Another One in the Dark

It was even warmer this morning with a strong and humid breeze blowing out of the Southeast. I know it shouldn't be possible, but it seemed even darker this morning than it did on Tuesday. Perhaps it was the overcast skies that we couldn't even see until we were ten miles up the river. With only six or seven of us and the prospect of a long battle into the wind on the return trip, no objections were raised to the suggestion that we turn around early at the "dip."

The usual levee runners and walkers have recently taken to carrying flashlights or flashing lights, which is great because they really do come up on you suddenly. Riding in the dark always makes it seem like you're going faster than you really are, doesn't it? We were probably going between 20 and 23 mph in the dark, and although we had lots of the usual flashing lights, nobody had anything that could really help us see what was up ahead, so we were being pretty careful and calling out anything we saw. At one point, though, I guess we scared an oncoming runner because as we went by he had bailed out down the levee and said somehing like "hey, watch it!" as we went by. Sorry 'bout that, dude. Anyway, the tailwind on the way out was pretty sweet, but the whole time there was this little voice in my ear telling me that it would be brutal on the way back. Actually one of the voices I was hearing was Ronnie's! It wasn't long after we turned around before we got organized into a nice circular paceline, which was just about as stressful as the dark had been on the way out. We were each taking short pulls of maybe ten or twenty pedal strokes, which made the run into the wind much easier.

The good news is that, at least for those of us who do most of our training rides in the morning, the batteries only need to last a few more days! Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be lousy, but behind the lousy is rumored to be another cool front. Hot - cold - hot - cold..... Welcome to Fall in New Orleans.