A Long Shrove Tuesday Week (and a Long Post)

There is something special about Mardi Gras day and the week leading up to it.  Other holidays come with far less intensity and end without the screeching stop best symbolized when the mounted New Orleans Police come down Bourbon Street at midnight followed by an army of street sweepers, officially, if not effectively, closing the door on another Fat Tuesday.  I confess, it's a sight I've never witnessed in person. In fact, I'd venture to say that a good thirty percent of the people who are still there at that time have only sketchy memories of it themselves. The old tradition of wanton celebration leading up to the beginning of Lent somehow makes it all feel like racing at full speed toward a cliff, only to slam on the brakes at the last possible moment before jumping out and kissing the ground. This year we were lucky enough to have a number of visitors with whom to share the experience. 

It started, for me, on Thursday with the arrival of a niece and company from Florida and a nephew's fiancé from Baton Rouge. I went with the neighbors to watch the parades (there were three uptown parades that night) down around 2nd street and St. Charles in the Garden District while the others met up with my sister and company in front of the Columns Hotel where there is usually a bar set up at the sidewalk and convenient toilet facilities available at $1 per at the church across the street.  Those are the two essentials involved in comfortable parade watching unless of course you are forced to drive a car, in which case you will require both a parking spot and a bottle of Advil.  The weather was still warm, but the forecast for the next couple of days was getting troublesome.  Anyway, we wanted to catch the Muses parade for sure because there were a few people we knew who were riding in it. Things were going well, as we awaited the arrival of the first of our two "target" floats, and then, with just one float to go before the first, everything stopped and someone on the float started waving the "POLICE" sign that they keep aboard in case of emergencies.  We're not entirely certain, but from what we could tell it looked like one of the krewe members had gotten falling-down throwing-up drunk and had to be extracted by ambulance.  This resulted in a big gap in the parade, so when that float finally got rolling again it, and the others behind it, took off at top speed and so we completely failed at making contact with our first target float.  The second one, however, worked out well and the group netted a ton of stuff, including a couple of Muses Shoes. 

I had been hoping to ride the Giro on Saturday morning, which would have left me just enough time to rush back for the start of the day parades around 10 am., but the streets were wet and the forecast uncooperative, so I decided instead to stay home and be a good host since The Wife was in Austin for a meeting until Sunday.  The group at the house, which by then had increased to four, again set out after breakfast for The Columns to catch the two "day parades" of Tucks and Iris.  Since I was planning on riding my bike down there, I had the luxury of waiting around the house until the last minute and bypassing the usual parade gridlock and parking hunt.  So I packed up some rain gear and had a nice little ride, the only one I'd get that day, fully expecting to come home in the rain. As it turned out, the rain held off until most of the last parade had passed our spot, and since it was still quite warm, the rain didn't make us feel all that miserable.  On my ride home, however, the sky really opened up and I was glad I'd brought my good rain jacket and Goretex hat.  My shoes and pants, of course, were drenched. Before the parades even ended we got word that the huge Endymion parade, which normally runs on Saturday night, had rescheduled because of the expected bad weather and would now be following Bacchus on Sunday night.  That was going to make for a *very* long night.

So after rainy Saturday, the Sunday morning weather was a bit better and I headed out for the Giro Ride.  Jered and Ashley had arrived around 1 am Sunday morning, and with Ashley still recovering from wisdom teeth surgery and Jered holding out some hope of finding some triathletes to interview for an article he was working on, I rode out alone to the Starbucks by way of Broad Street where I met up with Donald Davis who was in town from Pensacola.  The Sunday Giro turned out to be pretty hard. There was a pretty good wind blowing, and thanks to the pent-up energy from a missed Saturday ride and a number of visiting riders in town for Mardi Gras, there weren't too many easy sections. It was a good ride that left me predictable tired and hungry.  I had to run out soon after getting home to pick up The Wife from the airport, which meant I'd have to miss the day parades, one of which, Thoth, I would really have liked to see.  One good thing about rescheduling Endymion was that she would be able to see it, assuming we could last that long, which ultimately we didn't. We ended up riding over to Whole Foods to restock the kitchen, only to discover that Thoth was still trying to make its way down Magazine Street (where Whole Foods is).  I at least got to see a few of those floats through the big glass storefront windows. The plan that evening was to get a ride with the neighbor down to her parents' condo on St. Charles where she could park in the parking lot.  About an hour before the parade she called and said that she'd already been stick in parade gridlock and there was no way she was going to make it back uptown to pick us up, so I had to deploy Plan B. By then the Florida and Baton Rouge crew had headed back to their own realities, to be replaced by the sister in law and her daughter.  Jered and Ashley had been out all day on their bikes.  So we made our way down to 2nd street, after a couple of detours, with time to spare and headed down to the street to watch Bacchus when it finally arrived.  We never made it to Endymion.  We headed out for home around when the first floats arrived, by which time it was probably 10:30 pm.  Everyone was pretty well exhausted by then and it already looked unlikely that we would be seeing any of the Monday parade.

Mardi Gras morning I went out early to meet the Thursday ride, but I wasn't planning on doing much of the ride.  I wanted instead to head over to Audubon Park to see the start of the Royal Run, a rather amazing little 7 am event that's been going on for twenty years now.  Rex and his queen arrive via long black limousines for the start of this little-known fun run.  This year the queen actually ran it, arriving in gold lame tights, mardi gras colored shoes, and a customized Rex warmup jacket.  Regardless of how slow she runs, the Queen always wins the Royal Run.  The rest of Mardi Gras was more or less our usual routine.  We hitched a ride down to the Andrew Jackson with the neighbors where everyone (except me - I just hate wearing arkward costumes) dressed up in their minion (from Despicable Me) costumes. They were a huge hit.  Every kid, and lots of adults, along the route wanted to pose for pictures with them.  After Rex rolled past, The Wife and I made our traditional walk down to the French Quarter where I wandered around for a couple of hours taking photos and soaking up the happiness.  There are a bunch of Mardi Gras photos that I uploaded to Picasa.  By the time we were halfway home it was around 5 pm and my feet, hips, head, etc. were killing me, so when we got to Napoleon where the streetcars stop on Mardi Gras, we fished out a few bucks and took the easy way down to the end of Neron Place. After a big dinner with everyone I was more than ready to catch up on some sleep, but I was not to be so lucky. 

Around 2 am a strong cold front started coming through and I discovered that the dog that we inherited from my mother is afraid of thunder. In addition, there were some high voltage power lines that were periodically shorting out in the tree across the street, and every time that happened it sounded like someone was setting off a bunch of firecrackers - complete with sparks and flashes of light.  For the next few hours I was up and down trying to keep the dog from digging all the way through the bedroom carpet.  I finally gave up and got dressed around 5:30 during a lull in the weather and took the dogs out for a quick walk.  My plan to make a batch of coffee after that was dashed when the power finally went out, however, so I lit a few candles and sat around for an hour or two until the rain stopped and Entergy got the electricity working again.

This morning's ride was greeted with a strong northwest wind and I was definitely not feeling like pushing it.  We started out with a nice paceline, but eventually I started skipping pulls and finally ended up just sitting in.  Of course, I knew what was going to happen the next time we hit a long crosswind stretch.  I suppose I could have closed the gap that had opened up, but I just didn't have the motivation this morning.  My legs still felt achy - probably a little hangover from the weekend combined with all the walking and lack of recovery time.  I backed off and rode easy with one other rider, turning around early to latch onto Woody and a few others who had turned around at the little dip.  Woody towed us most of the way back.  Now I just need to get my legs feeling a little more recovered before I jump into next Sunday's Rouge-Roubaix where I will certainly inflict far more damage on my own legs than anyone else's.