The Last Two Rides

So my last two training rides of 2008 are in the books, and in under twelve hours we'll start the new year. Soon thereafter we'll start another racing season. Number 39, I guess. Back in the early years, I remember thinking that the big difference between bike racing in the U.S. and bike racing in Europe was that in the U.S. we didn't have any of those old ex-racer guys who kept things organized, coached the new riders, and took long rides on the weekends that started at coffee shops and included long stops for lunch over glasses of cheap wine. I have a feeling we're finally starting to close that gap, though. If only there was a nice little French cafe' in Enon.....

I suppose my nostalgia today stems from an email I got from Mitzi saying she'd be in town for a few days in January. She was a grad student in Psychology at Tulane back in the early 80s when she raced with the NOBC, and was part of the team that went to the 1980 nationals in Bisbee, AZ back in the Beth Heiden and Wayne Stetina days when Glenn Gulotta finished 11th in the time trial and the rest of us pretty much got our lunches eaten in the road races. If you look at this photo from the Tour de La., she's the one in the NOBC (Betat) jersey. She ended up getting her Ph.D. in Psychology and is a faculty member at the School of Social Work at U. Wyoming. Coincidentally, I just added a jersey archive to the NOBC website.

So back to the last two rides of the year. Man, Tuesday's ride seemed hard. I got there maybe a minute late and as I was riding up the levee the group was rolling out. I could see Rob at the front, or more accurately off the front, and could tell this would be a fast one. It was kind of cold, and I would have thought we'd have a smooth tempo ride, but in fact there seemed to be a few people like Rob and Diego at the front pushing the pace the whole time. Don't get me wrong. It never went critical or anything, but it was definitely a notch faster than we'd been going lately. Since my legs were still trying to recover from the weekend, I guess it felt a little harder for me than it might have otherwise.

I still seem to be playing catch-up with both work and LAMBRA stuff. I'm theoretically supposed to be "off" from work, but of course that's never really possible and I ended up at the office for a couple of rather unproductive hours in the afternoon. I moved the road championships date so we could avoid the conflict with Masters Nationals, and still have a few unresolved issues to attend to on that front.

This morning it was warmer, despite a pretty significant wind, and we had a good group up on the levee for the last ride of 2008. Everyone was on the same page today and the pace was steady with lots of double paceline riding and conversation. It looks like tomorrow morning's ride will be pushed back to the remarkably civilized hour of 8 am. I wish I was planning to be partying all night so I could appropriately justify the late start. If you need someone to drink your champagne, give me a call!

Cold and Caffeinated

Saturday's Giro Ride was good and fast, but I spent most of the rest of the day taking it easy. The Daughter and Wife and I took the streetcar down to the new bookstore on St. Charles Ave., where I had a cup of Seattle's Best and ended up getting a copy of Stephen Hawking's double book "A Brief History of Time" and "The Universe in a Nutshell." Here's a sample from his discussion of relativity:

"This has been confirmed by a number of experiments, including one in which two accurate clocks were flown in opposite directions around the world and returned showing very slightly different times. This might suggest that if one wanted to live longer, one should keep flying to the east so that the plane's speed is added to the earth's rotation. However, the tiny fraction of a second one would gain would be more than canceled by eating airline meals."

There were a few tourists on the streetcar as we made our way back, so we did our part to fill them in with lots of historical facts and restaurant recommendations of questionable accuracy.

Saturday night the forecast was way too uncertain to make a commitment to the northshore Sunday ride. So when I rolled out of bed early in the morning, the first thing I did was shuffle down the dark hallway to check weather.com's radar. Outside, the streets were mostly dry, but there was a lot of green on the screen. It looked certain that the northshore was going to be wet for at least the next few hours, but the southshore looked a lot better. I sent out a few text messages shortly after 6 am that mostly said, "I'm staying on the southshore and riding the Giro today." A little cool front had dropped the temperature back down in the general direction of normal, so I dug up the arm and knee-warmers and took off into the north wind for the 7 mile ride to the lakefront. The sky, of course, was cloudy, and there wasn't really any hope of seeing the sun today, so I knew it wouldn't warm up very much.

The Giro Ride was a little unusual today. There were only a few riders who seemed interested in pushing the pace, and consequently they spent a lot of time off the front. Jay and Woody and maybe someone else were way up the road by the time the main group hit Chef Highway where Robin got things organized into a nice circular paceline to make the battle with the headwind a little easier. Even at 23-24 mph, it was a bit of an effort taking pulls at the front, and after a few miles the number of people in the rotation started to fluctuate and riders dropped back for a little extra recovery time. Even so, things were staying together reasonably well until we a mile or two from the turnaround. There were a couple of surges and things really started to disintegrate. Michael, who recently moved to town, looked over at me and said, "we must be close to the end." After the turnaround, the handful of riders who had stayed at the front regrouped with those who had been off the front, but the main group had turned around really early, so we had to chase for a while just to catch back up. Right after we caught, though, Woody and a couple of others rode off the front. The group didn't respond, though, and the return trip was pretty civilized. When we got back to the parking lot, Michael, Mignon and I stopped by the local coffee shop for a while, which was nice. The only problem was that I started to get pretty cold. I ended up riding hard all the way home just to keep warm.

On the way, though, Michael and I stopped to see the Flamingo Creche in front of a house in Lakeview. I really liked the baby Jesus portrayed as an egg with a little flamingo head poking out of it.

Right now it's just past midnight and I've recently determined that a rat has been inconsiderate enough to have expired somewhere up in the attic. Every now and then I get a little whiff. Perhaps tomorrow the odor will be strong enough to allow me to locate it. Damn, I hate when they die inside the house like that. I've been somewhat intentionally putting off responding to a number of work and LAMBRA-related emails the last few days. The Daughter leaves tomorrow afternoon, so I guess I'll have to get back to normal after that. I hate normal.

Christmas and a Day After Christmas

Christmas morning in New Orleans arrived reluctantly. Another thick fog clung to the battered streets, painting the city with its greyscale palette until mid-morning. I stepped out the door at 6 am to an oddly silent street, turned on my lights, and rode toward the levee wondering if anyone else at all would be there. Climbing the access road to the bike path I looked up at our usual meeting spot and saw it was empty. I was determined to get in an hour or so while I had the chance, so I started out up the river without skipping a beat. A moment later a headlight emerged from the fog and zipped past me. I couldn't really tell who it was, and it took me a moment to put the pieces together, but I realized it was likely one of the morning group, possibly Mignon, so I made a quick U-turn. Indeed Mignon had done the same, so we headed out into the fog as I commented on how quiet it was. In ten miles we saw only two other people, but at least it was warm and the wind was calm, so we rode out to the Dip. On the way back we picked up Taylor. The closer we got the more riders we saw, all heading the opposite direction.

The rest of the day was a haze of turkey and wine and lemon meringue pie -- mostly pie.

The day after Christmas was a Friday, but we ended up with a pretty good little group today. I suppose not everyone was in the mood for a hard training ride, though, and things came apart a few times. After we turned around, I soon found myself with Woody and Howard, and the three of us worked together into the increasing headwind all the way back. We weren't going all that fast, but when I looked back toward the end, the group wasn't even in sight, so I guess someone must have flatted or something. Woody was planning to extending his ride and doing a big loop through the French Quarter, so he and Howard turned around to find the others as I rolled down onto Oak street toward home. A couple of hours later the doorbell rang. It was the telephone company repairman. My land line telephone had developed a loud buzz which this guy fixed pretty quickly once he determined that the problem was outside the house.

I just got back from The Prytania, where we went to see "The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, " which had opened Christmas Day. Since much of this movie had been filmed in New Orleans, it was interesting trying to identify all of the locations. I thought it was a really good movie, too. Quite a bit better than I'd expected, actually.

So tomorrow I think I'll do the Giro Ride in the morning. It looks like we won't be seeing any really cold weather for at least the next week, so except for the fog and damp streets it's been fairly good riding weather, especially for late December.

Humid Holidays

These weather ups and downs continue unabated. It was cold for the Tuesday morning training ride, but the forecast was calling for a big warming trend. I guess things were significantly worse elsewhere, though, because by the time I got home The Daughter's flight, already a full day late, had been delayed yet again. After much text messaging she finally got out of ORD a couple of hours behind schedule, arriving in New Orleans in mid-afternoon. Could have been worse. I think she was a couple of days late last year. Later in the evening we ended up going to City Park to see Christmas in the Oaks with the neighbors, although that was really more about the amusement park than the Christmas lights. For me, it was more like torture.

So this morning I was only too happy to ride out on the wet streets into a warm damp fog. Once again, I wished I'd ridden the Pennine because the streets were soaking wet. Up on the levee we had a nice little group but the wheel spray was making things rather uncomfortable, and the fact that we had three flats among us wasn't helping. At least I managed to get in a little bit of a workout, though. When I got back home I just took the garden hose and rinsed off the whole bike off before taking it inside to lube the chain. The rest of the day was mostly family stuff, although I did carve out enough time to post the '09 LAMBRA calendar. I have to admit, it's definitely hard to get into the Christmas spirit when it's 78F with 98% humidity, especially when it looks like it will remain that way for the next few days.

So tomorrow is Christmas. If the weather cooperates, I'll probably go out early for the regular Thursday long ride on the levee, although of course there's no telling who else will show up. At any rate, I should be home in plenty of time to exchange presents. After that I guess we'll be at my mother's place for the duration.

More of the Same

After a great ride out in the country on Saturday, I was primed for more of the same for the regular Sunday winter group ride. My enthusiasm was momentarily dampened, though, when I awoke to find the streets wet and a light rain falling. It was still early, though, so there was hope. I checked the radar and the image I saw was at least reassuring. The cold front had just passed over us and was making its way east, so it was likely that the sky would soon be clearing. I sent a few text messages out to the people who I knew were planning on riding, just to make sure they weren't going to bail, and headed over to Starbucks. Mignon was already there, but Viv wasn't going to be riding today, so we stocked up on caffeine and went out to put Mignon's bike into the wagon. That's when she looked down and said, "what's that noise?" Well, that noise was the sound of air escaping rapidly from my car's front tire! I quickly brushed away any idea of skipping out on the ride in order to fix the flat, and hurried to move the car to an end spot in the parking lot where it would be easier to jack it up later in the day. We quickly implemented Plan B, in which I put my bike into Mignon's car, and we hit the road for Barker's Corner.

It was damned cold and quite windy when we arrived, but even so we ended up with almost twenty riders for the winter-standard 65 mile ride. I knew I'd be shedding clothes eventually, but since the first twenty-odd miles were straight into a brisk north wind, I figured I'd rather be comfy right from the start. Considering that the day's group included Tim and VJ and a few others who seemed anxious for a workout, I knew the group would eventually split, but I didn't really want to leave solo riders scattered about the countryside, so I figured I'd try to keep an eye on everyone. When we got to the northernmost point of the ride, up at US highway 10, there were four or five riders off the back, but everyone waited for them before continuing. I figured that might be the last time it would happen, because we were about to turn back toward the south and east, and the strong tailwind was sure to be irresistible. Most everyone made it over the big hill together, but then the pace started to really ramp up. I dropped back a bit to bridge a few riders up, but soon just Mignon was there. She looked back and said she was going to ease up and wait for the group of three or four that was forming behind us. By then it was impossible to catch the main group, and I found myself with a smaller group of maybe five riders. We were going pretty hard along that stretch, but the lead group was still pulling away, and when we got to the turn at Sie Jenkins Road, I made a u-turn to retrieve the others. I picked up a couple and Steve waited to pick up a couple more. Figuring we were only a couple of minutes back I decided to take the Jap Little road shortcut to visit Jorge's Collarbone Curve and see if we might be able to catch the group before it got going and get it to wait for the last few riders, but when we got to Plainview we could see that they hadn't waited.

Once our little group was all together, we took another shortcut, which was really nice because we skipped the killer crosswind that the main group had to deal with, and arrived in Enon just before the first riders from the main group got there. I had ridden backwards on the course to meet them while Mignon and Steve and the others stopped at the Enon store, so I rode back there to get them and was surprised to see the group roll straight through the intersection without stopping to wait. Mignon had just walked out with a coke, which she had to chug down so we could get rolling, but it was already too late. The group was a minute and a half up the road with the wind at its back, but Charlie and VJ were lagging behind and looked to be catchable. Steve and I pushed the pace a bit as we started up the watchtower hill, and soon it was just the two of us. We passed VJ on the steepest part, and when we got to Charlie he latched on and we kept pushing all the way to Tung Road where I again turned around to pick up the other riders.

It was fun doing these short fast sections, turning around to regroup, and then riding paceline for a while with the group. As we got close to the end Steve and I rode off the front of our group again and got in another few miles of moderate intensity. By the time we were back at the car the sky was clear and sunny. It was really a fun ride for me.

So we get back to the parking lot at Starbucks and I go to remove the very flat tire and the damned thing will not budge. I start wondering if there is some weird Volvo safety lock or something and pull out the owners manual, but there's not hint of anything like that. Mignon, I think, was convinced I was going to need a ride home, because she stuck around to help. I finally had to pry the wheel off the hub with the lug wrench. I guess there was a little corrosion or rust of something, but it took some effort to finally break it free. The good news, though, was that the little spare tire actually had enough air in it! So that was pretty much my Sunday.

Today I was off work, sort of, which means I did a little email stuff from home and from the PJ's Coffee at the shopping center where I spent a couple of hours waiting for Sears to fix the flat tire, rotate the wheels and check the alignment. Unfortunately, The Daughter, who was supposed to arrive around noon, got her flight cancelled and won't be able to come in until tomorrow. Man, flying through Chicago this time of year is really a roll of the dice. At least the good folks at Orbitz notified her around midnight and then automatically booked her on the next available flight, which was good because it gave her time to get her own car fixed. It's battery had died the day before, and when the temperature is below zero, you really need a fully functional battery. She made her own donation to Sears up in Iowa, but at least she'll be able to drive herself to the airport tomorrow for her 6 am flight.

A Little Longer

Thursday and Friday were a little hectic. Why do things always pile up that way this time of year? The Wife was in a little fender-bender, so we had to take the car in for a repair estimate, we abandoned all hope and went to Lakeside Shopping Center one night, my bottom bracket started creaking, work got suddenly very busy, we removed all of the furniture from two rooms in order to have some carpet replaced, and we finally broke down and bought a new mattress that will be delivered Christmas eve.

So when I got an email on Friday saying that a group was getting together for a long ride on the northshore Saturday morning, I was quick to add my name to the roster. Seventy-five miles in the country with temperatures in the 60s and 70s, in December, sounded pretty damned good. It's about time for me to be doing a few more miles, and this would at least me a little longer than my usual Saturday.

I was up by 5:30 so Ed and I could get to the ride start way up in Enon in time. It's been foggy every morning lately, and this one was no exception. Unfortunately, that meant that the causeway was in fog mode, 35 mph and right lane only. Thanks to our early start, we were only a few minutes late.

I had thought it might be a little cooler on that side of the lake, but shorts and single jerseys were the order of the day today. We had ten riders and a rather circuitous 75 mile route on which I invariably get lost, but the pace was moderate and steady for most of the ride and for reasons I can't really explain, my legs were feeling pretty good.

Of course, there was the usual nature break along the way, but the only other significant stop was a brief store visit about twenty miles before we finished. A couple of the guys were kind of pushing the pace, and a few others were having none of it. I was kind of on the fence myself, and so I went with most of the surges today. Ed was riding a fixed gear of something like 49x15, and after 75 miles of hills and a few fast sections, I think his legs were kind of tired.

Tomorrow is the regular northshore winter training ride, and I'm planning on going unless the weather is really uncooperative. It's been about a week since we had anything you could call "cold," and except for the morning fog it's been pretty nice. Now if we can just get one more day like this......

SSAD Season

It's only been a couple of days, but it seems like forever since I've seen the sun. This is always a tough time of year for me. The weather is often uncooperative, the holidays disrupt my routines, and the short days seem to confuse the hell out of my pineal gland. I think I went to sleep last night before 9:30, and that's just strange. It's a good thing I don't live up in Alaska or I'd probably be a basket case by now. On the positive side, I was wide awake when the alarm went off this morning!

It was still dark outside, and with the temperature way up in the upper 60s, I knew it would be foggy, a fact that was easily confirmed by a quick glance out the window. I was prepared for the fog today, but what I really underestimated was the amount of water it had deposited on the roads. I was only a couple of blocks down the street when I realized I probably should have taken the Pennine with its full fenders instead of the Orbea, but it was too late. Arriving at the meeting spot on the levee bike path, I was glad to see that the fog didn't seem to be significantly thicker there than it had been on the way out. On a scale of one to ten, where ten is too thick to ride safely, I'd say it was only about a 7 today. Rich was there on his mountain bike, and John and David were there as well. Along the way we picked up Erich and Taylor, so for most of the ride there were six of us. The road was really wet, though, and I was doing my best to stay out of the spray zone which meant being out in the wind a bit more. Since we weren't going all that hard, and there was practically no wind, that worked out pretty well, actually. Erich, of course, was surprised that more people hadn't shown up, so to make ourselves feel better we called them all a bunch of lazy slackers who were afraid to get their bikes dirty.

So I got in a decent ride, arriving home soaking wet and generally covered with road grit, but thanks to the warm weather I wasn't cold at all. For a mid-December ride, you really can't complain about that! The bike, of course, was a bit of a mess, and I took a little time to wipe it down and clean the chain before hitting the shower. While I was doing that, down in the basement, I noticed that a rat or mouse had gnawed at the piece of wood I use to block the bottom of the door. The last couple of days I'd noticed it had been moved a bit, so last night I put a paint can next to it to see what would happen. So I guess the creatures of the night are back in full force, and looking for a nice place to spend the winter. Hope they like peanut flavored warfarin.

Door Problems

I seem to be having door problems lately. To be more specific, basement door problems. To be even more specific, I am having a damned hard time getting myself out the friggin' basement door early enough in the morning.

Today was no exception. First off, it was overcast and dark. Also, it was colder than I expected and the streets around my house were good and wet. The forecast had also been calling for dense fog. I very nearly pulled the covers back over my head and went back to sleep. I mean, how many excuses did I really need? I didn't, though, and instead stumbled around in some kind of confused state of wardrobe indecision, finally settling on more clothes than I needed. Since it was wet, I thought I'd ride the old Pennine to save myself from having to clean up my regular road bike after a long ride on wet streets. For some reason I decided I had time to fix that flat front tire first, so I went ahead and did that. Naturally it was already getting late by the time I had the wheel back on the bike, so I rushed out the door, locked it behind me, and then realized I had on the wrong shoes and wouldn't be able to clip into the old Look pedals with the new Look cleats. By the time I finally got going, I knew I'd miss the group, but considering the dismal and dreary weather, I really didn't expect anybody to be up there anyway. So there I was riding along by myself somewhere past Williams Blvd. when I saw a couple of the guys, Dave and Howard, standing on the side of the bike path. They were waiting for Erich, who showed up a few seconds later, so I decided I may as well turn around and ride back with them. I was a little surprised to find out that there had actually been some riders for the long Tuesday ride. Indeed, the bike path was not particularly wet, and if you avoided the occasional puddle, it wasn't bad riding at all. Oh well. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

Brain Fog

This weather is really something. Thursday we had snow. Yesterday's group ride started out with the temperature in the upper 50s and patches of leftover snow in the roadside shadows. This morning I awoke to a pre-dawn temperature in the 60s, an overcast sky, and a humid south wind. It's not surprising that I was practically the only person on the levee. As often happens, the cold water of the Mississippi was blanketed with a thick layer of fog. Apparently, so was my brain. Perhaps it was the weather creeping into my bones, but I've felt heavy and achy and unfocused all day. I guess there's also a chance that I'm feeling the effects of yesterday's ride, or maybe just the delayed consequence of having fallen on my ass while trying to pull a new ground wire from a fifty year old outlet box to a water pipe down in the basement. In the dark. While standing on an empty paint can.

Soooo, anyway, I did make it out for an hour's recovery ride this morning on the aforementioned vacant levee bike path. I never could get into a rhythm, though. I'd find myself gradually speeding up for a few miles, and then I'd sit up and coast for a while. I should probably call them "recovery intervals" and write an article for VeloNews about the newest top-secret training method and sell everyone special GPS-enabled interval timers that they can only buy from me. It wasn't helping that my bottom bracket has recently developed a creaking noise, apparent each time I push down with either foot. So I guess I'll have to take that apart for a look-see pretty soon and just hope it's something that a little grease and Loctite will take care of.

Good and Complicated Ride

After such a messy week of riding, I was looking forward to Sunday's long ride on the northshore. I had already done the Giro ride the day before, and that ride had been uncharacteristically civilized, which is to say it wasn't very fast. So I was up this morning at 6:15 putting the roof rack onto the car and pondering my wardrobe options in light of the warming weather. A number of people had said they wanted to do the ride, and as Mignon and Viv were loading their stuff into the car at Starbucks I got a call from Steve saying the (a) he and Pat were on the way to the ride and (b) they had already been rained on. Indeed, the sky didn't look too good, but there wasn't really any serious rain in the forecast, so we wrote it off as just a stray shower, a result of the humid southeast wind. I set the cruise control at a casual 65 mph, picked up my cup of Christmas Blend, checked the mirror to make sure Brady and Jen were following, and sat back to enjoy the 24 mile trip across the pond.

As we pulled into the school parking lot up near Barker's Corner, I was surprised how many cars were already there. It felt a bit chilly, and although I knew it would warm up, I pulled light vest on over my two jerseys and arm-warmers. By the time we finally rolled out, there were 22 of us, which is quite a big turnout for this kind of ride. I had a funny feeling that it was going to get fast. After a brief regrouping at the end of Tung Road, we were still all together as we approached Enon. There's a traditional sprint for the Enon town sign, which hasn't actually existed for quite a few years. Prior to today's ride, Jason had painted 1 km and 200 meter marks on the road, along with a finish line. Keith looked over at me and asked "want a lead-out?" I countered with "I'll lead you out." Just in front of me were Jason and Ed, and I had a feeling they were going to go for it. Sure enough, with about 500 meters to go I saw Jason shift down and jump with Ed on his wheel. I went too, and Keith was right on me. Because of the snow last Thursday, the bridge on which we were sprinting was full of sand, leaving just a couple of tire tracks of clear roadway. Jason was hammering down the right-hand track with the three of us following. I guess we were about 300 meters out when I decided I'd better make a move, so I took us out onto the gravel and across to the other tire track as Jason started to fade. Thinking that it might make Ed hesitate for a moment, I eased back over to the right as I started to blow up, but it must not have caused much of a problem for Ed because a moment later he came around Keith just before the finish line. I clearly remember thinking, "man, I'm not ready for this yet!"

So anyway, everyone regrouped again and there was the usual nature stop, and then right when we got going again, one of the guys flatted. I turned around with a few others and we got it fixed, but for some reason the group wasn't waiting around, so we quickly got a little paceline going. I figured they'd wait for us at the next turn, a couple of miles down the road, but no such luck, so we continued out team time trial. When they weren't at the next turn either, I started to think of alternatives, eventually deciding that if we didn't see them by the time we had to turn onto Lee Road, we'd take a little short-cut. However, this time they were waiting for us, so we were all finally back together. Well, it didn't last too long. On the very next stretch some gaps opened up right away and I dropped back to see how a couple of people were doing. Well, next thing I knew, it was just Jaro, Viv, Mignon, me and one other guy. Chasing again. Again I figured they would be waiting at the next intersection, and again I was wrong. I could sense that the others were getting a little tired. On the long climb way out on the back side of the course, things broke up quite a bit, and soon Mignon looked back and said she was going to drop back and ride with Vivian. They turned off at Lee Road to take a shorter route back to Enon, so the three of us left continued our chase, but every time we'd climb a long hill I'd find myself alone, so when it happened again on the last climb before Sie Jenkins Road, I kept going. I was thinking I'd take the Jap Little shortcut, catch the group, and get them to wait up for a couple of minutes. So I hammered down Jap Little, which, by the way, is barely more than a dirt road. The potholes had recently been patched, apparently by someone randomly shoveling asphalt out of a moving truck. Anyway, when I arrived at Plainview I found the group going slowly after having stopped for one of the guys who had broken a spoke. I rode back to him and the other guys who were helping, and by the time I got there, he was already rolling. Well, as you might have expected today, the rest of the group was already down the road, so once again I was in a small group, chasing. This time, though, they eventually turned around so we could regroup. Soon, with VJ and Jorge pushing the pace, we were flying down the road back toward Lee Road as if we were in a race. Things stayed fairly fast all the way back to Enon, by which time the day's pace was beginning to wear on some of the riders.

By the last six or seven miles the front group was down to seven riders and nobody was talking any more. We got back to the car just a few minutes after Vivian and Mignon -- good timing! For me, it was definitely a very good, if not complicated, ride. I got in quite a few miles of moderate intensity without going too far over the edge, so I was feeling pretty satisfied as we drove back to New Orleans by way of the local Starbucks. There was only one more thing that I needed in order for it to be a successful ride, and that was achieved when the Causeway toll sign showed $3.00 despite the two bikes on the roof! I've learned over the years that going through the height sensor ahead of the toll booth as a sufficiently high speed usually keeps the sensor from picking up the bikes and charging another three dollars. It did, however, elicit a little shriek from Mignon as I slammed on the brakes to keep from plowing in to the car ahead of us in line!

Improving Outlook

Well, after yesterday's meteorological anomaly (the photo is a Tulane person coming in to work yesterday), we awoke this morning to clear skies, a comfortable mid-40s temperature, and a vastly improving outlook through the weekend. This is good. Rain and slush and cold are a lot easier to handle when they're dished out in nice small doses, interspersed with long stretches of great riding weather. Of course, I overdressed a little bit, as usual. I long ago resigned myself to the fact that I will consistently overdress as a coping mechanism for my chronic cryophobia. That's just the way it is and I guess it's easier to just live with it. So it took me a little while to actually get out the door, and I arrived at the top of the levee maybe a minute or two late. It looked completely deserted, which didn't surprise me too much, although one might have expected to see few of the guys who had not ridden the last two days because of the rain. I was actually just fine with doing my own solo ride anyway, since it's Friday, so I continued down the bike path without giving it a second thought.

Well, I wasn't too far out when suddenly I saw Erich M. who moved back to NOLA from Athens (the one in Georgia, not Greece) not too long ago and is trying to get back into shape. As he whizzed by he said something like "is this it?" to which I replied, "nobody else was there." So he turned around and we pushed on into the northwest headwind, debating where we would turn around. In the end, we decided we may as well go all the way to the regular Friday turnaround, since at the pace we were going it wasn't like either of us was risking undue exhaustion. We never quite made it there, though, because soon after Williams Blvd. we saw John and Taylor coming the other way. Apparently I had just missed them thanks to my tardiness. So what had started out as one ended up as four, and with a nice little tailwind just to sweeten the deal. Now I'm looking forward to a weekend that promises some great Winter riding weather -- the Giro on Saturday and then a long Northshore ride on Sunday.

Meanwhile, back at the office, I just spent about an hour cleaning up the mess I made of my trusty little Palm Pilot T/X yesterday. You see, I have it set up to sync via wireless to Tulane's Outlook server so that I can keep the calendar and email, along with a variety of "in-progress" files, up to date. It's been working great for at least a year, but I really messed it up yesterday. I was sitting in The Wife's office after having taken some photos of the "snow event," and wanted to send them to some people. The trouble was that they were on my camera and there was no card-reader around and I didn't want to have to fire up my laptop just to transfer the images via the ad-hoc wireless. So, what to do? Suddenly it dawned on me that the camera and the Palm use the same kind of expansion card. So simple. So I put the camera card into the Palm and voila, I could send the photos as attachments from the Palm. Unfortunately, I then forgot to switch the cards back. Later in the day I connected the camera to the computer and saw that there were some Palm folders on the card. I figured they were there because I had sync'ed the Palm with Outlook while the camera card was in the Palm, so I deleted them. A while later I finally realized that I had never put the cards back where they belonged, so I had actually deleted some of the folders that the Palm needed. Bottom line was that I had to set up the Palm to sync with the Outlook server all over again, which is a rather mysterious process that involves guessing at the right mail server name so that the calendar and other stuff will sync along with the mail. Of course, I could have called someone for help, but hey, that would be like rolling down the car window to ask for directions when you're lost. Guys just don't do that until all other options have been exhausted.

Black and White, Mostly White

I almost went out for a ride this morning. Really. I was up in time to make the usual Thursday 6:15 start. The temperature was hovering around 39F, and the wind was strong, but that wasn't what stopped me. Seeing how wet the street was, I thought I'd better check the radar. There on the monitor were some unusual colors. White and Pink? WTF? It still didn't look too bad out the window and I wavered for a while thinking I might steal an hour of riding before that white and pink stuff arrived, but the final straw was the 10 am meeting I had downtown. I mean, it's all well and good to get wet and cold on a training ride and then come home like a wet puppy to a warm shower, but getting wet and cold and then walking into a meeting downtown with a bunch of public servant office rats is an altogether different situation. They wouldn't understand. As it turned out, I guess I missed out on something really different this morning.

So I reluctantly wrote off the morning ride and drove downtown in the car, camping out at The Wife's office for a couple of hours until it was time for my meeting with the LA, ORDA, LRA, and OCD, to discuss the CDBG and the PDA we were expecting from the DRU so we could start the ERR and A&E work for the new CHC. Soon after we arrived, I glanced out the 10th floor window overlooking Canal Street and casually remarked, "wow, it's really raining hard."

Then I took a second look.

That wasn't rain. Rain doesn't swirl around in the wind like that. That was genuine snow! Everyone jumped up and rushed to the window. It wasn't stopping, either. Now, you have to understand that this sort of thing only happens maybe once or twice every ten years or so. I did my best to get a few photos through the dirty rain-splattered window, and eventually a few of us went up to the roof which was, by then, blanketed with snow. Looking out over the city, the entire landscape was nothing but black and white, mostly white. An hour later, it was still coming down and it was time for my meeting, so I donned my hat and gloves and walked carefully through the slush. The cold water quickly found its way through the seams in my loafers, and i was glad I'd put on a pair of coolmax socks that morning.

So anyway, it was an interesting morning. I stopped by the house on the way back uptown to my office to change pants, shoes and socks, and the rest of the day was pretty much nonstop. I don't know exactly why, but things in the government affairs office always get really busy this time of year. Every now and then I'd look up from my work and think, "damn, I wish I was riding in this." Go figure.......

West of the Front

The outlook for this morning's ride had not been looking very promising last night, and when the 5:45 am alarm went off I reached out and silenced it without thinking. Half an hour later I convinced myself to have a peek out the window, if only to confirm the predictions. The streets were indeed wet, but surprisingly it was not actually raining, so I got up and hunted down the Palm Pilot for a quick look at the radar. "Well, well," I thought. It appeared we were already on the west side of the cold front, and that meant that the threat of heavy, sock-soaking rain had passed. Nonetheless, I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about all the water and grit that I'd be eating over the course of a ride, so I pumped up the tires on the good ol' Pennine just for the benefit of its full fenders. Actually, I just pumped up the rear tire because the front one was flat. That one got temporarily swapped out with another wheel.

It was windy but still relatively warm -- somewhere in the low 60s, I guess -- and of course there was little activity up on the levee. You can guess the rest of this story. Anyway, I was glad to have gotten in a bit more than an hour's riding at a fairly decent effort level today, because it wouldn't have taken much for me to have stayed home, under the circumstances. Unfortunately, the cold front has been moving slowly and instead of the usual clear, crisp weather, it's been dreary, overcast and drizzly so far today.

Lots of things to do LAMBRA-wise since the meeting. I spent most of last night building a little "website in a box" for a friend, so I didn't make much progress on other things. I've been trying hard to keep LAMBRA from consuming most of my day, and that has meant some unanswered emails and loss of focus, but work has been busy too and as they say, "first things first." I have a bullet list of things from the LAMBRA meeting that I need to flesh out so I can send a draft summary to the people who attended (in case I got something terribly wrong), I've contacted most of the people whose events have calendar conflicts, Michael's moving forward with production of a brochure, the LCCS awards are ready to be picked up, I still need to contact the winners to get jersey sizes (hoping I have enough of the right size jerseys), I need to make the draft revisions to the bylaws and LCCS rules, get in touch with a CPA to straighten out the IRS requirements, I want to see if we can do an awards banquet at Rouge-Roubaix, etc., etc., etc.

Visit to the Big Ring

I had to double-check the thermometer this morning. Sixty-four degrees? Really? I saw it, but I didn't really believe it and left the house way too late wearing two jerseys and arm-warmers, which proved to be one jersey and two arm-warmers too much.

I raced out to the levee hoping the group might be delayed, but I was already so late that I didn't even want to look at my watch. Of course, I had missed them. The question was, then, "by how much?" It was still kind of dark and I couldn't see anything up the road, so I put my head down and drove on, hoping that I might get close before they started going fast. Sometimes if I'm just a minute or two late I can catch up with them before they really get up to speed, which doesn't usually happen until they're past the playground. There was a bit of a tailwind, though, so I guess they were all in the Big Rings early.

As the sky got brighter I could see a lone rider up the road, and although I couldn't tell who it was, I could see that he was going pretty fast. I broke down and shifted to the Big Ring and picked my pace up to around 24 mph. I was not closing very quickly, though, and it was probably four miles before I finally rolled up behind Matt. He never knew I'd been back there chasing, since he himself had been too late to meet the group, so I snuck up behind him and grabbed his seat (kids, don't try this at home). Surprise! I thought he was going to end up in the grass for a moment. It turned out that he had flatted on his way to meet the group. We settled into a moderate pace and enjoyed the increasing tailwind. Matt said, "I think it's going to be a hard ride back today." That was no doubt true, but I just kept telling myself that it wouldn't be too bad because by then we'd be riding with a nice big group with lots of people to share the work. I'm such a dreamer.

After passing two people with flats who had been in the group, we saw them coming toward us and finally joined in as everyone was waiting for a third person who had flatted. Once everyone was back on their bikes, Tim started to roll off the front with me and Rob in tow. Soon Max came through the rotation and I thought, "good, now the whole group is back together." You can imagine my surprise, or perhaps dismay, when I dropped back after taking my pull to find that the group was at least 40 seconds back and Tim was definitely not waiting. Max had just made a rather long bridge up to us. So anyway, we ended up pushing pretty hard, at least by my December standards, all the way back until Max and then Tim dropped off to head home. I have to say, it felt good to be back in the Big Ring after having spent a lot of time lately in the spin cycle, but I have a feeling my legs will be reminding me about it tomorrow.

Lonely on the Levee

Monday morning on the levee. The temperature was a bit nippy, but pretty normal for this time of year, and I'm sure there would have been a nice group of riders for the morning ride except for one thing. It was Monday. Apparently the Monday Phenomenon is not restricted to cyclists, however. It was quite lonely on the levee today, and if I'd done my usual long ride the day before I would likely have been grateful for the opportunity for some 15 mph down time. As it was, however, I'd spent most of Sunday talking about how to improve bicycle racing with a good bunch of guys, some of whom had made long drives in order to attend. However, I hadn't been home for five minutes after that meeting when I had to head over to my mother's house for dinner, and by the time I got back I was not really too inclined toward digging through my notes in order to write up a summary of the meeting, or contact the event promoters with unresolved date conflicts, or dream about the perfect BAR/BAT system. I fired up the laptop, checked for critical work-related email, shut it down and went to bed.

So by morning I was more than ready for a ride, and it didn't really matter much that I was the only one out there. In fact, I enjoyed the chance to roll a nice steady pace with few distractions, trying hard to avoid thinking much about anything beyond my own long shadow on the bike path. Then, as I was heading back near the country club, I saw Viv coming up the levee. The timing was perfect and we hardly even missed a beat as we met up and rode the last few miles in to Carrollton where she split off to her Pilates class and I cruised home once again to start a day in the life ......

Spinnin' and Grinnin' Around Town

Saturday's plan was a little bit different -- long ride, low speeds, small ring. Rather than indulge in the usual Saturday Giro Ride, a little contingent had planned on doing the "Tour of New Orleans" route. This particular ride around town, mapped out by Kenny, takes us through a lot of areas of the city where the tour buses never go. The rules were simple: Stay in the small chainring and enjoy the scenery.

I was still a bit unsteady from the prior evening's downtown reception at the Westin Canal Place when I stepped out the door into the 6 am darkness. Our group was meeting at the lakefront at the rather uncivilized hour of 6:30 am. It was pretty chilly as I turned on my headlight for the seven mile ride out to the lake. Under my vest I was dressed for the warmer temperatures I was expecting toward the end of the day's ride, so I expected to be a little bit on the cold side. As I rode north past City Park I saw a bunch of runners coming toward me. I see them often when I ride out early in the morning. We always acknowledge each other, perhaps just because we're glad to see someone else who might understand why we're out there in the first place.

I was glad to see a decent-sized group of a dozen or so coming toward me on Lakeshore Drive, and indeed it was the group for which I was looking. I turned around and slipped into the draft. The Tour of New Orleans route is probably a bit over 50 miles, so I was expecting to log around 70 miles for the day. Although that may have been an accurate mileage, I'm sure I put in about 90 miles worth of spinning. As we coasted down the Casino bridge, we noticed that Jenn and Brady were suddenly missing. Someone said that Jenn had mentioned something about not feeling well. I rode up to the front of the group and slowed them down for a while. Looking back, I saw someone way up at the top of the overpass. The only problem was that he had turned around and was going the other way. We soft-pedaled for another mile or so before concluding that they must have turned back, so the rest of us continued on our way. Riding down Read Blvd. toward Almonaster, I was a bit surprised to see how many houses were still in complete disrepair. I had really expected that by now the majority of the buildings would have been fixed up. The group worked its way across the Industrial Canal, going over the big bridge rather than the little old one, and soon enough we found ourselves rolling into the French Quarter.

At Cafe' du Monde we all stopped, riding around the back to where the take-out window is. I though we could get some coffee more quickly that way, but as it turned out there were a lot of open tables inside, so a bunch of us sat down and we ordered a round of cafe au lait. I mean, what else would you order there? I was tempted to get an order of beignets, but considering that we still had another couple of hours of riding ahead of us, I thought better of it. Regardless, it was a rare treat to be doing a group ride like this, and I was really enjoying it. We finally headed off down Magazine and Prytania streets, riding toward uptown on quiet Garden District streets under the old oaks.

Somewhere around Audubon Park we lost a few riders who needed to get back sooner, and a bit later, near the Jefferson Playground, Russell headed for home. The rest of the group continued upriver on the bike path, eventually turning north and working its way to the Jefferson Parish bike path between the levee and the lake. I was happy to find that bike path to be in great condition. Even better, we had a nice little tailwind blowing us along the smooth asphalt at the edge of the water. I had been careful to work on my "suplesse," or lack of it, all day, sometimes spinning at RPMs just below the "bounce" level. This kind of low-gear riding always has one undesirable side-effect. Since your weight is practically never being supported by your feet when you're spinning low gears, you can probably guess which part of your anatomy has to pick up the slack.

So anyway, it was a good technical workout in the finest winter ride tradition, even though I suppose it was kind of light on the calorie-burning side. After about five hours and 70 miles, I guess I'd had half a bottle of water and one cafe au lait, and yet I wasn't feeling particularly drained. All-in-all, it was a good day on the bike. Good thing, too, because today I didn't get to ride at all. I was up before 7 am working on stuff for the day's annual LAMBRA meeting. That meeting was a bit of a marathon session, starting around 11 am and lasting until a bit after 5 pm. There was a lot of good discussion among all of the club representatives on hand and I really left with the feeling that everyone there was truly committed to finding ways to increase both the number of people racing bikes and the general quality level of the races. It's not as simple as it seems, though, and the path is not particularly clear, but I think we made some progress. I'll try and write up a summary tomorrow, make some of the suggested changes to the bylaws and LCCS rules, and get that out to the group for review. Then I'll have to work with a few of the promoters to resolve some of the date conflicts on the calendar.

Wheelspray Day

So yesterday we had a pretty typical Wednesday ride for this time of year. The weather was nice, the pace remained steady, and everyone seemed to be on the same page. It seems that on Wednesdays a lot of the guys like to indulge in taking long pulls at the front. Sometimes, they even do it while on the correct side of the road! Yesterday the pace was so steady and the wind so light on the way back that I wasn't really getting much exercise, so rather than go to the front and disrupt everyone's lives, I slipped off to the side a bit, shifted to a lower gear, and at least got my heart rate back up above couch-potato level. Some of the motivation for that, I admit, came from the forecast for today. The winter weekday ride zealots are always looking ahead a few days, and when the meteorological prognosticators start calling for disagreeable conditions you can be sure that a few of them will be trying to put a little extra training "in the bank," so to speak.

And so the moment I awoke this morning I listened intently for the sounds of car tires out on South Claiborne Avenue. After so many years of this, I can tell from the sound not only if it's raining, but also how much and how hard. Today I was surprised that it sounded dry. I reached over for my palm-pilot and brought up the weather channel page. "Uh oh," I mumbled. There was light rain heading my way at any moment, but behind that, maybe an hour away, was the big line of heavy rain ahead of a cold front. The Wife needed a ride in to work today because she's working a conference downtown all weekend and didn't want to have to park the car at the hotel, so things were going to be a little rushed anyway. It was still a few minutes before 6 am. I looked out the window again. Still dry. A plan began to form in my little brain. Why not go out for a quick low-gear spin, staying close to home so that when the inevitable rain started I would still be relatively close to shelter? So I got dressed, took the old Cervelo off its hook in the basement, and opened the door to find that a light drizzle had just begun. The temperature was in the 60s, though, and I wasn't going to be able to ride on Friday morning because of work, so I figured, "what the hell," and rode off toward St. Charles Avenue as the drizzle turned into a light rain.

I thought I'd ride up St. Charles under the protection of the Oak trees for a while and see how it went. The drizzle wasn't letting up, so I set my first goal as Napoleon Avenue. As I made my U-turn across the streetcar tracks in front of Sacred Heart, the drizzle started to ease up, so I changed the morning goal to "one loop around Audubon Park." By then the sky was a little brighter and although I knew it was temporary, things were definitely looking more encouraging. After one lap around the park I decided to hit the levee bike path at the Zoo, figuring that if it started raining again I could bail out at St. Charles Avenue or Oak Street. By then the wheelspray from the wet streets (why didn't I take the Pennine with its fenders??) was starting to soak through my shoes and into my socks, and as I rode past the Corps of Engineers building I could feel a little water starting to drip down my butt crack from the soaked backside of my shorts. Luckily it wasn't particularly cold today.

Up on the levee, the sky ahead to the southwest was looking really good, so I ended up riding all the way out to the country club before turning back. It was one of those rare mornings when I won my bet with the weather gods. I finally arrived back home with a nice hour's spin under my belt and just a couple of chilly feet to deal with. For the whole ride I had probably never strayed more than four or five miles from home. Not too bad. By the time I got back from dropping The Wife off downtown the real rain had started, so I drove to work in the car and finally got to try out the tiny little mini-umbrella that I'd bought while in the drug store checkout line last month when I was in DC.

Long Ride Back

It was my first early morning ride in well over a week, and I was surprised how dark it still was at 6:00 am when I stepped out the basement door and down onto the sidewalk (yes, here in New Orleans, one often steps down from what we call a "basement"). I think it was also one of the coldest mornings we've had yet this Fall. I had even resorted to firing up the central heat at home. I'm sure the 39 F temperature wouldn't even raise an eyebrow this time of year up in the Midwest, but down here on the delta anything below 40 qualifies as cold. Fortunately the wind was calm, and that made all the difference. I had, as usual, dressed for arctic conditions. Up on the levee there was quite a range of cycling clothing on display. There was Rob, who seemed to be wearing little more than knee-warmers and a long-sleeve jersey, and then there was Jeff, who had on a balaclava and winter tights. I tended more toward the Jeff side of the velo-fashion bell curve, finally having resorted to full-length tights and arm-warmers underneath my Kodiak jersey which itself was underneath a vest. Really, though, it's all just a matter of personal preference whether you prefer to be cold at the start and comfortable in the middle or warm at the start and warmer in the middle. All I can say is "layers, layers, layers!"

Today it seemed that the chilly temperature was keeping the speed down quite a bit as we made our way out to Destrehan. When I saw Tim and Woody join in out toward Kenner, I wondered if they would start pushing the pace. Instead, though, they were obviously out for an easy spin and when they and Donald turned back somewhere near the Big Dip, a number of other riders did also. The paceline had already been short-circuited for a while, so most of us up front didn't even notice for a while. Although we were only going 22 mph or so, it still seemed like an effort today. My legs were still feeling a little bit of Sunday's ride, and of course all of the extra layers always make me feel slow as well, so I shouldn't have been too surprised.

After a while we picked up David and Rolan, but David headed home at the turnaround, and Rolan was working hard on technique, spinning a really low gear at a really high RPM. By the time we were on our way back, my vest was in my pocket and the effort level had increased a notch. I was trying to keep it one cog lower than normal so as to avoid straining my still-achy legs. Still, the speed was staying in the 23 mph range most of the time, and there were only four or five rotating at the front. I was probably not the only one who was getting tired, and I remember thinking, "it sure is a long ride back on a day like this!" It seemed like forever before we finally arrived back at the playground where those of us left eased up considerably. It was still a good ride, even if I did get home a few minutes later than usual.