In Town

It seemed a little strange to actually be in town for the second weekend in a row during May, but here I am. By Friday afternoon I'd already made a bunch (far, far too many, in fact) of copies of Tour de LA flyers, LAMBRA brochures, and NOBC one-pagers, and I was thinking I was all set for Saturday's Tour de Lis. Thanks to Mignon's relentless networking we were scheduled to have a table there with information on bike racing. We'd also arranged to have a popup shelter and table for the Tulane Cycling Club. I knew it would be a great opportunity for some much-needed visibility. Later in the afternoon I got a call from Robin asking that I bring the NOBC pop-up shelter, so I ditched my plans to ride out there and instead put in a reservation for the car. Later that evening Jordan emailed asking if anyone had done any handouts for Tulane Cycling. Nobody had, so some time around midnight I whipped something up and printed out as many as my little home printer and inadequate paper supply could handle.

The event itself was quite a laid-back affair with around 600 participants that included a run/walk and a short multi-lap bike ride. I got there around 6:30 armed with a big cup of coffee and rushed around putting up shelters and stealing tables and hanging banners for both the NOBC/LAMBRA booth and the Tulane Cycling booth. I looked around at all of the organization and volunteers and thought, "This could be a much bigger event." Our little "booth" was reasonably active, especially after some of the Giro Ride riders stopped by. At one point the person who writes the "What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today" blog, who happens to be a Tulane faculty member, came over for a visit, so it was nice to finally put a face to the blog. To liven things up a bit, the CEO of SRAM, who was in town for the event, stopped by and ended up hanging around for quite a while once Kenny showed up. This was a nice development for a number of reasons. I'd just read a nice article in Road Bike Action magazine on the history of SRAM, which was the major sponsor of the Tour de Lis this year. He and his wife are also Tulane alumni. I think the event raised somewhere around $180k this year for the LAF, CAGNO and WBR. By the time I got back home around noon, Kenny had already texted me to say he'd talked Stan into riding the Sunday Giro. I was impressed. Anyway, despite my best intentions I never did ride on Saturday.

Sunday morning was noticeably cooler and quite windy thanks to a little cool front, and as I rode into the headwind out to the Harrison Starbucks to meet the Giro Ride I noted how fresh my legs felt after a day off. I figured the ride today would be smaller than usual since it's Mother's Day. I was right about that. I also figured it would be an easy ride. I wasn't quite so right about that, however. Kenny and Stan showed up as I was finishing my coffee and a little while later we all headed for Lakeshore Drive and turned into a brisk northeast or southeast (or both) headwind. Rob seemed to be feeling particularly frisky today and zoomed off the front on Hayne Blvd. I knew he wouldn't get too far in the headwind, but it nonetheless got the group going. The rest of the way down Hayne stayed fairly fast, and I was glad to see that the CEO of SRAM can ride! So we basically battled the headwind all the way out to the Venetian Isles turnaround. Fortunately, there wasn't too much of a crosswind component so although the group did eventually split, it didn't shatter like it sometimes does.

The return trip, of course, got pretty fast thanks to some nice sections of tailwind, although we never really approached the 37 mph rumored to have been Saturday's top speed. As we were approaching the Goodyear Sign Sprint I found myself second wheel behind Eddie D with a very long way to go. Just as I was resigning myself to doing a long leadout for the group, however, we got streamed on the left by an early sprint and I never really had a chance to catch a wheel. Oh well. Live by the sprint, die by the sprint.

So it was a pretty decent workout today despite the smaller than usual group. I rode back by way of the French Quarter with Kenny, Stan (who was staying downtown), Eddie and Woody. After Kenny peeled off at Louisiana I had a nice relaxing ride back home as I enjoyed what just might be one of the last pleasantly cool mornings until Fall.