Subdued Sunday

Maybe it was just me, or perhaps the uncommon summer breeze, but it felt just a touch cooler today as I rode easily out to the lakefront for another Giro Ride. The group was predictably a little smaller than yesterday, but by the time we got going on Hayne it was strung out in a long, long line anyway. I would have taken a picture, but my camera dug its heels in with the message "battery exhausted" or something. The old legs were feeling fairly good today, so I guess that day off, followed by yesterday's conservative ride, worked out OK.

There's that one part of the Giro where we actually get onto the interstate highway for about a mile, and it's often a problem. Today was a good example. As we approached the merge where we need to cut across two lanes to the right everyone in the back half of the pack was yelling, loudly, "car, car!!" Nonetheless, the deadheads at the front insisted on cutting across in front of the hapless driver, who had to hit the brakes and ended up in the middle of the bunch. Well, of course that split the group, and naturally the stupid ones didn't wait for the rest to regroup, so the smart ones had to chase for a while to close the gap. Situation normal.

Right after we hit Chef Highway, a group rolled off the front and eventually opened a pretty big gap. The rest of the pack got organized into a nice double paceline and after a little while we were closing on the escapees. Then, when we got reasonably close, a few people got impatient and tried to make it across. Well, that had the usual two results. (1) the paceline completely disintegrated, and (2) they didn't close the gap. So then Jaro, Noel, and a few others, including me, started working together. The group didn't come with us, of course, but we were definitely making up ground. Noel took one long, hard pull that got us pretty close, and then I took another, so some of us finally latched onto the front group. That last pull I took really cost me a lot, though, and I had to take it almost to the limit. So anyway, there was a little sprint at the end, but it was mostly just Jaro.

After the fast ride out to the turnaround, the group was content to keep it slow most of the way back down Hayne. I guess it speeded up for the Goodyear Sign sprint, but really, there weren't too many contenders today. Did I mention that there were a lot of TT bikes today? I guess they all watched the Tour de France prologue on TV yesterday. So on the way back down Hayne, the group seemed like it was done for the day, and so a small group ended up off the front. A couple of Tri bikes, Jaro and me. Jaro eventually dropped off, only to be replaced by Brett, so the pace stayed pretty fast all the way down Hayne and over the two bridges. As we rolled back down Lakeshore Drive, I swear it felt cooler than usual.

So it's a rather quiet and subdued Sunday in the neighborhood today. Maybe it's just too hot for people to leave their air conditioners. I just took a little walk down Neron Place and it seemed unusually tranquil. There was someone out watering the garden, and a Tulane student who must have just arrived, moving into a new apartment. His car was absolutely packed with stuff pressed up against the windows and a big bag of stuff was lashed to the roof. Those 6-month leases that end in December start in July, you know. People from elsewhere often lament the lack of "seasons" around here, but in fact if you live around a university you have lots of seasons. Every Fall and Spring there's "new student move-in season" and then around the holidays they all disappear and you have the "lots of parking season," followed by my personal favorite "furniture season" when they move out of their apartments in the Spring and leave all sorts of furniture out on the curb. Makes life interesting, anyway.