The Ride Before Christmas

It was crisp, cool and clear as I rode out, quite overdressed, to meet the Friday morning levee ride.  Ordinarily I would have been expecting a nice easy ride by myself, but this particular Friday was the day before Christmas and since a lot of people were on holiday, the plan was to meet at the relatively civilized hour of 7 am.  Of course, being a creature of habit, I arrived at 6:40 anyway, so I rode down to the playground where I met up with a few more riders, and then we rode back to the usual starting spot.  Once we finally got going we had about a dozen, I guess.  Scott asked, "Want to ride all the way out to the end today?"  Mignon replied, "How about the 'real' end?"  And so it was decided.  The usual turnaround for the usual long ride is actually nearly two miles from the end of the asphalt since the bike path was extended early this year.

It was a good group today, and everyone was pretty much on the same page.  We took nice mile-long pulls at a comfortable 21-22 mph., for the most part.  With a light tailwind, it felt fairly easy, especially when sitting in the paceline enjoying the draft.  Way, way out near the end of the bike path the pace eased up.  Just then Mignon pointed excitedly toward the river.  "Eagles!"  I had to turn around before I could see them, but sure enough, there was a pair of bald eagles perched in the batture trees.  I stopped and fumbled with my camera, but before I could even turn it on they both took off up the river. Anyway, any ride where you spot an eagle around here is a good one.

So the ride back involved a bit more cross and tailwind, but in general things stayed smooth.  We had a couple of stops when Scott's tire went soft.  He tried shooting in some CO₂ at first to see if he could make it back but within a mile or two it was already going flat again, so we stopped for a proper tube change.  When we got back to the playground I followed Mark to his house to pick up my copy of  the Chasing Legends DVD (and a stray stopwatch that I think actually belongs to LAMBRA).  A few hours later I was at a family lunch, and from here on out the next 24 hours will be devoted mostly to eating pie and drinking wine, or mimosas, depending on the time of day.  Hope everyone has a merry little christmas!

No Draft for the Wheelsuckers

After a couple of warmish days, this morning's 40-something temperature felt positively cold as I rolled out in the dark to meet the 6:15 levee ride.  It wouldn't have been so bad were it not for the strong north wind that had brought in the cooler air.  There were just a few riders waiting when I arrived, but by the time we got to the playground the group numbered somewhere around twenty. I'd started out at the front and soon found myself alone as the group slowed down here and there to pick up various additional riders.  By the time they finally got organized I was starting to feel the effects of the increasing wind and knew it was going to be a difficult ride.  A strong north wind and a big group means just one thing on the levee bike path -- there would be no draft for the wheelsuckers like me today.  As Erich once said about crosswind rides, there's just a table for four on the levee.

Dropping all the way back to the end of the long string of riders I soon found myself fighting for the last three inches of asphalt in a nearly futile effort to salvage just a sliver of draft.  As the followed the bends in the river the wind constantly shifted from crosswind to headwind.  Somewhere up ahead of me the paceline had been short-circuited.  Nobody was dropping back to where I was and unless I wanted to get out into the wind and force my way into the rotation I was kind of stuck where I was. I wasn't really in a fighting mood, and besides, I figured I'd get a good enough workout anyway, under the circumstances.  Then, at the dip, there was a flat, so a few of us stopped to assist, eventually meeting the group on its way back.  Unfortunately, the return trip wasn't much better that the outgoing one, and by the time I got home with forty-something miles on the odometer I wasn't feeling particularly short-changed in the workout department anyway. 

At one point I pulled my camera out of my pocket, then had to battle my way back up the group. I rode there at the end of the paceline, three inches from the edge of the path, holding my camera and losing ground before I finally decided that the cost of taking a picture would be a very long ride home alone, so I shoved it all back into my jersey, almost getting dropped in the process.  There's this one long stretch just upriver of the parish line where a north wind results in a mile or so of direct crosswind.  The group often splits there, and indeed it did so today.  I was near the back and didn't notice the gap opening until Pat looked back and said something.  He then proceeded to pull me all the way across the gap.

So The Daughter is in for Christmas along with her two little dogs, Odin and Echo. Since I couldn't take any photos while riding, I guess the one up at the top will have to do for today.  I expect we'll have a pretty good group up on the levee tomorrow, maybe at 7 am instead of the usual 6:40?

Winter Group Rides

It was still dark as I stood there over my duffel bag considering what to bring for a long ride starting in the low 40s.  I finally just threw my hands up and said, "hell with it, I'll just bring everything and decide later."  "Later" would not come for over two hours because Saturday's group ride called for a drive up to St. Francisville to sample a little bit of the infamous Rouge-Roubaix course.  The first stop, though, was PJ's Coffee at Clearview Shopping Center where I was surprised at the number of riders on hand for the impromptu road trip. 

I drove up with Mignon and Mike, who was in town from Seattle.  The temperature was in the low 40s when we finally got on the bikes up at Bains Elementary, and although I figured it would warm up a bit during the ride, I didn't skimp on the clothes.  The plan was to put in around 80 miles, including a couple of the gravel road sections of the R-R course.  We probably hadn't gone five miles before we had the first flat, which was mine.  I dug a little piece of the levee bike path out of my rear tire and we were back on the road fairly quickly, but it would eventually turn out to have been just the first of five flats we'd have that day. When the group suddenly slowed down to make a turn onto the first dirt road, somebody hit somebody and Ed hit the asphalt.  He wasn't too happy about it, but he was at least relatively unharmed.

Half a mile down the dirt road the pace ramped up and I looked at the computer to see 28 mph.  I was hanging onto the trio Frank, Woody and Kenny as we flew down the nicely packed dirt and gravel and wondering how long I was going to be able to keep it up when we heard someone yelling from behind about another flat tire.  For the first forty miles or so I think we had a flat roughly every eight miles.  Anyway, we finally turned onto the R-R "2nd gravel road" with its infamous Block House Climb.  This time, though, the road was really easy to ride.  The gravel and dirt was pretty hard-packed and you could even get out of the saddle to climb up that long, steep hill.  I guess I've had to walk part of that hill about 40% of the times I've done it, but then usually it's in deep loose gravel.  This time didn't seem nearly as hard as usual.

With all of the stops for flats and crashes and such, we ended up cutting the ride short and skipping the last R-R dirt road, reducing our mileage to only 65 for the day. Although I was a little disappointed not to have been able to ride that last dirt road, it was still a pretty hard ride and around 4:30 pm by the time I finally got back home. 

The plan for Sunday was to ride out with the Giro Ride group, make the turnaround, and then catch the NOBC club ride, which was starting half an hour behind the Giro, on its way out.  It felt pretty cold as I rode out to Starbucks to meet the group at around 6:15.  The group was on the small side, and as we rode over the two bridges Tim and Woody rode off the front before the rest of the group even noticed.  I didn't realize they were out there until we were halfway down Hayne Blvd., and by then they were essentially out of sight.  The group wasn't really going all that hard, but once we got onto Chef Highway a nice rotating double paceline formed up, so that was nice.  I was behind Howard in the paceline as we shared the work into a moderate headwind.  The only problem was that Howard would pull off but not slow down, forcing me to accelerate.  I put up with it once or twice but eventually I just eased up and left him up there since the surges were threatening to dismantle the paceline. 

On the way back I found myself a bit off the front chasing with two of the guys on TT bikes.  We were going pretty fast with a bit of a tailwind, and by the time I spotted the NOBC group coming the other way we'd reached the part of Chef Highway that has a median, so it took me a while to actually turn around.  When I did, and that headwind hit me in the face, I figured there was no way I was going to catch them, but fortunately they had seen me and slowed down, sending a couple of riders off the back to help pace me back up.  That was nice. I'd left the house without taking anything to eat, so by the time I made the turnaround at Venetian Isles, for the second time that day, I was starting to feel a little bonky, but I decided to just go with it and see how long that cup of coffee would actually take me.  After a quick breakfast (well, it was more like brunch by then) at Kona I headed home with Steve who was putting in a long day and was going to pick up the levee bike path and ride all the way out to Ormond.  I ended the day with sore legs and 75 miles on the computer.  Shouldn't been much of a problem to take an easy day tomorrow, I think.

"Rest Day" (yeah, right)

As they always say, "If you don't like the weather in New Orleans, just stick around. It'll change."  Change it did indeed.  Thursday morning the temperature was back above 60.  Since I seem to have a hard time adjusting to these fluctuations, and knowing that all that water coming down the Mississippi was still just as cold as it had been on Tuesday, I pulled on the knee-warmers anyway.  Why risk a winter bout of tendonitis just for one freak ride in shorts?  The Thursday ride had a pretty good turnout, especially considering how low the turnouts have been lately, and as the group made its way up the river that little bit of tailwind kept nudging the pace higher and higher.  With Brady and Woody and a few others taking long pulls at the front, we had a nice fast ride out to the turnaround that was still manageable by everyone.  By then people were pretty warmed up and so there was a bit of a break for some "wardrobe adjustments."

The light headwind on the return trip kept things pretty much under control, so all-in-all it was a good training ride, as I rode with Brady back down Oak Street toward home he said something about Zotz as we went past, at which point my bike suddenly made a u-turn and, next thing I knew, I was enjoying a cup of dark roast.  As I sat there I indulged in a little guilt trip about the current status of my fitness and the blatantly obvious reasons for its recent decline.  It seems I've been taking an inordinate number of "rest days" lately, and that, combined with the usual holiday surplus of ad libitum chocolate, cookies and wine, are already taking a toll. It's just so damned easy to skip a ride this time of year, and it doesn't help that so many neo-coaches keep writing about how riders are always overtraining and need more recovery time.  I mean, really. Recovery from what?  Old age? At the level that most of us train this time of year, the risk of true overtraining is pretty damned low.  It sure makes for a good excuse, though.  In fact, I kind of employed it just this morning.

Today I awoke to grey skies, a temperature in the low 60s, and a disturbingly low level of motivation.  It would be a perfect day for yet another "recovery ride."  Somehow, though, I felt chilled from the get-go.  I got dressed, got on the bike, rode a few blocks, and said -- out loud -- "this is crazy."  It was just one of those days when I didn't want to ride.  I even convinced myself that my legs felt sore from Thursday.  I'm sure part of it was the depressing weather, and perhaps the lingering depressive effects from the shopping coma induced last night by an unwanted trip to Wal-Mart and Pier One and some other place like that. Whatever, I certainly can't blame overtraining for this one. Anyway, after aborting the morning ride I loaded up the bike with four bottles of wine (office Christmas gifts) and headed off to work a little earlier than usual by way of Starbucks.  As I rode cautiously down Lowerline, listening to the rattle of glass wine bottles in my bike's "grocery pannier." I suddenly noticed that the street below me was littered with those pretty bright yellow leaves of a Ginkgo tree.  There's nothing more spectacular than a Ginkgo tree in the fall, but those bright yellow leaves only last a little while. I looked up and just had to stop to take a picture.  I'll bet the big Ginkgo back on campus next to the Architecture building is pretty impressive right now.  When I got to work I saw that Mark had picked up the nice PA system that I'd found yesterday on Craigs List.  It looks like it was a really good deal for the club.  The last couple of years we'd been renting a PA system for our races.  This one should pay for itself after two events.  We can also rent it to other clubs in the area if they need it.

Worth a Try

It was some time early Monday when the local weatherpersons started sounding the alarms.  Warnings were issued, shelters were opened, the city braced for imminent disaster.  Yes, the temperature was going to dip below 32° F.  The prediction for the city went as low as 27, but I had my doubts about that. With all of the water around us here in New Orleans, and its attendant specific heat, along with the abundance of asphalt and concrete in the immediate vicinity of my own house, we rarely hit the predicted lows.  So when I woke up this morning and saw the thermometer reading around 32°, I wasn't too surprised.  I knew it would feel a couple of degrees colder up on the levee, but the wind was relatively light and had already started switching around to the East, so I layered up in winter gear, including my brand new Giordana NOBC jacket, slathered some chap stick on my cheekbones and nose, and set out for the levee.  It was definitely worth a try, even though I knew there was no way I was going to make it all the way out to Destrehan as we usually do on Tuesdays. Nor was I holding out a lot of hope that there would be anyone else out there, but at least I knew I could easily get in 25 miles or so without getting too uncomfortable.  These modern riding clothes are just awesome.  There was a time when this sort of weather would find me either sleeping in, or riding in wool tights with a scratchy leather chamois, a heavy wool and nylon jacket with newspaper stuffed underneath, and suffering immediately with cold hands and even colder feet.

To my surprise, there were two people waiting when I got to the levee (a couple of minutes late, of course), and so we headed up the river without delay.  Once we rounded the Ochsner bend the light wind, which seemed to be coming largely from the east, was more or less at our backs, keeping us relatively warm, or at least relatively less cold. Within a couple of miles I was already reaching for the zipper on my wind vest as I sat there in Woody's draft.  Of course, the bike path was particularly quiet this morning, so we pretty much had the whole thing to ourselves. Every now and then Woody would reluctantly drop back so we could each take brief pulls, but for the most part he was doing more than his fair share today.  We turned around at the parish line, knowing better than to gamble on extending the downwind leg on such a chilly day.  The return trip turned out to be mostly into a light headwind and as we made our way back toward town I could feel the cold starting to work its way through shoe-covers and gloves into my feet and hands.  Our timing was good and I got back home a bit cold but still a long way from miserable, feeling good that I'd made the decision to give it a try today. 

Warmup and Winter Winds

A nice little warm-up in the weather on Friday found me up on the levee looking for a little down-time.  The levee police must have been thinking the same thing, because they had the bike path closed underneath the Huey P. Long bridge.  I turned around and rode back down the river for a little spin around Audubon Park and an early return to the house. By Saturday morning it was a little cooler, but the more serious stuff was still eight hours away as I made my way out to meet the Giro Ride at Kona Cafe'.  It was going to be a complicated Saturday.  The plan was to ride out to the Giro, do part of the ride (out to Chef Highway), return to Kona (where they had free coffee for Giro riders), catch a ride to the northshore with Mark to help with the Junior Training Clinic, and finally return home to put up a few holiday decorations. 

The ride itself had been a little unusual.  Right when we started from Marconi someone apparently had a little mechanical problem that the front of the group, including I, didn't know about.  We were way out by Leon C. Simon when I finally looked back and said, "Where is everybody?"  So we slowed down even more until the group finally caught up somewhere near the Seabrook bridge.  A few riders went off the front on Hayne and the pace ramped up quickly until the gap was finally closed, but since I never saw the front it wasn't to hard from my perspective.  Out at Chef I turned back with Mark, Vivian and a few others.  The timing worked out nicely and we arrived at the training clinic right on time where we spent a couple of hours with Bob M. instructing a few of our junior riders on proper cornering technique.

The forecast for Sunday morning was a little harsh.  Temperature in the low 40s with an official high-wind advisory.  Regardless, we had about fifteen riders for the start of the northshore ride and we turned out of the parking lot directly into a 20 mph north wind.  I was wearing the clothes I'd normally wear for temperatures in the 30s.  Considering the wind, I thought we would have a fairly easy ride, but within the first few miles I knew it was not to be.  Despite the unrelenting wind the effort level, if not the actual ground speed, remained high, putting a few riders into difficulty almost from the start. By the time we reached Highway 10, a bit less than halfway through the day's 65 mile ride, a few riders had turned back and a few more had decided to take a shortcut back.  That left us with eight or nine for the remainder of the ride.  We finally got a decent tailwind as we turned east, but that just meant that the speed went from 21 mph to 29 mph, and I could finally take off one pair of gloves and start unzipping things. I guess we were about fifty miles into the ride when I really started feeling my legs.  After an absolutely brutal trip down Hwy. 1072 in a quartering headwind, I'd been hoping for a good tailwind for the return trip down Lee Road, but by then the wind had shifted a bit and the best we got was a crosswind and some protection from the roadside trees.

The last stretch, from Enon back to the Lee Road school, felt pretty hard.  I guess that was partly my own fault for refusing to drop back when things started to split up coming over the firetower climb.  So it's 4:30 pm right now and I'm sitting here with feet that are still cold, watching the Saints game on the TV and the USAC men's cyclocross championships on the computer.  Tomorrow's going to have to be an easy day.  Really easy.  Could be worse.  Up in Iowa City right now it's 10 F with winds gusting to 30 mph and a forecast low for tonight of -4.

Beginning to Feel Like Winter

The morning levee ride have been hit hard by the recent drop in morning temperatures.  Yesterday I was running a little late, and when I finally got to the levee bike path I ran across Woody and a couple of other guys going in the other direction. "We going to ride around Audubon Park," they said.  The only rider who had actually shown up at the usual time was Big Richard, so I went with the larger group and turned around.  I ended up with a nice hour's spin.

This morning the alarm went off at 5:45.  I reached out from under the covers and turned it off.  At 6:00 the alarm on my watch went off.  I shoved my hand underneath the pillow until it stopped.  At 6:10 it went off again.  This time I fumbled for a button to silence it, but still didn't actually get out of bed. It was nearly 6:30 by the time I actually got up. I still would have had enough time to make it to the ride except for the fact that I'd left practically all of my riding clothes in the dryer down in the basement. By the time I'd pulled out the gloves and shoe-covers and other essential cold-weather gear I knew I'd be late.  The sky was grey and so it was darker than usual when I finally hit the road, and when I arrived at the levee three minutes late I didn't even slow down. For the next half hour I just cruised at around 20 mph out to Williams Blvd., by which point I realized that there probably wasn't anybody else out there.  When I turned around I met up with Donald who said, "I was beginning to think you were avoiding me."  Apparently he had been chasing me the whole way out.  So we rode back together into a light headwind. Eventually I dropped back into his draft.  Sometimes riding with Donald is like riding with a diesel truck. He just keeps going and going and going.

It's been a busy week at work so far, but I sense that things will be winding down rather quickly over the next week or so. This little surge of activity is probably just people trying to wrap up some things before the holidays.  Speaking of holidays, I'm always surprised how early exams are at Tulane (and elsewhere).  I think most of the students will be finishing up their exams in the next day or two.  For our own office, it won't make much of a difference except that it will start getting hard to find some of the faculty.

Weathering Winter

Those  barriers seem higher than they look

It really feels like winter around here today, and that can mean only one thing.  I'll be complaining regularly about the cold weather despite my incongruous compulsion to ride in it anyway.  Just to get things started, let me complain about this very morning. I awoke to a temperature in the upper 30s, with a north wind to match, and thought long and hard about whether it was worth going out on the road for what was probably not going to be much of a recovery ride. I did it anyway, of course, and as usual it wasn't quite as bad as I'd imagined. After all, the upper 30s doesn't quite qualify as arctic.  It's all relative, though, and relatively speaking I was pretty cold.  I was also a bit sore from yesterday.

Sunday morning I had made the drive up to Baton Rouge for the second day of their 2-day CX-Palooza cyclocross race with the idea of helping out with the officiating and jumping into the "A" race for a few laps.  As it turned out, the weather was pretty much ideal for this sort of thing.  Well, at least it was ideal for somebody with 30mm tires and a complete lack of cyclocross skills.  So after scoring the "B" race, I quickly changed into riding clothes and sped off for a couple of practice laps on the Highland Park course.  Luckily for me the entire course, except for the two sections of barriers, was rideable, even on my road bike masquerading as a cyclocross bike. It was a nice long course with lap times for the faster guys of around 5 minutes and for the slower guys like me, 6 minutes.  I lined up pretty much DFL and for the most part maintained that slot throughout the 45 minute race.  It was actually a lot of fun even at my mediocre pace.  After a nice long and flat finish straight there was a sharp right turn up a hill, around a tree and back down the hill, another U-turn around a tree, and then the first set of double barriers.  My first couple of tries over those things were really ugly, but I started getting the hang of it eventually.  Another few twists and turns and then the course went across a little bridge and straight up a very steep washout. I was glad that my low gear of 44x26 proved adequate to keep my feet off the ground on that one.  That was followed by a few tight and swoopy turns and then a fast downhill with an off-camber right and quick crossing of a soft muddy spot where I was sure my front wheel would eventually dig in and send me over the bars (it never did, though).  Then a right up a little hill and a second set of barriers that I had a lot more trouble with than the first. Coming over the barriers the route continued uphill for a little bit, so you had to run a few steps before you had enough momentum to leap back onto the saddle and try to clip in.  The clipping-in part seemed to be a big problem for me, as I'm really not used to those old-style shimano mountain bike pedals and cleats.  After that there were a number of curves and some easy rolling terrain that was fairly fast, including a trip through a sand trap underneath a park swing set.  Then there was a final downhill with a sharp right turn back onto the finish straight. I felt like I got a good workout despite getting lapped twice by all of the leaders.

On the officiating side, I discovered that in order to be able to pick up rider data for everyone who has a cyclocross license I need to download both the USCF and the NORBA databases, since both types of licenses include cyclocross.  Unfortunately, for riders with only NORBA licenses there are no club or team listings. Rather inconvenient. I spent a lot of time Sunday night getting the results ready for posting and uploading, especially considering that there were only 23 riders!  Then, after wasting all of that time, I discovered a little link way down at the bottom of the USAC promoters download page that said, "CROSS all riders."  Crap.

Ninety and Knobbies

The weather around here has been changing faster than I can change clothes lately.  This morning I went out perfectly attired to meet the Giro Ride, but I knew my pockets would soon be stuffed with discarded clothes. My original plan of doing Saturday's Baton Rouge cyclocross race had been rearranged when I got a request to officiate Sunday's 'cross race.  I also needed to pick up The Wife from the Westin downtown in the afternoon, so I set my sights on Sundays cyclocross race and figured I'd do the NOBC club ride out to Fort Pike this morning.  After a quick stop for coffee I met the Giro Ride group at Robert E. Lee Blvd. and was surprised how many riders were there.  Since the NOBC group wasn't leaving for another fifteen minutes I decided to go ahead and ride with the Giro group out to Venetian Isles and then pick up the NOBC group when it came by later.  It was a good plan.  The Giro turned out to be pretty fast and so rather than sit around at Venetian Isles for twenty minutes or so, I started riding back down Chef Highway until I finally saw the group coming a few miles later. 

The NOBC group had a good paceline going and with a nice little tailwind we made pretty good time out to Fort Pike.  For a change, the view from the top of the bridge was great today. I was feeling pretty good, but by the time the odometer was reading 65 miles my legs were starting to feel the distance a bit.  Later, a few of us stopped at Kona Cafe to eat.  By the time I got home I had 90 miles on the computer and I had a feeling my legs were not going to be too happy about that cyclocross race on Sunday.

It'll be interesting to see if my bike holds together for Sunday's race.  My poor-man's retro cyclocross bike is a 1972 vintage English frame with 5-speed friction shifting. I finally broke down and bought a couple of 30mm cyclocross tires for it.  The problem was that the wheels on the bike were 27".  I had a nice pair of 700c 6-speed clinchers, so I figured I'd just swap the freewheel over to the those wheels and all would be good.  Unfortunately the old freewheel had welded itself to the hub and the removal notches were mangled, so I never could get it off.  Luckily the LBS actually had a 5-speed freewheel in stock. 

Then I just had to fix the loose headset, reposition the brake pads (which I hope I don't actually have to rely on), replace the missing bolt holding the cleat onto my mountain bike shoe, and replace both derailleur cables (the front one had gotten water inside the housing and was in pretty bad shape).  While I was at it I installed a "new" old-style Concor saddle that's been in a bag for the better part of twenty years.  Hopefully nothing will come loose because I didn't really have a chance to go out for a test ride.  Fortunately I won't have to worry about slowing anybody down tomorrow since that would require me to be in front of them and we all know that's not going to happen.

Long Tights and Blinky Lights

Heading back downriver into the morning sun

The days are growing shorter now and together with our most recent cold front it is beginning to feel a lot like winter. I stepped out the door this morning and looked up to see a beautiful bright crescent moon accompanied by the planet Venus.  It took a little while for the 40-degree air to penetrate my somewhat excessive early-winter layering, and as I rode slowly past houses already adorned with holiday lights, I thought to myself, "I'd better start getting used to this."  Indeed, it was the first morning here in New Orleans on which I felt the need for both long tights and blinky lights. That lower-40s temperature range, which we seem to get a lot of around here in the winter, is probably the hardest to dress for, particularly for morning rides.  It feels good and cold at first, but you know it's going to warm up significantly within an hour or so.  I usually tend to err on the side of warmth, which means making full use of zippers and pockets later in the ride.  I had started with long tights and shoe-covers, base layer, arm-warmers, heavy long-sleeved jersey and a wind vest. It felt about right for me. Wednesday's ride, for which only four of us showed up, had been nearly as cold, but the later start time had at least allowed me to leave the lights at home.  Today, however, a relatively large group had gathered up the courage, or become sufficiently desperate in an OCD sort of way, to show up for the long Thursday ride.

The northwest wind was relatively light, and the group started out at a moderate pace with riders taking surprisingly long pulls at the front. I myself wasn't feeling all that energetic, so I was keeping my time at the front down to fifty or sixty pedal strokes or so, preferring to wait until the return trip to see if I had anything to offer.  Most of the way out we were cruising along at a comfortable 22 mph, except when Howard would hit the front.  As usual, he would surge up to around 25 mph each time and I would let a little gap grow between the rider in front of me and myself, knowing that it wouldn't last too long and we'd soon be back to cruising speed.

The return trip was a little weird, though.  Right off the bat, Woody started rolling off on his own as the rest of the group was still getting re-assembled.  Then Howard took off with Mignon on his wheel and bridged up to him.  They didn't appear to be killing themselves, though, and the rest of the group could have easily closed the gap with ten minutes at about 24 mph.  Mignon sat up and waited for the group, but Donald was on the front and was holding a speed of around 22, which was just slow enough that the gap to Woody and Howard was ever so gradually increasing.  For a long time nobody wanted to come around him and he wasn't pulling off, so I watched from the back as Woody and Howard started getting smaller and smaller.  Eventually one of the guys got tired of sitting in the draft and surged past, so I went with him.  He was going a bit too hard to survive long enough to close the gap, which by then was probably around 45 seconds, but when he started to back off I came through anyway since I needed a little exercise anyway.  Next think I knew Donald came surging past and things got kind of messy, but the gap definitely started coming down for a while.  I think Scott took a pull, but in general the rest of the group didn't seem interested so things eventually settled back down with Donald again sitting on the front.  I went to the back and started taking occasional pseudo-pulls by moving out of the draft for a minute or two in order to get a little more exercise.