Billy Richards' son threaded on nicely, so I was able to put the wheel back into service in time for this morning's WeMoRi where my legs were still feeling a little bit of Dahlonega.

Evolution

Saturday Giro heading out

Evolution is driven by change in the environment, and enabled by the random "experiments of nature" that occur, by design, with each new generation. Most of them are abject failures or dead ends, of course. Bikes are kind of like that too. Some experiments, like 20mm clinchers and 650C wheels turn out to be dead ends, while others, like disc brakes and electronic shifting, survive just long enough to continue an evolutionary path that eventually absorbs and displaces their ancestors, as modern humans did with Neanderthals. If you get a new bike only once per decade, the leap from one generation to the next can feel pretty dramatic, like "should I go ahead and mate with this attractive Homo sapiens, or stick to my own kind?" More on that later...

Sunday Pass Christian Ride

Last week was another 300+ mile week for me, thanks mainly to slightly cooler mornings and the notable lack of recent rain that once again has salt water creeping up the bottom of the Mississippi in our direction. That mileage was despite a slightly shortened ride on Tuesday when I flatted somewhere out on the Lake Trail. 

As I did last week, I rode the regular Friendly and Fast Friday ride at the lakefront, and then hustled down to the river to meet up with the Tulane coffee ride group for some easy cool-down miles and a stop at the relatively new coffee shop on Maple Street - Shug's Bagels. It did not disappoint, except that there is only minimal outdoor seating, and what is there is directly in the morning sun. It'll be better when the weather is cooler, I think.

On Sunday we had a big group of Tulane riders making the trip over to Bay St. Louis for a 75 mile ride with a 55 mile option. I think we started with around 20 riders. This was more or less a shakedown ride for the Tulane riders planning on doing Six Gap or Three Gap next weekend. The Tulane riders' plan was to do a couple of longish threshold intervals during this ride, but as it turned out the pace was quite fast enough to make that entirely unnecessary. For some, I suspect most of the ride was pretty close to threshold. The timing with the short and long rides fortuitously turned out perfect, with both groups pretty much meeting up at the store stop, and again at the finish. I was taking short and relatively rare pulls on the front, already cognizant of my accumulated weekly mileage, but actually felt pretty good throughout, and arrived at the finish none the worse for wear despite the fact that the pace was definitely one notch faster than the usual BSL rides. I was glad to see that everyone planning on doing Six Gap next Sunday survived. I think we lost a few riders in the last ten miles when there was a sustained surge into the upper 20s, but that was to be expected under the circumstances.

Some assembly required

So a little over a week ago I made an uncharacteristic impulse decision and ordered a new bike that was on clearance sale. It's a 48 cm Cervelo Soloist with the 12 speed Ultegra group, which is kind of in the same place in the Cervelo road lineup as the Bianchi Sempre was in the Bianchi lineup. The last Cervelo I had was also an entirely new bike (a very rare thing for me), a Prodigy, that also represented a big jump from one generation of bikes to another. In that case I was going from a 6-speed friction shifting all-steel Cinelli that I'd been racing on for a decade, to a 9-speed Campi Ergo setup with a carbon fork. This time, I'll be going from a 50 cm 11-speed with Campagnolo stuff and rim brakes and 170 crank arms to a 48 cm 12-speed with Shimano Ultegra Di2 semi-wireless setup, hydraulic disc brakes, 165 crank arms, and frightenly wide carbon wheels with huge 28mm tires. For someone who  raced on 22 mm, 28 spoke 280 gram rims with 190 g tubulars, these wheels seem insanely wide and heavy, but this is where evolution seems to have taken us. Perhaps the added cushiness will be a welcome relief to my ageing back and neck without the collateral damage of getting me dropped out the back. Remains to be seen.

This changeover is going to take a little while. Electronic shifting is a whole new world for me, and I guess I'll be watching YouTube videos about it for a while and then still reaching for the missing thumb shifter. Even assembling the bike is going to take a little time, thanks to some of the usual short person challenges. I'm going to have to cut down the aero carbon seatpost since it hits the cutout part of the seat tube well before it's inserted far enough for my normal saddle height. I guess they provide the same length seatpost regardless of frame size. I think this seatpost is about as long as the entire seat tube. I will probably have to use a longer stem (it comes with an 80mm one) since I'm right at the top of the height range for this size frame. Getting the handlebars in the right place will have to wait until I have the seatpost sorted out, and since the battery is in the seatpost, getting the shifters set up will also have to wait. So all of that is now on hold until after Six Gap since I also need a pair of pedals, bottle cages, and a cutting guide that can handle the aero seatpost. Of course I could just eyeball the seatpost and cut it freehand, but I've always wanted to have a proper guide, and there is really no urgency.

Meanwhile, I need to get the trusty Bianchi Sempre, which has thus far logged 132,670.9 miles according to Strava, set up for Six Gap. That involves installing the Roadlink derailleur extender, and changing the cassette on my carbon wheels to the 12-32 that I reserve just for this ride. Neither of those are really recommended for this short cage derailleur, but the setup, if something of a kludge, served me well the past couple of years and should at least keep me from having to walk up the 12% segments!

Miles and Miles

For the past month or so it seems I've been rather unintentionally piling on the miles, which by no means recommended practice, especially for me. Sometimes, though, it just works out that way because of favorable weather, extra group rides, and available time. Normally, I think of 250 - 275-mile weeks as good solid routine mileage, so I was a little bit shocked to find two weeks that were over 350 miles and that the last four weeks were all practically 300 miles or more. I may be paying for that now, of course.

Monday a week ago was Labor Day so of course there was a Holiday Giro. Also, of course, that came on the heels of two regular Giro Rides on the prior days, plus the annual Fall Expo at Tulane where we recruited a ton of new riders thanks to having bikes available and the fact that we added triathlon. Giro Ride turnouts lately have been rather low, which makes the rides considerably harder, if not faster, because there's a huge difference between sitting near the back of a 40-rider group and working in a 9-rider paceline. A good thing, perhaps, but exhausting.

And so on Tuesday when everyone else turned off after the Lakeshore Drive section, I was kind of relieved to be able to ride solo out to Williams and back on the lake trail. There was a pretty significant East wind blowing, so although it felt great on the way out, I definitely could have used a few wheels to hide behind on the way back. That evening we had the introductory meeting for Tulane Cycling & Triathlon, which I thought went really well. At last count we have 35 students who have paid their annual dues, which is by far a record. Wednesday's WeMoRi was as usual brisk but uneventful.

On Thursday it was just Jess and I for the Lake Trail segment which felt really smooth and steady. Then on Friday I rode the Friendly Friday ride which turned out to be really fast. The Tulane group was doing a levee ride that morning, so I rode straight down Carrollton afterward and met up with them on the bike path, which made for a really nice cool-down ride.

Saturday's Giro had a small but fast group that included Peyton, Connor, Rob, Rachel (in town for a few days) and at some point Jaden. The group split pretty early on Hayne Blvd. but those of us in the gruppeto had a pretty good paceline going anyway, so it was a good enough workout.  

Sunday was kind of a repeat of Saturday, but without the faster riders. That was good because by then all those miles were starting to catch up with me. The Tulane group had scheduled its first "long ride," heading up the levee and then over to the lake trail and then a lap of Lakeshore Drive and City Park, so I was able to meet up with them after the Giro. That ride had a planned stop at Cafe' du Monde where I had a badly needed frozen cafe' au lait. After a long afternoon walk around Audubon Park with the dog, I was starting to feel a little sketchy. 

Monday morning I went out to the Mellow Monday ride. There were a number of new Tulane riders there, and of course it got a little fast on Lakeshore Drive, dropping a few. I turned back and met up with them at Marconi and we rejoined the group for the last stretch. That evening I felt like I might be running a low-grade fever, and considering how much time on the bike I'd been piling up, I figured it was time for a day off, so I skipped riding altogether on Tuesday, which was good because I still wasn't feeling quite right. This morning I went out to meet the WeMoRi but the group didn't show up when it usually does. I figured something was wrong, which turned out to be the case. I went ahead and headed down Wisner, and eventually the group, what was left of it after a crash they'd had on Lakeshore Drive, swept me up. That was shortly before the overpass, so naturally I kind of blew up going over that and was quite happy to just let them go, but then Charles, who was a few bike lengths ahead of me, started to chase and I thought maybe I could latch onto his wheel. Of course he was chasing hard, so I never quite made it into his draft before throwing in the towel somewhere on City Park Avenue. Then, on the way home, Maruizio flatted, so I stopped with him before continuing home.

Variety

Sunday on the northshore

The Saturday Giro over a week ago was hampered by yet another closure of the Seabrook bridge, and although it was otherwise a prefectly acceptable ride, I decided to venture across the lake the following day for a little variety. There was a small group planning on riding the old "Mailman" route, and although I knew it wouldn't be a fast ride, at least a lot of it would be in the shade since it started from the Mandeville trailhead of the Tammany Trace. So that was a fairly easy 69 mile ride to finish off a 350 mile week. 

Last week was more or less routine, except for a ride over in Mississippi on Sunday. On Wednesday I went out to meet the WeMoRi as usual, but there was a 3-rider break that was way off the front. I looked back and couldn't even see a chase group, so I hopped onto the back hoping for the best. After a few miles I realized that the group, composed of Lisa, Rob, and Maurizio, would probably soon be just Maurizio. Indeed, as we approached the Wisner overpass, Lisa looked over and told me she would be turning off to go home. I figured that Rob would be leaving for home at the turn onto Marconi, and for some reason I just didn't feel up to the challenge of hanging onto Maurizio's scant draft after that, so I eased up, hoping that the group was somewhere behind me. It took forever for them to catch me, which wasn't surprising because there were only a few of them left, none of which obviously had any interest in chasing. Maybe I should have stuck with Maurizio.

Friendly Friday has its usual good-sized group, and as has been the case of late, it did get pretty fast for a while. As we rounded the Armory loop at the eastern end of Lakeshore Drive, Jess launched a big water bottle when she hit that bump right after the bridge traffic merges onto Lakeshore Drive. That was also where the speed ramped up. Luckily, the water bottle seemed to stay off to the left, so that was good. After the ride she went back to look for it, but it was gone. Later that day I went over to Ochsner for a routine checkup which was, well, routine. BP was 110/80 and labs looked pretty much like they have for the past couple of years, so status quo for now.

On Saturday was the usual Giro, this time with a pretty good-sized group that included Connor. I wasn't feeling too hot from the start. After coming down from the overpass onto Hayne, the riders on the front put the hammer down, as usual. As sometimes happens, I was immediately in the red as the speed was stuck at around 28 mph and my heart rate was stuck in the upper 150s. After a couple of miles I decided I needed a little recovery and dropped off the back. Charles did the same a minute later, so we both took the Bullard shortcut. That usually cuts off a minute or two. Considering how fast the group was going, and how relatively slowly we were going, I was a little worried that we might miss them when we got to Chef Highway, but when we got there we couldn't even see them. It was a couple more miles before they finally caught us and we easily merged back into the group.

Sunday was a planned ride from the ballpark in Mississippi at 6:30 am. On Friday evening I got a call from Dylan and Josiah saying that they had about five Tulane riders who wanted to go, so we made arrangements for me to pick a couple of them up on Broadway so we could all meet at HQ. Amazingly everyone was on time, and after mounting three bikes on the roof we headed for I-10, arriving just a few minutes after 6:00 am. Jess arrived a couple of minutes later, so from Tulane we had Dylan, Josiah, Jess, Liam, Daniel, and Jack. The latter three were new Tulane riders, but Liam and Daniel had solid road experience, so no worries there. Jack was on his own bike with clip-on aero bars, wearing running shoes with toe clips, and looked pretty unsteady from the start, so I knew he was going to be seriously challenged sticking with the 12-person group we had on hand. Indeed, he was off the back early, so we waited for him at a couple of intersections. I eventually told the others I'd drop back and keep track of him so they wouldn't have to worry about him, and so he wouldn't get lost and end up calling us from somewhere in Alabama. We were probably 20 minutes behind the group when we got to the store stop at 49 miles, but at least everyone waited a while longer so he could get something to drink before heading out again. Right after we left the store the front of the group basically attacked and a big gap opened, and so I was in full chase mode for a few miles before catching. Of course, I knew Jack wouldn't be able to handle that, so when we got to the next intersection I turned back to pick him up. He was doing OK up to about 16 mph on the flat, but would drop off immediately on every climb, so I spent a lot of time enjoying the scenery and looking over my shoulder to make sure he was still there. So although it was almost 70 miles, most of it was kind of on-the-bike recovery for me. No complaints, though. We were five or ten miles from the finish when Jess came past in her car! She had gone back to look for another water bottle that had ejected itself from her bike. I don't know if she found it. So that made for a 294 mile week for me, although with definitely less intensity than the prior week. That left me with enough energy for a few hours of yardwork in the afternoon that unexpectedly didn't seem to take too much of a toll on my lower back.

This morning's Mellow Monday ride had a nice turnout that included some of the Tulane riders who had done the Mississippi ride the prior day. Three of them were planning on making it a true recovery ride, which they did, but not everyone in the group was on the same page, so things split up on the way out to the armory, so there was a group of four or five well up the road. Once we picked up a little tailwind on the way back down Lakeshore Drive, a couple of us rolled away from what was left of the main group, but by then the gap to the front group was way too large to have any hope of closing. We turned around a few blocks early on Canal to rejoin the group, though. Not much rain in the forecast until around the weekend. The tropical disturbance that was heading into the Caribbean doesn't currently look like it will amount to much, and there doesn't seem to be anything else that's threatening to get organized out in the Atlantic, so that's good news as we approach the 20th anniversary of Katrina on the 29th.

Up in Olympia

Last Sunday I packed up the old Orbea (aka my "travel bike") and headed for Moisant Field at around 4:00 am. I had an early morning flight to Seattle where I would be taking a shuttle from there down to Olympia. The wife had already been there for a few days. Our task for the week was to dog-sit for the daughter's two dogs while she was out in the wilderness around Mt. St. Helens leading a team that was supporting her partner Sharon who was entered in the Bigfoot 200, a 200 mile ultra run. I had already reserved a parking spot at the U.S. Park place, just down the road from the airport. By the time I pulled into a parking space, the shuttle was already there waiting for me, which was nice. It was reasonably quiet at the airport. I shoulderd on my Airport Ninja bike case and deposited it and my other bag at the Alaska Arlines counter, and headed over to the short TSA line. This time they didn't ask me to remove my shoes or to take the laptop out of my carry-on messenger bag that was stuffed with all sorts of electronics, including the laptop itself, an android tablet, my cellphone, a bag full of cables, a small battery pack, my bike computer, headlight, and tail light. I was a little surprised they didn't need to open up the bag, considering. Anyway, despite all my efforts to get to the airport really early, the flight was delayed for at least half an hour, which put my shuttle ride connection in jeopardy. I texted them before boarding and they moved me to a shuttle leaving half an hour later.

I was flying first class this time, thanks to the daughters copious Alaska Airlines points, which meant I had pre-ordered a breakfast that was served on an actual plate with a real glass and everything. The flight was uneventful, but of course SEA is a big and busy airport, which meant I had to get from one terminal to another to get to baggage claim, which was still under construction and kind of a mess. I stood in front of the luggage carousel wondering if the bike would come down the regular luggage chute, or get diverted to one of the two oversided chutes. Just as the bike came down the chute, the shuttle company called to check on me, and a few minutes later I found my way over to the parking garage where they were waiting for me, so that all worked out pretty well. An hour later I was at the house in Olympia and ready to put the bike back together so I could ride the next day.

I ended up riding over 200 miles between Monday and Thursday. Everyone there seems to ride in the evenings. At 6 am the temperature was usually 58-60, but by early afternoon it was in the mid to upper 80s the first couple of days. I had a few routes that I'd more or less ridden before, so although I was solo, at least I wasn't in entirely unfamiliar territory.  There was a GBC team ride on Tuesday and Thursdays starting at 5:30 pm, so I went out to meet it on Tuesday. Unfortunately, since there was actually a heat advisory that day because of the high temperature of 90, nobody showed up except one person who led me a few miles to the slower group ride that left at 6 pm.  That was quite a nice little ride, actually, and considering that I'd ridden almost 70 miles the day before, it's not like I really needed a hard ride. I ended up riding alone again on Thursday rather that trying to make the team ride because by then Danielle and Shannon were back, and I needed to take the bike apart for an early drive to Seattle the next morning.  Shannon survived the race pretty well, although it was a couple of days before she was walking normally again, and Danielle was relieved that the very complicated support logistics involving multiple pacers and rest areas and satellite phones worked out. 

We had a nice time with the dogs, walking to the nearby Starbucks every morning for coffee. The trip back was pretty smooth, although the flight was again delayed, this time because the Captain was still in the air on another flight at boarding time and they had to wait for him to land and get to our plane. The flight back was nice, again in first class, and we were back home before dark. 

The entire time I was riding there, the old Orbea was making various creaking noises that, as always, sounded like the bottom bracket. When I was taking the bike apart to pack I noticed that the freehub was actually coming loose, which was obviously causing the noise. It just took a couple of allen wrenches to tighen it up again and all was well. Granted, the crankset bearings are just a little bit looser than I'd like, but I'm pretty sure the noise was all coming from that loose freehub.

Back in town, I headed out on Saturday for the Giro. There was just a small group on hand, which has been status quo lately since a lot of people have been doing the SaMoRi to escape half an hour of summer heat. It was a good fast ride, though. It's always a better workout with a smaller group since there's no place to hide. Unfortunately, the Seabrook bridge was closed for repairs (again) and we had to take the alternate route down the Danziger bridge. So on Sunday I decided to meet the northshore ride. They were doing the "mailman" route, which is pretty much the same as the training race route they used to do back in the 80s, but the pace was pretty relaxed. For some reason my neck and shoulders were hurting from the start and were absolutely on fire by the time we finished. No idea why. 

On Monday there was a good turnout for the Mellow Monday ride. With Tulane back in session now, we had four or five Tulane riders. As often happens with a larger group, the ride didn't stay mellow for very long, so it was more of a workout than I'd planned for, especially since my legs were still a little sore from the weekend. This morning's Tuesday ride also had a pretty good group and got fairly fast, especially once we picked up a bit of a tailwind heading westbound. By the time we got to the lake trail it was just Jess, Matt, and me, though. Matt was on his TT bike and towed us all the way out to Williams Blvd., and most of the way back. We were still a couple of miles from Causeway when he sat up and I rolled through, not realizing that he had flatted. I continued on with Jess on my wheel and was past Causeway when I finally looked back and reailzed he wasn't there any more. Oops! Right about that time Jess's Di2 rear derailleur locked itself into the small cog. I think it probably went into crash mode when she hit a bump just right. Anyway she rode all the way back like that.

Lack of Power

Small Giro Group. The Chef Highway asphalt overlay was still not finished.

The WeMoRi a week ago on, of course, Wednesday was kind of fun for me. It was pretty windy when I arrived at Lakeshore Drive, and looking down the road all I could see were three headlights coming in hot. I jumped on the back of the trio of Maurizio, Steven, and Wes and hung on for dear life. I figured the wind and the pace had probably shattered the rest of the group, which turned out to have been the case. Conveniently justifying my blatant and unrepentent wheel-sucking by telling myself it wouldn't be fair to assist a breakaway when there must be an invisible chase group somewhere, I continued swapping wheels at the back for pretty much the duration. This was a remarkably easy task since the trio was cruising along at an equally remarkably smooth and steady pace. I felt only the slightest twinge of guilt, but fortunately the feeling dissipated quickly. 

That evening a big thundestorm came through shortly after sunset. Lightning must have hit something nearby because immediately after a huge flash, the lights went out. Checking Entergy's outage map and text messages, it looked like it should be fixed by 9:30 or so, so I plugged the lamp on the nightstand into my battery pack for a bit, eventually turning it off and falling asleep. Around 1:00 am I awoke to find that the power was still out, and checking my text messages I saw that Entergy had moved back the restoration time to around 9:30 am. That was a little longer than I wanted to have both the refrigerator and air-conditioner out of service, so I hauled the big Honda generator out to the back yard in the dark, ran an extension cord through the bathroom window, and fired it up, only to discover it would only run with the choke on. Obviously something was clogging up the carb jet, which wasn't surprising since some of the gas in that thing is a couple of years old and as good as StaBil is, that's pushing it. Fortunately, I had the little generator I use for races, so I started that one up instead and plugged the refrigerator into it. Then I brought the basement fan up to the bedroom and plugged that into the battery pack. Naturally the power came back on around 3:30 am, which woke me up immediately since I hadn't switched off the lights. A couple of hours later I was out the door for the Thursday morning ride. By then the streets were fairly dry again, but we decided not to ride out on the lake trail because there is often a lot of runoff from the levee after a heavy rain.  Turned out that wasn't the case that morning.

On Friday morning I woke up to wet streets and decided it was a message and I should take a rest day. Turned out the streets weren't as wet as I thought, but since I hadn't missed a day of riding over two months, I figure I was due anyway.

Saturday's Giro was rather sparsely attended, and although it wasn't super-fast, it still felt hard. By the time we were halfway back I was feeling overheated and tired, so I dropped off the back when we turned onto Hayne Blvd. and just coasted in. Charles dropped back to keep me company. By then there were only a few left, and Connor and Steven were already ramping it up for the last segment.

That afternoon I pulled the carburetor out of the generator, disassembled it, cleaned a little bit of crud out of the jet assembly, and put it all back together without having any mysteriously leftover nuts or bolts. It seemed to run OK after that, so I'll see if I can run it for an hour or two next weekend to burn through some of the old gas.

Sunday's Giro was even smaller than Saturday's had been, but otherwise was fine.

Mellow Monday Sunrise

This morning I went out to meet the WeMoRi as usual. Sunrise is already getting noticeably later (now around 8:15), and it was cloudy, which made it feel even earlier and darker than usual and I made my way to the lakefront. The group seemed a little smaller than usual, which I attributed to the 15 mph WNW wind, but as it turned out there had been some disruptions as well, plus some riders had been dropped, or stopped to help other riders, on Lakeshore Drive. Jaden apparently fell somewhere around the Elysian Fields traffic circle, jumped back up, then realized his phone had fallen our of his pocket and had to go look for it. Someone else apparently had a wheel that "broke." Not sure about the details on that. Anyway, since all of that transpired prior to my arrival, and the group, what was left of it, was only a couple of minutes later than usual, I didn't find out about it all until we were on our commute back uptown. Otherwise, it was a good WeMoRi during which I felt, at least, not terrible.

Wrong Reasons

Mellow Monday

Mid-summer in New Orleans means arriving back home soaking wet for all the wrong reasons. Other than an abbreviated Thursday ride, the last week was routine with a capital R. This time of year any morning with a temperature below 80°F is cause for celebration, and indeed there were a couple of those thanks to that "disturbance" that started in the Atlantic, crossed Florida, and came through here in the middle of the night on Wednesday. Fortunately it was moving along at a good pace, and by morning the streets were, quite surprisingly, mostly dry. Unfortunately, I had an early meeting on Thursday, so I had to cut the ride short, which was just as well since turnout was slim.

WeMo Finish

Ride photos seem to be in short supply lately, especially mine. Half an hour into almost every ride my jersey is sweaty, as is my phone, and since it still hurts a bit to fetch it out of my back pocket with my right arm, I've been reluctant to do so anyway. Saturday's Giro was fairly normal for this time of year. There were a few missing people because of some ad hoc alternate rides in the area, along with the Giro regulars who have been invading the SaMoRi in an effort to miss the worst of the heat. As often happens this time of year, it was fast on the way out, but a bit slower on the way back as the sun took its toll. Sunday was about the same but with a much reduced group. That made it feel a bit harder since the available draft was likewise reduced. Nonetheless, we mostly all survived, stopping at the gas station on Harrison for a cold drink before the short commute back home, or in Chris' case the long commute back home. 274 miles for the week seemed to be enough for me, although there were a few out there doing 100+ mile rides despite the copious solar radiation.

Mellow Monday was pretty mellow. I guess we were mostly in the 22-24 mph range. My legs felt tired, so I wasn't complaining. 

This morning as we gathered in front of the City Park Museum of Art, watching the regular exercise group on the steps, I made a remark about how it was already pretty hot and that there didn't seem to be any wind. Indeed, none was detectable there in the park. Apparently all of the wind was hiding out at the lakefront, though. Shortly after we turned onto Lakeshore Drive we picked up a pretty significant tailwind, so it was 26-29 mph all the way out to the Armory. The trip back westward, of course, was much slower. By the time Charles and I were approaching Williams Blvd. on the lake trail we were struggling to maintain 19 mph. Of course the ride back to the east was much faster, but by then the morning sun had been on us for over an hour, and I'd guess the relative humidity was in the 90% range at least. When I got home I hung my kit in the bathroom to let it dry out so it wouldn't serve as nutrient media in the laundry hamper.

Looks like one more hot day before things change and we get a few days with some rain and high temperatures just a touch below 90°. After that, though, it's back to lows around 78-80 and highs around 91-95 for the forseeable future, with the typical summer afternoon chances of rain. 

Meanwhile, over in Tucson, they're building a new, apparently mostly aluminum, velodrome!