Joe and I

Yesterday's Giro ride was fairly tame since a number of regulars were missing and everyone seems to have switched into easy mode. Some were doing a mountain bike race up in Baton Rouge, but I suspect some others were just enjoying the last morning of nice weather before the return of the muggies later in the day. So, I was a little surprised this morning to find only Joe up on the levee when I arrived. Mondays are always sparse, but this was rather extreme. In fact, there were notably fewer people, cycling or otherwise, on the levee this morning. So, there were just Joe and I for this morning's ride.

Joe F. isn't exactly just one of the regular guys. Joe is a transplanted Cajun who has been in New Orleans most of his adult life, which has been considerably longer than mine. Joe's around 75, I guess, and has been an athlete of one sort or another since high school. Riding with Joe is usually a bit of a history lesson. When he was old enough for high school, Joe was shipped off to the big city to live with relatives and attend Jesuit High School (my alma mater, my brother's alma mater, my father's alma mater, etc.) where he was on the track team. He continued running after high school, and practically never stopped. The last ten years or so he's been riding. I started riding with him some years back when I would meet him out at the lakefront early in the morning. A few years ago he went down in some loose sand and broke his hip. He was back on the bike in a few months. He's never done much racing other than time trials, but he rides with the levee group many mornings and sometimes does some of the Giro rides on the weekends.

So this morning Joe latched onto my wheel and I took us down the levee path to the turnaround, keeping the pace around 20-21 mph most of the way. After we turned around, we headed back into a light wind at around 16-18, with me staying on his left side, since that's the side that he had his hearing aid in, chatting about all sorts of stuff from bike components to construction, all sprinkled with a bit of history. For example, as we rode into the morning sunrise, Joe commented that it made him think of a particular song. I didn't recognize the name until he pointed out that some of it was used in a TV cigarette commercial back in the 60's. He hummed a bit of it, and sure enough, I remembered it. When that brought the conversation around to smoking and other addictions, I said something about the neurobiology involved with addiction, and in typical style, Joe responded with in French "Il est tout dans votre tête," or something like that, somehow reducing that last 20 years of addiction research to a French colloquialism.

I hope that in 25 years I can still do a few training rides with the group.

Don't we all?