Chamois Time

It was a weekend of nice weather and long group rides, in many ways not so much different than the one before.  On the agenda for Saturday was an NOBC club ride out to Fort Pike. Although we were scheduled to start fifteen minutes after the Giro from Kona Cafe' on Lakeshore Drive, I decided to stop at Starbucks and have a cup of dark roast with a few of the Giro riders before heading over to Lakeshore Drive to meet the NOBC group.  It was surprisingly chilly, and even though it was supposed to warm up considerably, I rode out there with knee and arm-warmers.  I didn't regret it, either. 

Over at Kona I found a good turnout for the club ride.  It can be a little tricky sometimes finding just the right group speed that will keep everyone together.  The ride turned out to be pretty good, despite a steady stream of speeding dump trucks along Chef Highway.  We have been dealing with the trucks for months already, and I suppose it will be quite a few more before the levee work out in the east is finally completed.  At any rate, it will be nice when the work ends and our weekend rides can return to normal. Unlike the Giro, the club ride stopped a few times to regroup and make adjustments for the rising temperature.  We even posed for a picture on top of the Rigolets bridge.  Kyle, who moved here recently after completing his degree at Purdue, was nice enough take the photo, although I'm afraid my little camera struggled a bit with the focus.  After the ride, a number of us stuck around at Kona to eat, so by the time I got home it was after noon and I had almost 90 miles on the odometer.  Thanks to the moderate pace, however, I felt I'd be good to go for the Sunday northshore ride.

Some time early Saturday morning the Sewerage and Water Board's big water treatment plant lost power for a few hours, and as a result almost the entire city was under a "boil order" until Sunday afternoon.  Really sucked for the restaurants.

So Sunday morning I drove across the causeway with Woody, who was trying to recover from a head cold, for the regular northshore ride.  It was much warmer than Saturday and although I started out wearing arm-warmers, I knew they'd end up in my pocket pretty soon.  The group was big - about twenty-five, I think, and we headed north from the school at a smooth but brisk pace.  Things stayed together nicely up through Enon and along Choctaw Road to the sprint just before La. 10, but then we had a long delay because Kurt (was it Kurt?) broke a spoke in his rear wheel and it went too out of line to clear the seat stays.  After loosening a bunch of spokes, though, we finally got it to where it would roll, so he and Elizabeth headed back.  I think a few others had also turned back early as well, so as we turned onto the hilly stretch heading toward Sie Jenkins Road we were down to a nice well-matched group. 

The rest of the ride was pretty good - fast enough to be a good workout but not hard enough to make me a worthless couch potato for the rest of the day.  We did cheat a bit and take the Dummyline Road shortcut, probably because some people had plans for the early afternoon Saints game.  The last ten miles or so got fairly fast, and by the time we were on the last stretch my legs were beginning to complain.  Anyway, although I was back home by about 1 pm, I sure put in a whole lot of chamois time this weekend.

That afternoon I picked up a copy of the new Peloton magazine which has a nice article on New Orleans and Kenny that Jered put together before leaving for Europe.  Tomorrow (oh, well actually today I guess) I will have a lot of things to wrap up at work because we'll be driving up to Iowa on Tuesday.