On almost any summer Friday the morning ride along the river is a very low-key affair with it's own special character. If there's a race that weekend, then you know the guys planning to race probably won't show up, and if they do they'll sit on the back and spin. On the other hand, the guys who don't usually race and for whom the faster Tuesday ride is more of a challenge get a chance to train at a more manageable and consistent pace where they can work in the paceline more.
Today we had six riders, which is pretty typical for a Friday morning, and among them were Joe F. and Bob P. who rarely try to stay with the big studs on the fast days. Often, on the faster days, I'll drop back and find Joe telling me to get into the paceline in front of him. He'll do that with everybody as they drop back from the front of the paceline, and until the pace starts getting up around 27 or so it allows him to stay with the group. Considering that he's 77 years old, that's still pretty impressive. Today when I dropped back he held his spot and said he'd be OK today as long as the pace stayed like it was. So it was nice to have everybody rotating through today at a fairly steady speed that afforded those at the back the luxury of looking at the scenery a bit, or in my case fiddling with the camera at the back. The top photo shows the paceline just starting to come around the big bend in the river at the country club as it heads back into town. That's Joe taking his pull at the front.
The river winds around so much that the wind always seems to be shifting. In fact, you never really realize quite how much the direction changes while you're riding, but if you look a the route on a map you quickly see the rather dramatic curves. The short 24-mile ride that we do on Fridays starts out going almost due north for a little bit, then makes the curve at Ochsner hospital and ends up going southwest all the way to the country club where it curves back to the north- northwest before gradually easing back to the west as it approaches the airport.
As I have every day this week, I spent a few hours at the hospital yesterday evening keeping my father company and helping out with little things like pillow placement and bed adjustments. He's been getting a couple of hours of physical therapy each day and it's been coming along pretty well thus far. He's able to get in and out of bed and stand or sit without much assistance, and his speech and right arm strength seem to be improving. I expect it will be another week easily before they are comfortable releasing him, but anyway that's progress I guess. A big part of the challenge is keeping him from being too depressed about the whole thing. I'm not feeling like I'll be up for a mad dash to make the race tomorrow, though, so I'll probably skip this weekend. C'est la vie...
Today we had six riders, which is pretty typical for a Friday morning, and among them were Joe F. and Bob P. who rarely try to stay with the big studs on the fast days. Often, on the faster days, I'll drop back and find Joe telling me to get into the paceline in front of him. He'll do that with everybody as they drop back from the front of the paceline, and until the pace starts getting up around 27 or so it allows him to stay with the group. Considering that he's 77 years old, that's still pretty impressive. Today when I dropped back he held his spot and said he'd be OK today as long as the pace stayed like it was. So it was nice to have everybody rotating through today at a fairly steady speed that afforded those at the back the luxury of looking at the scenery a bit, or in my case fiddling with the camera at the back. The top photo shows the paceline just starting to come around the big bend in the river at the country club as it heads back into town. That's Joe taking his pull at the front.
The river winds around so much that the wind always seems to be shifting. In fact, you never really realize quite how much the direction changes while you're riding, but if you look a the route on a map you quickly see the rather dramatic curves. The short 24-mile ride that we do on Fridays starts out going almost due north for a little bit, then makes the curve at Ochsner hospital and ends up going southwest all the way to the country club where it curves back to the north- northwest before gradually easing back to the west as it approaches the airport.As I have every day this week, I spent a few hours at the hospital yesterday evening keeping my father company and helping out with little things like pillow placement and bed adjustments. He's been getting a couple of hours of physical therapy each day and it's been coming along pretty well thus far. He's able to get in and out of bed and stand or sit without much assistance, and his speech and right arm strength seem to be improving. I expect it will be another week easily before they are comfortable releasing him, but anyway that's progress I guess. A big part of the challenge is keeping him from being too depressed about the whole thing. I'm not feeling like I'll be up for a mad dash to make the race tomorrow, though, so I'll probably skip this weekend. C'est la vie...
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