Coffee Shop Ride

December is always a great time to do some of the fun rides that you'd probably never do closer to the racing season. A couple of days ago someone reminded me that I'd been promising a coffee shop ride once the weather got colder. So I sent out an email to see if there was any interest, and next thing I knew I was rolling up to the local Starbucks on a chilly Saturday morning. Although I was nearly half an hour early, I was surprised to see a number of people already there. Soon we had around fifteen riders and had more or less taken over the place as bemused locals wandered in wondering what all the lycra was about. The plan, such as it was, was to ride down to the French Quarter for some beginets at Cafe' du Monde, and then ride through Faubourg Marigny and out to Almonaster, eventually coming back by way of Lakeshore Drive, Metairie Road, Bonnabel and the levee.


These kinds of city rides always require a large dose of patience, and we got a quick start on that when one rider flatted coming out of the coffee shop parking lot. I got that fixed as quickly as I could, and we headed for Audubon Park where I promptly put a big nail through my tire. It was rather windy this morning, but one of the good things about city rides is that when you're in the old neighborhoods you never really feel the wind. Today we took the long way, following the river along Tchoupitoulas Street and taking a little detour across the tracks where the cruise ship terminal is. Eventually we worked our way through the morning traffic to Cafe' du Monde where we went through four orders of hot beignets and a few cups of cafe au lait. It was so good that we had a hard time getting everyone back on the bikes. In fact, at this point we lost a number of people who had to get back home for one reason or another.


The ride out to Almonaster went smoothly, except for yet another flat tire, but when we finally turned north toward the lake we ran into the northwest wind that had come with yesterday's cold front. It wasn't really much of a problem since this was an easy winter ride. I think our average speed was somewhere around 15 mph. Even so, we rode into the wind for a long time, stopping for another break at Kona Cafe, and then working our way through Metairie and Jefferson back to the levee bike path. I ended up with a bit under 50 miles, which was fine since I'm planning on doing the northshore ride tomorrow. The forecast is calling for mid to upper 30s in the morning, but hopefully the sun will be out and it will warm up quickly.