A Good Day to Ride

It was cool and still a little dark this morning when I headed out to the bike path. I was all decked out in the new team kit, having adjusted the new Bell helmet the evening before. I wasn't quite positive what time Realdo and Tim said they were meeting, so I figured I'd make my way down to Jefferson Playground for about 7 a.m. and I'd be sure not to miss them. Realdo showed up around 7:15, explaining that he had mistakenly set his clock an hour back instead of an hour forward last night, so he was lucky he made it in time. Tim was supposed to be coming toward us from Kenner, but we never saw him although we waited around for a couple of minutes at the pumping station in River Ridge where he usually meets the bike path. There were five of us, including Joe Fusilier, and we were shooting for a long but easy ride today.

When we got out to Destrahan, we decided to ride across the Mississippi River on the suspension bridge that goes to Luling. This is a really beautiful bridge that we're probably not really supposed to be riding on, since it's at the end of an Interstate spur that goes South from Interstate 10. The really neat thing about it is that the concrete barrier on the outside of the road is only about three feet high, so you can see right over it. Some people find it a little scary to ride over. The bridge makes for a nice little climb to break up the monotony of the levee bike path. We just rode across, looped around, and rode back across. On the other side, I started looking back up the bridge for Joe and, not seeing him, asked if anybody knew how far back he was. Someone said that they thought he had turned back before we actually got onto the bridge, which seemed reasonable, so we headed back toward town, picking up Brian and Laura along the way. When we reached the Audubon Park end, we turned around and headed back to do another 25 miles or so and shortly thereafter we saw Joe coming our way with another rider (there were lots of people out on the levee today because of the nice weather). So unfortunately it looks like we had basically abandoned Joe out there! Anyway, I ended up with 75 miles or so, which I badly needed. So it was a nice ride on a nice day, and other than the high pollen level that is playing havoc with my lungs and head, it was good.

A friend called today and I was happy to hear that she's feeling a bit better about a difficult situation. A good hard road race is always good for that sort of thing!