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.