Wet Streets and Flat Tires

"I think the humidity has returned," I said, even before putting a foot down at the start of the Friday morning ride. The group up on the levee was small, but typical for a Friday, as we headed out for the week's last workday ride. It was a typical Friday ride with everyone taking long steady pulls at moderate speeds. You could see that the sky was changing. After a week or so of atypically dry (relatively speaking) air, the wind was now shifting around to the east. I knew that by evening it would be from the south, pulling in Gulf moisture and putting us back into a more typical late summer pattern.

By late afternoon things at work were shutting down early ahead of the upcoming 3-day weekend, so by 4 pm I was already on my way home. My nephew James and company were coming to town that evening, James from Baton Rouge where he's in architecture grad school, and the others from Florida, so we were planning to meet up at my mother's house for dinner. I guess the timing was off a bit, though, because it was probably around 8:30 or 9:00 before everyone arrived. That wouldn't have been a problem, except that the delay resulted in my drinking at least one beer and two glasses of wine too many, which is why you're looking at Friday's photos on Saturday.

Speaking of Saturday, I rode out to the lakefront, by way of the Harrison Avenue Starbucks, under cloudy skies. It had rained during the night, and the streets were still wet in some places. The group was a bit smaller than usual, but included a new rider who just moved here and is on the History faculty at Loyola. Naturally I failed to get his name. The ride itself got pretty fast down Hayne Blvd. and Chef Highway, the only real problem being that there was still a lot of water on the roads, resulting in a whole lot of wheel spray. As we were flying down Chef I remember wondering who would have the first flat. Sure enough, just after we turned around, Howard flatted. Once he got that fixed we started up again, at which point my own rear tire went flat. So again we stopped. Don't you just love fixing flat tires when the tires are all wet and nasty? We made it all the way to the service road on the way back before Courtney's tire flatted. This time the front of the group kept going and just a few of us stopped. After that we just rode back in at an easy pace.

Assuming the weather cooperates, I'm planning on doing the Northshore ride tomorrow, once I patch a few tubes. BTW, I saw today that Willow won bronze at the Worlds mountain bike championships down under. Always nice to see some U.S. riders kicking butt at Worlds.