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.