WEAKend Riding

After a good long levee ride on Thursday and a couple of relatively decent rides earlier in the week, I figured I could weather the temporary closure of the bike path (from Friday through Monday) without too much trouble. I knew my weekend was going to be cut short, training-wise, anyway because of the annual LAMBRA business meeting in Jackson on Sunday.  So Friday morning I figured I'd just do a little sightseeing spin.  I headed over to the levee just in case anyone was going to show up at the regular time (nobody did), and rode on down to the bridge where the Jefferson Parish police had dutifully parked a police car to ensure that none of those lawbreaking cyclists would slip by.  As I turned around I ran into Donald, and we rode down to Audubon Park where I rode an easy lap after Donald peeled off to play in the St. Charles Avenue traffic.

New Tulane Kit

It was still a little chilly Saturday morning, and although I knew it would warm up quickly I wore my NOBC winter jacket anyway, this time with just an old jersey underneath, to ride out to Starbucks for my traditional pre-Giro cup of java. There were already a number of people there when I arrived, including a couple of the Tulane cycling team riders decked out in their brand-new 2011 kits.  I'd been tempted to wear mine, but decided instead on the relative warmth and sponsor exposure of my jacket.  With the warmer weather came one of the larger Giro ride groups we've seen in a couple of weeks, and we rolled out at a nice conversational pace for a long time.  Somewhere on Hayne Blvd. I guess a few riders rolled off the front and soon the main group, or at least the dozen or so riders at the front of it, took up the chase.  I heard my computer beep as the speed went past 25 mph, and when I looked down a few seconds later it was reading 30.  It stayed that way all the way down Hayne.  In fact, I doubt we spend more than a few minutes below 28 mph all the way out to Venetian Isles.  There, Kenny and some other riders had planned to do some "structured training" on the way back, so the group kind of fragmented for a while as riders tried to figure out what was going on and with which group they wanted to stay.  I went ahead and went with the "unstructured" group for the return trip.  Although it had its moments, the pace on the return trip was relatively restrained, and I arrived back home with a feeling of satisfaction and 60 miles on the odometer.  After spending a three or four hours at the hospital that evening, it was around 11 pm by the time I sat down to really think about the next day's LAMBRA meeting, and although I didn't really accomplish much, I didn't hit the sack until well after 1 am.  After maybe five hours of sleep I was up and about again getting ready for Mark to pick me up at 7:00 for the drive up to Jackson, MS.  As we drove up I-55 under a cloudy and, eventually, rainy sky I couldn't help but take a little comfort in the fact that I was at least not missing one of those great sunny winter training rides that I love so much.

The meeting went nicely and the webcast actually worked, and for a change we adjourned without having made any controversial changes in the LCCS rules for 2011, focusing instead more on administrative issues and LAMBRA programs like the nationals travel grants, junior development, officiating, race equipment, etc.  By the time we left Jackson, around 3:30 pm, it was raining steadily, which made the long drive feel even longer.  Along the way I saw an email about a new Xtranormal animation about the Giro Ride.  I wonder which riders they used as models.  That night I reconfigured the old Pennine from poor-man's cyclocross bike to poor-man's rain bike, since I figured the streets would still be pretty wet by morning and there wouldn't be a group ride anyway because of the bike path closure.  When I woke up, though, what I found were not only wet streets but a thick fog that could only have been worse closer to the river.  It just didn't seem worth going out in that.  Unfortunately, it's looking like tomorrow's morning ride is going to come right about when then the weather goes from bad to worse ahead of an approaching cold front, so I guess I'll have to play that one by ear.  If the forecast changes by one or two hours one way or the other, it will make a big difference since the winds are predicted to be around 17-21 mph and the rain chance goes from 30% at 7 am to 90% at 11 am.  Might get to use the rain bike after all.

Morning Tardiness

I took Monday off this week.  I knew I shouldn't have done it.  It's like telling somebody that you haven't have a flat tire in a long time.  Well, sure enough, Tuesday morning the streets were wet and the rain bike is still set up in cyclocross mode, and I just couldn't summon up the motivation for an hour and a half with cold water spraying up my backside.  I set my sights on Wednesday.

I have one of those old clock-radios with the bright red digits and the single alarm setting.  I've been meaning to get something more versatile for the last fifteen years or so, but I never seem to get around to it.  Anyway, the alarm goes off at 5:45 am every day, which gives me just enough time to make it to the 6:15 am rides on Tuesday and Thursday.  On Wednesday's, though, I can indulge in the snooze button a couple of times before hitting the floor for the 6:40 am ride.  That is, assuming I actually hit the snooze button and don't switch the alarm off instead, which of course is exactly what I did this morning.  So I woke up again at 6:30, muttered some four-letter word under my breath, and got up with the knowledge that my tardiness would mean I'd be riding by myself for a while.  The weather wasn't too bad.  I guess it was in the 40s with a moderate wind, but the sky was clear and my legs were fresh, so the ride up the river was nice. 

Somewhere around the country club I spotted a bald eagle waiting at the highest point he could find for the sun to reach him.  I always seem to see eagles when I'm riding by myself.  This is not a surprise, since the rest of the time I'm more focused on the wheel in front of me than the scenery. I stopped a took a few photos with my little pocket camera, knowing that they would reveal, at best, a white-headed black blob that, with a little imagination, could be interpreted as a bald eagle.

I met up with the group shortly before Williams and rode back downriver in the paceline.  There's a big sign near the Huey P. Long bridge announcing the impending road and bike path closure, which as of today is scheduled for Jan. 28-30 and again for Feb. 10-13.  Looks like we'll be able to do the usual ride tomorrow!  I stopped in at Zotz on the way home for a cup of coffee and a chance to postpone, at least for a few minutes, the rest of my day, whilst pondering the quote by Jane Wagner, "Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it."  Sometimes I truly wish I was more out of touch with reality.  Really.

Cool Rides, Hot Coffee

I stood there in the dark bedroom in front of a pile of crumpled cycling outerwear considering my options.  The temperature outside was in the mid-30s, the sky was clear, there was hardly any wind, and the forecast wasn't offering much of a warm-up.  What would the Giro Ride serve up today?  A big group and fast ride would call for a completely different approach than a small group doing an relatively easy ride. When the temperature is in the 30s, the turnout is usually fairly light, so factoring that into my little mental multivariate analysis, I dressed for warmth rather than speed with knee-warmers underneath long tights and two layers under my jacket.  The ride out to Starbucks was nice.  There was virtually no wind, so the ride seemed smooth and comfortable. When I got there, I knew I'd guessed right.  When we rolled out to meet the others at Robert E. Lee there were probably only six or seven of us.  We waited at the corner for a few minutes as one or two riders joined us, but eventually we resigned ourselves to the fact that we were it. 

I guess the whole group never numbered more than fifteen today, and I suppose that was one of the factors that kept the speed down.  We made our way out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles in a nice smooth paceline with speeds that hovered around the 23 mph mark except for a few miles on Chef when we lifted it to 25 or so.  After the turnaround we never seemed to get that smoothness back again, though, and once we got to the service road the speed was down to the teens and everyone was in conversational mode. After getting fairly sweaty on the way out, the slow pace eventually started to take its toll on my core temperature, though, and by the time I got home I was really pretty chilled, but glad I'd decided to dress for warmth.

Later in the day, at 2 pm, I rode over to Tulane to meet some of the Tulane riders for an easy coffee shop ride.  The new team kits just arrived and so a couple of the guys were fully decked out in green and blue.  We decided to head down St. Charles and see how things looked at Cafe' du Monde.  When we hit Decatur and saw all the people out on the streets I was a little worried, but usually the little take-out window around back isn't too busy so we made our way past the break dancers to check it out.  Unfortunately, there was a pretty long line there, so we rode down toward Frenchman St. to look for an alternative.  Eventually we wound our way back into the Quarter and settled on a nice place on Decatur (Cafe' Envie) where we could sit outside.  I could have sat there all day, but it was starting to get cooler and so we headed back by way of Esplanade and Jeff. Davis.

Batture Mansion

I opened the door and just stood there for a moment as my groggy brain tried to access the section of the archive indexed under "riding in the fog."  The thick fog had caught me by surprise, and it took me a little while to make the decision to ride.  In fact, the fog wasn't quite thick enough to turn me back.  Besides, I was getting desperate for a ride and my options were limited.  So I headed out to the levee wondering if it would be even worse along the river.  Luckily, it wasn't much thicker out there, and surprisingly there were even a few other guys out there waiting.  I knew I didn't have enough time to do the whole ride, but at least I would be able to get in a solid seventy-five minutes or so. There was a little delay on the way out when Woody stopped to help someone in need of a tire iron, so I had to turn around about a mile before Williams Blvd. in order to get back home in time to shower, change, and ride out to the hospital for my morning visit.  Around 11:00 I headed back down the river to the office, stopping along the way to take a photo of what is definitely the fanciest batture house I've ever seen.  They've been working on this particular house for quite a long time, actually, but this was the first time I'd seen it in daylight in a couple of months.  The thing is practically a Batture Mansion.  Even better, it was already sporting its Mardi Gras decorations.

This morning found me back on the levee by 6:15 am trying once again to squeeze in an hour or so of riding, basically repeating my Tuesday ride, this time without the company of the early Tuesday group.  By the time I'd ridden  home, changed, ridden back out to Ochsner, and then back down to the office, it was 11:30.  Work today seemed like a series of frustrations until 3:30 when I got word that my mother was ready to be transferred from the CICU to a "skilled nursing" facility out at Elmwood.  I have to admit, I wondered who came up with the term "skilled nursing."  I mean, does that mean that the other nursing is unskilled?  One thing I've noticed over the past 24 days that my mother has been in the hospital is that the average size and mass of the nursing staff in the ICU is a whole lot lower than those of the staff in the skilled nursing facility.  I'm not sure why the difference, but I'm quite confident it would hold up to statistical scrutiny.  Anyway, this is a bit of progress.

So I got Issue 02 of Peloton magazine today.  I immediately recognized most of Jered's photos, both because they tend to include Ashley, and because of his tendency to fiddle with the color saturation.  I have to admit, I've started to do the latter myself from time to time.  This issue has a long article on Eddy Merckx that really made me feel kind of old.  There were photos of old bikes that looked way too familiar to me, along with a special page with a big title that read, "1972 - The Greatest Season Ever."  That year he had 127 race days.  It was the year that Atari released Pong.  The year Apollo 16 landed on the moon. The year Merckx won his 4th consecutive Tour de France.  It was also the year of the first Tour de Louisiane. I was there, too green and timid to actually enter, but I still drove out to Donaldsonville to watch John Howard crash, grab a bike from a spectator, and claw his way back to the pack, and then to the breakaway, back in the days before free laps when criteriums were measured in miles (in this case 50 of them) rather than minutes. This will the our little Tour's 40th year. Who would ever have believed that the oldest continuous stage race in the United States would be in New Orleans?

Once a Week Training Program

It had been around five days since I'd been on the bike, so I wasn't very surprised at the mental effort it took for me to get myself out the door this morning. By the time I clipped in I knew it was too late for a pre-Giro cup of coffee, so I just headed straight out to Robert E. Lee Blvd. to meet the group.  Although it was still on the chilly side, the weather has finally started to warm up around here.  Even better, the winds had likewise died down.  So even considering my recent once-a-week training regime, I figured I wouldn't have any trouble hanging in for the Saturday Giro Ride.  Of course, I had gone out significantly overdressed, as usual, but at least I was nice and warm as the group rolled eastward toward Hayne Blvd.  That road, by the way, is still quite a mess because of the ongoing levee construction, and the east bound Casino bridge was closed off today.  The lane nearest the levee is closed off with traffic barrels pretty much all the way to Paris Road, so although it isn't too much of a problem on the way out, coming back toward town is quite uncomfortable.  As a result, the Giro has recently been coming back on the I-10 service roads all the way down to Crowder in order to minimize the amount of time spent on Hayne.

Today the pace was pretty easy, by Giro standards at least. Since I was definitely feeling the effects of three weeks of minimal saddle time, this was perfect.  It was fast enough for a decent workout but easy enough to accommodate my once-a-week training program.  So things were going along nicely all the way out and most of the way back.  When we made the curve onto the service road I dropped back a bit and soon found myself almost at the end of the paceline. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something coming my way.  One of those thin plastic grocery bags was being blown across the road and was on an intercept course with my rear wheel.  I tried to make a quick course correction but before I knew it was all tangled up in my jockey wheels and cassette.  The crank wouldn't turn, so all I could do was coast to a stop as the rest of the group disappeared around the bend at Bullard Avenue.  Fortunately I was able to remove everything without too much drama (I almost had to pull out my pocket knife), and was back on the bike a couple of minutes later, just in time to meet up with a couple of riders who weren't with the Giro.  So at least I had someone to ride back with.  Back on Robert E. Lee I caught up with Vivian for a little while before I turned off at Marconi.  My then I could see the remnant of the group that was coasting back toward Harrison Avenue, so I decided I'd stop at the Starbucks to get that cup of coffee I'd missed.  Max joined me and we chatted for a while before I finally had to head back toward home and reality.

So my mother is out of the ICU now and in the CCU where she is asking for Scotch (the doctor actually said it would be OK to have a little!), complaining about the pureed food, and planning on having someone come in to fix her hair.  She was on Vent just a few days ago.

Third Monday

As I stood there looking out the 6th floor window of Ochsner's Intensive Care Unit this morning, it struck me that this was the third Monday in a row I'd done so.  It's a long story, and an off-topic one for this particular blog, but when Matt recently sent me an email entitled "Account for Yourself" I thought a brief explanation for my absence was in order.  As much as I would like to say that I had made an impulsive decision to spend a couple of weeks secretly training and eating tainted meat in northern Spain with the rest of the peloton, I was, indeed still am, spending my time mostly off the bike and rather stressed at the ICU watching my mother struggle to recover from a Christmas night 911 call prompted by respiratory failure and further complicated by age, arterial disease, a serious UTI, and who knows what else.  Fortunately I have two sisters in town, plus a couple of my mother's friends, and a visit by my brother to help share the load. It has been a long road thus far and we don't know how it will all play out, but we remain hopeful.

So as the situation at the hospital has permitted, I've managed to get in a few relatively short and uneventful rides over the past couple of weeks. I even made it out to the Giro a week ago on a day when things were looking particularly good. It reminds me a bit of those first few weeks after Katrina when I'd go out for rides that were aimed more at stress relief and maintenance (aka not getting too much fatter) than actual training.  This morning it was cold and windy, but since I hadn't been on the bike all weekend because of a complicated aortic valve balloon dilation and subsequent emergency vascular surgery to resolve some resulting peripheral arterial blockage, I figured I'd better get in whatever saddle time I could.  In this case it was a 6 am Monday morning ride on the levee, which was understandably deserted but for Erich who was out for a run and a couple of walkers.  In the meantime, a few of those little tasks that I normally take care of late at night, including LAMBRA stuff, blog updates, and routine work and personal email, have been falling through the cracks. So if you've been getting uncharacteristically curt and grammatically compromised emails from me lately, or if I just haven't replied at all, well, at least I have a good excuse.