Weekend Decisions

It was like springtime in February down here in New Orleans last weekend, and with a lot of things going on that made for some difficult decisions.  You just can't be in two places at once.  Saturday morning I was up early for the Giro Ride despite the fact that the city was pretty well fogged in and there was a small weekend race up in Monroe.  As usual, I wore an extra layer since I figured I'd be wet most of the time, and headed out for Starbucks with blinky lights flashing and my glasses in my pocket.  Although I was wearing knee-warmers, it was certainly warm enough by 7 am to go with bare skin, which is the approach that most of the riders took.  I figured that my old knees would appreciate the extra warmth and kept them on, if only because it was easier to carry them on my legs than in my pockets.  Not surprisingly, the warmer weather made for a rather brisk Giro Ride, even though the fog didn't start to burn off significantly until we were nearly finished. The only problem was the increasing amount of mud that has been accumulating on Chef Highway, thanks to the nonstop stream of dump trucks working on various levee projects.  The fact that the morning's fog had left all of that mud nice and sticky didn't help much.  I'm thinking I may as well just blow off cleaning anything on the bike except the drivetrain until April.  On the way back, just after the Goodyear sign sprint, we all ended up on the debris-strewn shoulder because of a dump truck convoy.  By the time we were approaching the turn onto the service road Lenny already had a flat tire, and as we were waiting for him to fix it, Charlie looked at his tire, then at me, and asked, "do you hear something hissing?"  Lenny went through three tubes before finding one that had a long enough stem and didn't explode, so Charlie had lots of time to get his flat fixed. A brief post-ride club breakfast at Kona meant I didn't get home until nearly noon.

Saturday evening was the Krewe du Vieux down in the Quarter, and we planned on an early dinner at Santa Fe on Esplanade followed by an attempt to get close enough to the parade.  Well, dinner was great, but by the time we got down to the quarter it was obvious we weren't going to find a place to park without suffering through forty-five minutes of parade gridlock, so we decided to bail since one of the party has been fighting a back problem and wasn't up for a long walk.

Sunday I had to decide between the Sunday Giro ride, where a group was going to extend the ride to Slidell and back, or the regular Northshore ride. The weather was looking really nice so I decided to do the northshore ride since I haven't made that one in about two months. We had around fifteen for the ride and once again the temperature felt a lot more like mid-March than mid-February. Just after turning off of Tung Road, I heard a commotion behind me and everyone stopped.  At first I thought it was just a simple flat, but it turned out to be a little more complicated than that.  One of the riders on a tri bike had flatted and then had the flat tire wedge itself into the frame, stopping the rear wheel and causing her to skid to a stop.  The result was a two-inch long hole in the tread.  Luckily, I had a piece of Mr. Tuffy stashed in my spare tire bag for just such a problem, and another rider had an old tyvek race number handy, so we were actually able to fashion a good enough boot to get her rolling (back home of course) again. I was feeling a little uncertain about this ride since I hadn't been getting my usual saddle time and certainly hadn't been riding any hills.  Fortunately the general testosterone level in the group remained mostly within normal parameters and despite Saturday's efforts, my legs were feeling pretty good.  By the time we were halfway through the ride I was starting to feel a bit more confident and it was getting harder and harder to fight the urge to push the pace.  I had to keep reminding myself that it was still only Feburary.

I was glad to see that a number of the Tulane riders had made the trip up to Monroe for the Criterium and Time Trial, and now I'm really feeling conflicted about next weekend.  Although it would be a lot of fun to accompany the team to its first South-Central Collegiate Cycling Conference race over in Austin, it happens to be on the same weekend as the NOBC winter training camp up in Natchez.  Since I wouldn't be able to ride if I went to Austin (I'd just be helping with wrenching, logistics, and wound care duties), and since I need all the miles I can get right now, I had to make the decision to go with the training camp, which I expect to be fun too.  Now I'm looking at the March 5-6 collegiate race, Tunis-Roubaix, which is actually offering an Alumni race.  Hmmmmm.  That could be interesting.  Decisions, decisions.