City Rides

It was Saturday morning and I still didn't have the Orbea back together.  I had gotten a "new" old Campi ErgoBrain and so it was finally time to break down and replace all the cables, install the computer, put on some new rubber, and finish it off with some nice fresh handlebar tape.  The brake and derailleur cable replacement went smoothly enough. The ErgoBrain installation, however, was a bit more tedious. As anyone who has done it before can tell you, installing the aptly named ErgoBrain can sometimes feel like doing brain surgery .... especially late at night after a couple of glasses of wine. So it wasn't until very, very late Thursday night that I finally had the little buttons on the brake lever bodies working properly.  I figured I'd finish up the rest Firday night, but an impromptu dinner with the neighbors changed my plans.


Leaving the Quarter with the Cathedral in the background

Saturday morning I rolled the Cervelo out the door and into the 6 am darkness.  Flipping on front and rear blinky lights, I headed out on the quiet streets toward the lake.  The sky was clear and the moon was about full, and there was just a bit of morning fog that made it feel a little colder than it really was. 

When everyone converged on the corner of Marconi and Robt. E. Lee at 7 am, I looked around and realized that we had a really big turnout for this one.  A few of the Herring riders were in town and I wondered if things might get out of hand speed-wize.  I didn't really want to end up with sore legs since I was planning on doing the northshore ride on Sunday.  Once the speed started to ramp up on Hayne Blvd., I settled into the middle of the group as it started to string out.  Then Jacob just rode off the front, taking one or two with him. A sort of semi-serious chase ensued, but lots of people, myself included, were just sitting in.  I remember looking down and seeing 30 mph and thinking how easy it was while sitting in the middle of a big group.  On the way back things bunched up a bit about a mile before the Goodyear Sign sprint, and for some reason I decided it would be fun to give Jacob a leadout, so I tapped him on the shoulder and accelerated down one side of the paceline while he accelerated down the other.  I crossed over as soon as I could and he was right there on my wheel, so I took him straight to the front thinking I could get him maybe 300 meters from the line before blowing up.  Well, that turned out to have been wildly optimistic.  I *maybe* got to within 500 meters before dropping him off.  I glanced back and saw that we had gotten a pretty big gap, but a moment later I heard wheels coming up from behind really fast.  Mark G. was going flat out and caught Jacob well before the finish.  Even so, they didn't really slow down much after the sprint and we ended up chasing all the way down the service road. 



Just the back end of the group.

On the way home I made the crucial mistake of going down Wisner where I ran right into the huge Susan G. Komen breast cancer run/walk event.  I ended up winding my way through a sea of pink down back streets and sidewalks until I finally broke free at Canal Street.

Back at home I put on the new handlebar tape and new tires just in time to ride over to Tulane to meet the club's 2 pm city ride.  Four of us did a nice easy ride down through the French Quarter out to Bywater and back.  Other than the 500 stop signs we rolled through and the exhaust from the tour buses, it was nice.