Up and Down the Mississippi

It was a good thing I didn't wait until the last minute to meet the group over at Starbucks this morning. We were doing a club style ride today - moderate pace, interesting route, coffee and beignets - and since we weren't starting until 7:30, I might easily have rolled around in bed for an extra half-hour. Luckily, I got up a little early. Equally luckily, I went downstairs with the idea of putting a little lube on the chain before the ride. Unluckily, I discovered my rear tire was flat - the same tire that I'd flatted yesterday. Turned out there was a tiny piece of steel wire stuck in the tire. I needed pliers to get the damned thing out. Then I patched the tube and put it right back into the tire while, probably while the glue was still wet. I could have waited a while for it to fully dry, but if I had, I wouldn't have had time for a cup of coffee before the ride. I needed that cup of coffee. So despite the delay, I was the first person to arrive at Starbucks.

We started out around 7:45 with a nice group of ten or twelve, eventually picking up a few more en route. It was a chilly and overcast morning with a nagging wind. I was a bit on the cold side for most of the day's ride until the sun finally came out. We rode up the river in a nice double paceline out to the Destrehan (aka I-310) bridge. I really like the long climb up that pretty suspension bridge, although today I wasn't interested in pushing it too much. After spending most of Saturday afternoon and evening cleaning stuff out of the attic so that I could store stuff that I was cleaning out of the back room so that I could move a bed into that room from another room so that I could put a new double bed in there, I knew my bikie back and arms would be a little sore. I don't know how many trips I made from the basement to the attic and back, but they were many for sure. Anyway, as I'd expected, the group kind of shattered going over the bridge, but we regrouped at the bottom before the rather uncomfortable five miles on the shoulderless river road before the westbank bike path starts.

The westbank bike path always feels a lot different from the eastbank. It seems like the river is much closer to the levee on that side, and until you get to Gretna, it feels like you're really out in the country. We had a rather long delay waiting for the bridge at the Harvey Canal lock, but after that it seemed the sun was out more and I finally started to warm up a bit. We arrived at the Algiers ferry just after it left, so that meant a long wait while it crossed the river twice. Luckily the sun was out, so it wasn't too bad.

Once we got onto the ferry we walked over to the sunny side for the fast trip across the river, and then headed straight for Cafe' du Monde. When I rolled up to Cafe' du Monde, I figured we'd have to bail for sure. There was a line of people a block long waiting to get in. Of course, being locals, we knew about the top-secret take-out window in back. There, the line was relatively short, but still a bit longer than I'd have wanted to wait. Just then one of the waiters popped out from the seating area and when we asked him if we could give him an order, he said, "sure!" Awesome. Felt like we'd won the lottery! So we ordered five orders of beignets and a few cups of cafe' au lait, and ten minutes later we were all happy campers.

By the time we left Cafe' du Monde it was after noon and I guess a few people were needing to get home since it was, after all, SuperBowl day and there were pre-game parties to attend. We flew down Decatur and Magazine like a bunch of kamakazie hipsters on fixies, weaving between the lanes of gridlocked traffic through the downtown streets. Once we finally got a clear road on Magazine Street, we just took over the road all the way back uptown. Definitely a fun ride.

Oh, but the way, there are 44 seconds left at the Superbowl, the Saints are ahead 31 to 17, and they just got the ball. Could it be? Holy shit. They won the Superbowl.