Went Long

On the way to the Giro ride this morning I came across a pickup truck stopped diagonally across the road with a big chunk of concrete lamp post under it. The airbag had deployed and the front end was totalled - coolant spilled out onto the street. There was nobody around, so I checked to see if there was anyone inside, but as I expected the drunken driver who had failed to negotiate the little curve on the otherwise straight street had taken off. Better to be cited for leaving the scene than for DWI, I guess.

There was a big group for the Giro, but the pace stayed fairly reasonable. As it turned out, a lot of riders were planning on doing a longer ride out to Slidell and back. Charlie asked me if I was "going long," and my reply was "got any food?" He said he had some cash, so I figured I go ahead and do the long ride which would give me a 93 mile day. After we passed the usual turnaround there were about 15 riders who continued on toward Slidell. Unfortunately only a handful knew how to deal with the crosswind. I tried with limited success to get a second eschelon going, since there wasn't room for everybody to get a draft without blocking the whole road.

After a remarkably tasty Little Debbie marshmellow filled cake thing that Charlie got me, we headed back. I was already getting cold and rolled off the front a little bit trying to keep warm. Bob came up to me and started taking long and slightly faster pulls so we rode together until we got to the Fort Pike bridge over the Rigoletts. We slowed down and waited for the pack to catch, and I was surprised when Rob and someone else came blasting past by themselves. I looked back and saw the pack and figured we'd all come together in a minute, but as it turned out the pack had just split too. So I ended up in a small group of four chasing a lead group of four of five. I'm not really sure because I never saw them again! We chased pretty hard for seven or eight miles, but every time we would start to close the gap our group would start to come apart and we'd need to slow down. After we got off of Chef Highway we waited up for the rest of the group and rode in at a pretty decent pace. So my legs are a little sore and I noticed that my odometer passed 40,000 miles at some point over the last week while I wasn't looking.

I think tomorrow I'll help Robin with the Mardi Gras Marathon. The club always provides most of the lead bicycle riders for the full and half marathon groups and besides, the forecast for tomorrow looks pretty lousy. I figure if I'm going to be riding in the rain at 10 mph, I can dress pretty warmly.

Dropped my sister and her husband off at the Port of New Orleans cruise terminal today. We'll be taking care of their dogs for a few days while my mom takes care of their kids.