Twisted Chains

Really hard getting out of bed this morning. The "cool front" that never quite made it here dropped the morning temperature all of maybe two degrees while at the same time engulfing the levee in fog and, of course, 100% humidity. I made it out there anyway and we took off into the mist just a few minutes late. Every now and then I'd have to wipe the water from my glasses in order to see what little there was to see, and eventually I gave up and stuck them in my helmet for the duration.

We were out past the parish line when suddenly the pace slowed and Scott started coming through the group backwards, looking down at his chain as I heard Rob say something like, "No, don't pedal backwards!" Scott's efforts to get the chain back onto the chainring lasted no longer than his momentum, and soon he had to stop. The rest of the group hesitated for a moment, but when they realized that it wasn't going to be a quick fix they went ahead while Robin, Max and I stayed behind to assist. I turned around and rode back to Scott who was trying to unravel his chain, which by then had about three loops in it, one of which was jammed tightly in the front derailleur cage. I finally got them all unravelled, but the damage was pretty severe. A few of the links had been rather badly twisted out of parallel with the others, so we had to send Scott limping back home with strict instructions not to stand up on the pedals. Luckily, he made it there without any of the damaged links coming apart.

So the three of us who were left rode steadily upriver, turning around just before the Luling bridge to meet back up with the group. With a bit of a crosswind and headwind on the way back we tried to get a circular paceline going, but that never really works well on the levee. The road is so narrow and there are so many pedestrians and bikes that the double line gets disrupted way too often. For me, I also have issues with the double paceline blocking out most of my visibility ahead as well. Eventually the number of people in the rotation dropped down to four or five and it all devolved back into a single paceline.

Much work to get done today, which is good because it will keep me from thinking about The Mistress's 12-hour nose surgery and The Daughter's planned knee surgery, although every time I sneeze I can't avoid thinking about my damned ribs!