Another Day, Another Giro

Saturday night I was still harboring notions of doing the CCC Fall Century up across the lake, even though the weather forecast was not exactly encouraging. So early on Sunday morning I lit up the laptop to check the radar. It didn't look good. There was a long line of thunderstorms in red, yellow and green, heading our way ahead of a cool front expected late in the day.

So I decided not to roll the dice on that and instead headed out to the Lakefront for the Sunday Giro Ride. The ride proved to be fairly fast, and in order to make up for my lackluster ride of the previous day, I put myself into the small rotation at the front as we hammered down Chef Highway. About a mile before the turnaround, as I was sitting in 3rd position waiting to take another 27 mph pull, Brett, who was at the front, suddenly lit the afterburners and surged up to 31. The rider on his wheel stayed in contact, at least for a while, but I was caught a bit off-guard and ended up out in the wind. It didn't last long for me and I eased up about the time the rider on Brett's wheel blew up, but Brett just kept going. After the turnaround, though, the group was going really slowly, so I went to the front. Even at 20-21 mph, I was pulling away and soon there were just three or four of us. We weren't going particularly hard, but we weren't soft-pedaling either. The group was pretty much out of sight by the time we turned off of Chef Highway and then when we hit Bullard we picked up Robin who had taken a shortcut after getting a phone call and falling off the back. Anyway, I felt a bit better than the day before. The only bad thing was that all the thunderstorms never really materialized until late in the afternoon, and judging by the skies on the southshore I doubt there was much rain at all for the Century ride. It always seems to work out that way when I skip a ride based on the forecast.

This morning was a nice solo ride on the levee in the nice cool air that finally arrived during the night. I actually paused to zip up my jersey on my way out there. Tonight is the first Saints game in the Superdome since the hurricane over a year ago and the fans are in a real frenzy. From what they're saying, it's been fixed up better than it was before the combined destruction caused by the hurricane and the Katricians. They have actually sold out the Dome for this one, and something like 80% of the seats are season tickets. I'm impressed. Yesterday afternoon one of the neighbors dropped by to invite us to a Saints party tonight. I'm not much of a football fan, but I never turn down an invitation to a party where I know there will be ample wine and ale! Most of the businesses downtown, including Tulane, near the Superdome are closing early today so the rush hour traffic can get out of the way before the game traffic shows up. I expect there are already tailgate parties going on at the Dome parking garage - they opened at 6 a.m.