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.