Destrehan Mountain

A long weekend is finally coming in for a landing. Saturday's Giro ride was, well, the Giro ride. I haven't been feeling too sharp all weekend, and there were times during the Giro when I was wishing I was somewhere else. I had gotten up extra early so I could stand outside in the early dawn and see the space shuttle / space station trace a smooth arc almost directly overhead, passing quite close to the red planet, which is currently visible just before sunrise, before fading out in the brighter Eastern sky. It was the second time I had caught a shuttle fly-by, and I was lucky to have seen it because by the time I got out to the lakefront an hour later the skies were already quite overcast.

There was a pretty big group, a pretty good chase, a pretty good sprint, and a long ride home. An hour later I was en route to Baton Rouge to visit the mother-in-law. That made it a really long day. For example, there is always the obligatory trip to Wal-Mart, an aimless drive around the lakes and University area, and a stop for ice cream. I must have gotten into and out of the car 50 times on Saturday. Lately, we are also treated to confusing conversations, typical of early Alzheimers. As we drove past an "Old Navy" store at the shopping mall, she said to her daughter, "remember when I used to take you kids there to buy your school clothes . . ." Then at Wal-Mart she walks up to someone in one of those motorized wheelchair/shopping cart things and starts up a conversation as if they were old friends. The befuddled guy was very nice, but of course had never laid eyes on her before. Happened a couple of other times with other random people too, each of which she said lived in her apartment building.

Toward the end of Saturday's ride, a few of the guys started talking about getting together for a long levee ride on Sunday. Reo was determined to put in another four hours or so, and ultimately a rather complicated plan was sketched out. So Sunday morning I got up early again and rode the 12 miles or so out to Williams Blvd. on the levee bike path. It wasn't too hot this morning, but not a cool as yesterday either. It felt rather odd to be skipping the Giro ride, for some reason, not that I needed another run down Chef Highway. I met Reo and Jay S. and Eddie there and we hung around a while to see if Tim was going to show up, but I think yesterday was a heavy lift for him coming back from that broken collarbone and we never did track him down.

Our next stop was on the other side of the river where we were supposed to meet a group that started over there and was riding upriver on river road. So we exited the levee and rode up Mount Destrehan, aka the Luling-Destrehan bridge. Around here, this is what substitutes for a hill. It's is actually a nice, reasonably long, but not too steep climb. The only problem is that you have to negotiate the reflectors that are stuck all over the shoulder, which is a pain in the arse but preferable to being in the right lane since it's technically part of the Interstate highway system. Luckily the local police don't seem too concerned about seeing us riding over it. One of them went right past the group without lifting an eyebrow as we were climbing the on-ramp. When we came down on the westbank, nobody was there, so cellphones were activated and we got the word that the westbank group was still a few miles down river road. We headed in their direction for a few miles until we saw them coming, then made a U-turn and finally had a nice sized group of nine or ten. When we hit the bridge a few miles later, Reo went straight to the front, setting a nice brisk tempo. Half-way up I shifted to an easier gear and moved over to let the rest of the group go past. My legs were tired and figured I'd just ride my own pace to the top. Right after that there was a loud explosion as one of the guys caught a sharp rock and put a huge slash in his rear tire. So now there's a whole group of us way up on the bridge doing this major tire repair job. This suspension bridge doesn't have much of a railing or anything, and standing up there you really feel like you're on the ledge of a very tall building. Not a good place for the moderately acrophobic. Luckily, somebody had one of those official store-bought stick-on tire boots, which definitely saved the day, since one alternative already on the table was an early morning phone call to a sleepy wife with a search and rescue request.

Anyway, we finally made it across and back onto the bike path which by now was getting busy with weekend bike riders and runners and all. A few more riders were picked up and there were yet more stops and slow-downs before we made it to the end of the bike path after which we did a loop through Audubon Park. The westbank group headed off into town to catch the Canal. St. ferry while the rest of us went back to the levee, riding all the way back out to Williams Blvd. where Jay peeled off and we turned around again to finally head home. We kept up a good pace all the way back, and by the time I exited at Oak Street, I was on the outskirts of Bonksville with 78 miles showing on the odometer and a big "E" showing on the carbometer.

It was a good training weekend and now that I'm sitting on the couch full of homemade smoothie and peanut butter, I'm thinking I won't be feeling too guilty if I do an easy ride tomorrow.

Gina called yesterday - perfectly timed during a lull in the Giro ride - to say she was doing one of those crits today, but when the pace started to ramp up again I had to say g'bye because I needed both hands to pedal by that point. She said that she had gotten only about 14 hours of sleep all week and was hoping she could get through the race.

Update! Gina just called in her report on the Bank of America criterium last night. She said it was a bloodbath. Something like $11,000 on the line for the women, 100 girls at the start, prime on the first lap. The primes were like $1,000. Huge crash, of course. Both the men and women had big pile-ups on the same corner on the first lap as the course turned onto a narrow street. She went down with the rest and did a little damage to her arm and leg, probably more from getting run into more than road-rash. She's currently doing a rotation at Duke in trauma surgery, so she was right at home amidst the tangled bodies and blood. She said she had to take command for a while until the ambulances got there. Ended up with blood all over her. One of the girls had a fairly serious head injury - Gina said she checked her pupils and they were all over the place! Word is she spend the night in IC. Anyway, they stopped the race to take care of all the medical issues and then restarted it. Gina got back in, but it sounded like she couldn't get her head around the race at that point and eventually backed out. The first few laps of a crit are always fast and dangerous, but when there's that much moula on the line, it gets positively crazy. Getting stuck toward the back of a 100-rider field on a crit course like that means you will never even see the front of the race.