Alone in the Wind

Saturday night was the big Endymion parade (photos), for which we organized a three-car caravan to the Tidewater Building downtown. This was pretty nice, since we had tons of food and drink up in the Psychiatry office, not to mention a parking garage and bathrooms. The weather was great, so we spent most of our time out on the street. As usual, the parade was long and slow by the time it finally got downtown. Everyone had a great time, though, and shortly before the last float rolled past, the Florida gang took off for a visit to the French Quarter and Bourbon Street. Just as we walked into the building to go home a light rain started falling. Perfect timing! The plan was for them to call me whenever they were ready and I'd go pick them up. It was a plan. So I got the call around midnight and told them to meet me at Decatur and Canal St. I was, of course, assuming that all of the parade stuff would be long gone by then. Well, not so much. I turned onto Canal and ran into complete gridlock. Most of Canal St. was still barricaded off completely and there were hundreds of cars trying to get down to the Quarter. I called the Florida gang and told them to start walking. It took a while, but thanks to my knowledge of local roads we managed to extricate ourselves from the masses and make it back home.

Sunday morning was much colder and just ridiculously windy. I actually got dressed and stepped out the door in time to make the Giro ride. Then it hit me. The wind. The cold. The lack of sleep. I thought about it for a little while and decided it would be a good day for along solo ride. Later. When the sun was out. So I put my ride on 'hold' until noon. By then it was at least a little warmer and I spent well over two hours up on the levee bike path, alone, doing battle with the fierce north wind. It was work. As I was returning I saw the three tractor-trailers with the Budweiser Clydesdales on their way to the parades.

Last night the sister-in-law and three of her kids were in town for Bacchus (photos). We parked a long way down St. Charles and had a nice walk to the parade route on Napoleon where they set up camp way too far from the street. We were at Prytania and Napoleon, near Anne Rice's old house, aka St. Elizabeth's. It didn't take long before a couple of the kids were unhappy with their ability to catch anything, so I took them through the crowd all the way to the street where we had a great view and caught a ton of beads and stuff. Half the time I had one of them on my shoulders. I'll be paying for that, I'm sure.

So this morning it was still pretty cold and windy, but I headed out on time for the 6:40 levee ride anyway. Apparently I was the only one. I saw a freshly decorated Truck Float parked at someone's house, and then met up with Taylor along the way and we got in a pretty good ride despite the wind. The levee was very quiet today and the only other rider I saw was John.

I just got back from the bike shop where I completed a long-overdue restocking of my bicycle security inventory, which is to say that I bought a big U-lock and a bunch of cable locks. We're planning on riding bikes down to 2nd Street this evening for the Proteus parade, and we'll probably do the same for Mardi Gras, so some solid locks are in order, and with five bikes to secure, my usual old locks were just not going to cut it!