Parading Around

New Orleans is in Mardi Gras mode, and as always that requires a certain amount of accommodation from the regular training program. This year the weather seems to be cooperating, for the most part.
So Thursday morning I woke up feeling tired. I got dressed, grabbed the bike, stepped out the door, and just stood there for a while. Despite my best effort, I just didn't feel like riding. There was a strong chilly wind blowing the trees around and I knew I was a little underdressed. I turned around and went back inside. Sometimes you just have to listen to that little voice inside that says, "go back to bed."


Thursday night we headed down to St. Charles Avenue to watch some parades. There were three in a row, the best of which was Muses. Naturally, Muses started last. I was with some of the neighbors, and we had the luxury of access to a condo right on St. Charles Avenue. Everybody else went back up to the condo after the first few floats of Muses, but I stayed down on the street. Eventually they dragged me back home around 10:30 pm. The worst part was that I missed seeing the Rolling Elvi, a particularly fun-loving group of which Ed N. is a member. Anyway, I took a bunch of photos of those parades. One of those is Chris Harvey, who did a lot of racing around here at one time. We also saw the Big Easy RollerGirls, who were part of the Muses parade.


At least I made it out to ride on Friday. We had a small group but did a nice steady ride on the levee. That night it was back to St. Charles Avenue for some more champagne, beer and Popeye's Fried Chicken, and of course a couple more parades. At one point a rider fell off of a float practically right in front of us. He ended up kind of dangling by his safety ropes and the crowd had to lift him up so he could unclip and climb back up the back of the float (that's where they all have a hidden set of stairs). A couple of hours later I discovered that one of my photos showed him on the way down. So anyway - another bunch of photos from Friday night.


By Saturday morning I was feeling better but had to drive the car out to the Giro Ride because I needed to get some LAMBRA cameras and stuff to Dave who was going to take them up to the Monroe race on Sunday. Somehow, that basically resulted in me getting a late start, so I was kind of lucky I didn't miss the Giro altogether. The ride was fairly fast on the way out, and I think part of that was that some of the riders wanted to catch all of the triathletes before the turnaround. Even so, lots of the Giro riders were planning on doing the longer ride out to Fort Pike, so that certainly served to moderate the speeds a little bit.


After the Giro, Steve M., Jay, Robert and I stopped for coffee for a while before heading home. There were already lots of people camped out on Carrollton Avenue (many since the day before) protecting their spots for tonight's Endymion parade. Soon after I arrived back home, I was heading out on the commuter to meet my nephew, niece, and friends on the parade route to watch the Tucks parade. As usual, that was a fun parade to watch. I got home about an hour ago to refuel because in another hour I'll be heading downtown to Tulane's Tidewater building on Canal Street to wait for Endymion. We'll have the nephew and his entourage, along with The Wife's sister and friend. Should be interesting. I'm pretty sure the Florida group is planning on walking down to the French Quarter after the parade, so I'll probably be on call to pick them up in the middle of the night.