With Both Hands

As advertised, Tuesday's 6 am temperature was in the low 50s.  It felt like the wind was also in the low 50s.  I dug out my long tights and jacket figuring I just might be the only one crazy enough to actually show up for the levee ride. Rolling up to the meeting spot at precisely 6:14, I leaned against one of the big pipes, letting it block the gusty north wind for a moment.  Behind me the bike path was deserted except for that woman who rides the tricycle.  Nothing stops that lady.  I let her go by, took one last look around, and pushed off.  A minute later I saw a couple of blinky lights heading my way.  Four other people!  At first, considering the rather brutal wind conditions, I didn't know if I should be happy or worried.  Then I saw that among the four were both Tim and Woody.  Now, Woody can occasionally be convinced to yield to a moderate pace, but Tim, well, not so much.  They turned around and within a minute Tim was in his characteristic position at the front, characteristically talking to us over his right shoulder. We were still on that section of the bike path where riding upriver means riding toward the south southwest, so for all practical purposes we had a tailwind. A rotation started up and before long we were flying along at 28 mph.  Anyway, I knew that once we made the bend at the Country Club we'd be riding straight into the wind.  On the plus side, I was by far the smallest person in the group so there would be ample draft, on the minus side, a good crosswind gust was liable to blow me right off the levee.  Anyway, as I'd expected, once we got past the headwind part and into the long crosswind stretch, things really started to get difficult and I started skipping pulls in the interest of survival.  We were somewhere out past the parish line when I dropped back after a particularly taxing pull only to see Tim stand up and attack. That was pretty much the last straw, so I backed off a bit and just maintained 19-20 mph for a few miles until I saw them coming back.  Luckily, they were still in conversational mode at the time, but it didn't last too much longer and soon I was down on the drops holding on tightly with both hands just to keep the bike going in a straight line. I was skipping a lot of pulls.  The hardest part, actually, was when we got to a stretch with a strong tailwind. The nice thing about being small is that headwinds seem relatively easy because you get a really good draft, but the flip side is that when the big guys ramp it up into the 30s with a strong tailwind you're pretty much screwed. So despite the shortened ride (nobody went past The Dip), it was a good workout with, at least for me, a number of hard efforts.  I'd post a picture, but I was afraid to take my hands off the bars to get the camera out.