A Cross-Country Christmas (long story)

We headed out from New Orleans right on schedule at 6 am Tuesday morning.  Christmas presents were stashed underneath the bike in the back of the car.  Emergency winter supplies, blankets, food, water, etc, were on board.  The weather was great, but we were going to have to make it past a developing cold front somewhere in Colorado or Wyoming.  Even so, that route seemed, at the time, the best of the three possible choices.  The plan was to drive a new car up to The Daughter in Olympia, Washington, and then to drive home in her '02 Jeep.  A little crazy, perhaps, but it promised to be a minor adventure nonetheless.  The first day went smoothly and some time around 9 pm we checked into a motel in Salina, Kansas.  We were back on the road early the next day, hoping to make it to the Salt Lake City area that night. 

The drive through Kansas and eastern Colorado was pretty routine, and we decided to take a little shortcut from Denver up to meet I-80 near Laramie, Wyoming.  As we drove north I could see some bad weather and snow rolling over the high mountains to the west and wondered if we'd be far enough north to miss the worst of it.  As we pressed on to the west along I-80 we started picking up some light snowfall, but I was still optimistic as the sun went down.  I doubt it was half an hour later when things started to go from bad to worse .... really quickly.  We were in the middle of the mountains of the Wyoming Great Divide.  We were also in the middle of a snowstorm.  Suddenly, it seemed, the lane markers on the interstate disappeared, and I was straining to see where I was going through the blowing snow.  As I slowed down from 70 mph to 60, and then to 45, the passing trucks would blow up enough of the dry snow to make it completely impossible to see where I was going.  It was exactly like trying to drive with your eyes closed, except everything was white instead of black -- complete disorientation. The word "harrowing" kept coming to mind.

Eventually I resorted to hazard flashers, fog lights, full-on defroster, and windshield wipers complete with frozen blocks of ice on them.  We pulled into a closed rest area along with a couple of other cars to consider our options.  We learned that they shut down I-80 behind us later that night.  We sat there for about half an hour as cars, trucks, and a Greyhound bus full of desperate cigarette smokers came and went, considering whether it would be better to stay at the rest stop and get buried in snow or continue on and possibly drive off the road.  I decided that driving solo wasn't a particularly good idea considering my limited snowstorm driving experience, so I waited for a little convoy to come by and tacked onto the end. It was 35 white-knuckle miles to the next town, Rock Springs.  As other cars dropped out of the caravan, I was soon the only car left, clinging to the tail lights of a big pickup truck whose driver seemed to be reasonably consistent.  About half of the time, my only points of reference were those two red lights and an occasional glimpse of the post-mounted reflectors at the far edge of the shoulder. As we would pass other cars I'd drift left behind the pickup, feeling for the rumble strip. 

Finally we made it to the main exit at Rock Springs where I gladly pulled off in search of a motel.  Once we checked in we felt like we'd won the lottery and decided to drive down the street to find something to eat and pick up a scraper and de-icer at the gas station.  As we left the parking lot I stopped to chip away some of the accumulated ice from the windshield wipers.  Then, as we walked into the restaurant I realized I didn't have my phone.  I looked everywhere, and figured it must have fallen out of my coat pocket.  After an extensive search retracing my steps, I found it lying face-down in the snow where I'd stopped to clear the windshield. Of course it had been rolled over by a car, probably my own.  On the plus side, it still worked.  We went to sleep hoping the roads would be safer in the morning.  It dawned on me that the timing of our drive had us traversing all of the really mountainous areas at night.  Maybe not such a good plan?

(Much better driving in the morning!)

The next morning the sun was shining and despite a few warnings about black ice farther down the road, we left the local Starbucks around 8:30.  We had originally been hoping to make Olympia in three days, but the snowstorm had put a pretty big dent in our plans and our ETA would have been after midnight, so we went to Plan B, which was to basically stop some time before I started falling asleep at the wheel.  At least the interstate down to Salt Lake was almost deserted, and negotiating the icy road was a lot easier in the daylight after the road crews had done their work. 

Olympia bike path

The drive through Utah and Idaho was pretty routine and thanks to the 75 mph speed limit went fairly quickly.  After some long delays because of accidents and road construction we got into Oregon by mid-afternoon. Oregon seems to take a certain amount of pride in doing things differently than everyone else, regardless of whether or not it makes sense.  For example, you can't pump your own gas in Oregon.  You have to wait or an overworked attendant running around in the freezing cold while trying to handle three cars at once to do it.  The 75 mph speed limit that seems to be fine in the neighboring states drops to 65 in Oregon. 

Naturally, once it got dark we still had to drive through some of The Blues where the road wound around in the mountains making for some exciting driving until we finally decided to pack it in at The Dalles, leaving just a few more hours of driving for Friday morning.  Fortunately, the weather was warmer and there were no issues with ice or snow.  Through it all, the new all-wheel-drive Volvo V-70 remained remarkably sure-footed.  Along the way it got a very thorough road test that challenged pretty much everything from the heated side-view mirrors to the stability control system.  How the Jeep Liberty will handle the return trip remains to be seen, but a longer alternate route down south is definitely still on the table.

So we finally made it to Olympia around mid-day on Friday where I celebrated with a pint of the local Porter.  By 11:00 on Saturday the weather was looking pretty good and I decided it might be my only window for a good ride.  The temperature was in the upper 40s, the wind was light, and although the streets were somewhat wet it didn't look like there would be any rain for the rest of the day.  Here in Washington most people ride with fenders all winter because the roads are wet pretty much all the time, I think.  Moss actually grows on the asphalt around here.  The Daughter's place is right alongside a bike path, so I headed out onto that and ended up riding nearly 60 miles without ever getting onto a city street.  Although I'm sure there are more scenic rides to be had, it's always nice to have a network of bike paths available when you're in unfamiliar territory.

Should be an interesting ride back to New Orleans.

LSD and Hollicross

It's that time of year again.  December always stresses me out.  The bicycle half of my brain keeps nagging me about all that Long Slow Distance (LSD) I'm supposed to be doing, but there are so many competing complications.  There are cyclocross races, a half-finished re-write of the LAMBRA bylaws and LCCS rules, and of course the stress of the arterial bleeding gushing from my checking account.  On top of that, there are always some things at work that really need to be done before the holidays, which is even more of a problem this year because of a planned early departure for a winter road trip to what is nearly the farthest place from New Orleans you can go without a passport.  In light of what may turn out to be nearly a full week of driving with only the slim possibility of a couple of cold and wet rides, I decided on Friday night that I really needed to go with the "long Giro" group out to Slidell on Saturday for what promised to be 95 miles worth of flat and windy paceline riding. I figured a long Saturday ride would diminish my LSD guilt sufficiently to allow for a little cyclocross fun on Sunday. 

Saturday was cold, windy and cloudy.  It somehow seemed perfectly appropriate for a long winter ride.  There was little hope that the temperature would warm up much during the ride, so I dressed a little bit heavier than usual.  You never know what to expect of the Giro this time of year.  The worst would have been a small group of four going out to Slidell with one or two who didn't know what the "S" in LSD stands for.  Of course, you never really know who will be doing the long ride until you're actually all the way out to Venetian Isles, otherwise known as "the point of no return."

Fortunately, there were lots of other riders thinking the same as I.  On the way out to Venetian a few riders rolled off the front.  That would normally have resulted in a bit of a hammer session down Hayne Blvd., but this time the rest of the group was having none of it, knowing that payment for such an early effort on a 95 mile ride would be extracted with interest somewhere around mile 80.  As it turned out we had about 25 riders who continued out to Fort Pike, and then about a dozen, including three Tulane riders, one of whom has just been recruited onto the Herring team, who stayed with us all the way to Slidell.  Despite my best efforts to suck wheels and resist temptation, I was definitely starting to feel the mileage as we sprinted up the overpasses about ten miles from home.  By the time I got home I was pleasantly sore and tired.  Yeah, you know what I mean.

So Sunday I made the short trip out to the Spillway near Norco for the Holli-cross races where I figured I could help out with officiating and then ride the "A" race for fun.  The race location was at the start of a popular mountain bike trail, so I kind of knew there would be a lot of singletrack, but the organizers had done a pretty good job of incorporating the levee road and a big field near the boat launch, complete with a couple of good barriers and a run-up back to the top of the levee.  I have to admit, on the first practice lap I rode I thought I'd missed a turn because I'd been on winding singletrack for so long, but I hadn't.  As it turned out, I really enjoyed the singletrack part because it was mostly hard-packed, flat and technical.  Anyway, we had a pretty good sized field for the race, which I started from my usual position near the back as the real 'crossers sprinted into the headwind on the levee road.  I finally settled in behind a rider who was on a somewhat over-geared single speed.  About mid-way through I passed him and then promptly crashed when I somehow flubbed my re-mount after the levee run-up.  I chased back and caught him again within a lap or so, and then on the next lap dropped the bike a little too hard after the barriers and had to stop to re-seat the chain.  Once again I chased back, ultimately passing him again with a couple of laps left to go.  So anyway, it was a lot of fun, the turnout was about the best we've had yet, and I only crashed once.  Well, I'm sitting here at home and the roofer just finished a little chimney work that he'd forgotten to do last week, so it's back to work.....

Warm Weather and Falling Leaves

The seasons tend to be pretty confused around here.  Just a few days ago I was bundled up in full winter kit.  This morning I would have ridden in just shorts and jersey, but I know better than that.  Even though the air temperature was registering in the upper 60s at the house, I knew from experience that up on the levee there would be those occasional cold blasts of moist river-chilled air rolling across our path.  As it turned out, there was another reason I was glad to have worn the arm-warmers today.  As we waited at "The Pipes" for the rest of the crew to arrive, Max rode up and commented that a few miles upriver the road was soaking wet in a wheel-spray kind of way.  Go figure.  The forecast had included only the usual precautionary 10% rain chance, but it was looking like all ten percent was going to be on top of us at some point. So despite the cloudy sky and dampness, we had a pretty big group this morning. Starting out with a bit of a tailwind, I was worried things might get out of hand again, but for some reason the pace remained brisk but steady.  I don't know who all was up at the front, but whoever they were, they weren't rotating back to where I was.  I guess someone up ahead must have been short-circuiting the paceline because we were probably fifteen miles up the river before I finally found myself near the front.  All morning we'd been riding through patches of wet road and misty drizzle, but it wasn't until we were halfway back that the misty stuff turned into what you'd actually call rain.  A couple of miles later I could feel the water starting to come through my shoes.  That's really the point of no return when it comes to riding in the rain.  Once your shoes and socks get soaked, you may as well just keep going until you get home because slowing down or, heaven forbid, stopping will just make you colder.  Fortunately most of the riders were happy with a fairly smooth pace, although there were certainly a few momentary instances of passive paceline aggression on the way back where someone ramps up the pace a notch and then nobody will pull through afterward.  Situation normal, however.

So here we are officially halfway through December and the Ginkgo trees have finally decided it's Fall.  They are easy to spot with their neon-yellow leaves, but you have to look fast because the next time there's a bit of wind all the leaves will fall at once and the display will be over for another year.

A Warmer Ride

Finally things have warmed up a bit around here and I was able to leave the jacket and long tights at home when I headed off to meet the Tuesday morning group today.  It was overcast and therefore dark and relatively damp, making the upper-50s air feel like it was going right through the long-sleeve jersey I was wearing.  I wasn't complaining, though.  I'll take damp and 60F over dry and 38 any day of the week.  The ride started off a little faster than usual, stringing everyone out over the first mile or so as a couple of riders baited the group, but soon it all came back together and settled down a little bit.  The whole way out the wind alternated between crosswind, tailwind, and something in-between, so although the speed might have been a little higher than normal for this time of year, the effort level wasn't too bad as long as you still had enough asphalt to get a draft on the crosswind sections. 

I was feeling pretty good, so I spent some time in the wind here and there in order to give a few more riders a little draft because the very front of the group didn't seem to be rotating very often.  When that happens in a crosswind it makes it really hard for everyone beyond the first five or six riders.  As we got farther upriver there were a few surges that caused trouble.  I tried to kind of buffer them when I could, but still had to seek shelter sometimes just to keep from getting dropped.  The group, of course, eventually split, so we were missing a few riders by the time we got out to the turnaround at Ormond.  I had been trying to conserve a little bit because I knew it was going to be a long ride home, mostly into the wind.

The return trip started out fairly easy as the group mostly ignored a couple of riders who were riding off into the distance. It wasn't too long after we finally got really rolling again that Matt flatted.  We were still pretty far from home, so while some of us stopped, some continued on.  It wasn't the world's fastest tire change, but as we stood around criticizing Matt's tire-changing technique, which is of course the main reason we all stop when someone flats, Richard spotted a bald eagle flying overhead.  I think that makes five that I've seen in the last couple of months. Just on the other side of river road there was one house that had a boat decorated with Christmas lights being pulled by a couple of equally decorated plastic alligators.  Right next door was a Christmas bonfire that was about half-completed.  I've never made the trek up the river to see the bonfires on Christmas Eve, but they have gotten to be a big deal in some of the towns that build little mini-festivals around them.  Anyway, after we got the tire fixed our group got a really nice little rotating paceline going for quite a long time, although eventually it started to falter as the wind got stronger and the riders got more tired.

Chocolates and Cold

Saturday morning was pretty cold and fairly windy, and as usual I was running a few minutes late after debating what to wear for the Giro Ride. There wasn't really a chance I'd miss the ride itself, but I was definitely going to have less time to sip my pre-ride coffee.  Fortunately, I got there early enough to put a pretty good dent into my cup of Christmas Blend before we rolled out. 

Considering the cold and wind, I was expecting a fairly smooth ride with a lot of rotating paceline work.  I couldn't have been more wrong. The first clue was the relatively fast pace along Lakeshore Drive.  I heard some time later that there were some rider who had missed the group entirely because we were ahead of our usual schedule.  The cross/headwind along Hayne Blvd. kept most of us pretty close to the gutter while a small contingent at the front pushed the pace. Once we made the turn onto Paris Road, the wind was more at our backs, though, and the speed ramped up.  When we came to the place where we cross over two lanes of interstate traffic, though, things didn't go too well.  (We really should be using Bullard on the way out to avoid this!).  The front of the group cut across in front of a Semi that had slowed down for us, but then, coming around the truck on the outside, was a dualie pickup that was not slowing down.  So the back part of the group, including me, had to back off and wait until it was safe, which opened a large gap. 

The front of the group continued hammering away down the road, so Howard went to the front and pushed our pace up to 30-32 mph.  After a little while on his wheel I checked my December training plan and couldn't find anything on it about going 30 mph chasing down ill-gotten breakaways, so I backed off a bit as the rest of the riders who'd survived went around me.  I figured that things would probably come back together on the service road anyway. Wrong again. Looking up ahead I could see Rob attacking off the front of the group as it made the left turn to cross under the interstate on the way to the service road. I knew I was, well, in trouble. Although I was holding the gap for a while, there was no way I was going to close it once we got onto Chef Highway, so I ended up riding the rest of the way out to Venetian Isles alone before turning around and getting back into the group for the return trip where the irregular pace continued.  On the ride home I commented to someone, "The Giro is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get."   It was still pretty cold by the time I got home.  I doubt the temperature had risen more than five degrees.

So Sunday was an NOBC group ride that was planned to be a no-drop 50 miler at a fairly easy pace.  It was still pretty cold this morning and even colder across the lake, and it didn't look like we'd be seeing much of the sun, so I piled on the clothes for the well-attended ride that had attracted nearly twenty riders to the Abita Springs start. I guess it was somewhere in the 38-40 degree range at the start, and although I knew I'd probably get a little sweaty underneath my nice warm NOBC winter jacket, I had a feeling it wasn't going to warm up a lot and I'd rather be warm and wet than cold and dry.  Cold diuresis was in full effect and a nature stop was called for not to long after we'd rolled out.  There's nothing like the combination of coffee and cold to precipitate a group nature break!  Anyway, it was a good ride at a good pace, and after the ride, many of us headed across the street to the Abita Brewpub for lunch.  In my case that was an oyster loaf, fries and a pint of Turbodog (I wasn't driving).

Cold and Lonely

This morning felt, officially, like the real thing -- Winter.  The temperature was in the upper 30s with a mild but noticeable wind, and the sky was uniformly grey from horizon to horizon.  In a word -- dreary.  To make matters worse, I'd set my alarm for the wrong time, and when, after the dog nudged me with his nose a few times, I finally looked over at the clock, it read 6:00 am.  If it had been summer I might have had a chance to make it out to the levee by 6:15, but Winter carries with it a large amount of wardrobe overhead and I knew it would be impossible.  By the time I was layered up enough to keep the ride from being miserable it was probably around 6:15, and so I guess I arrived at the meeting spot about ten minutes late.

There was a light tailwind on the way out today, which made it easy to spin along at 18-20 mph. The bike path was predictably deserted for the most part, except for a lone coyote who I startled near the Construction Aggregate place.  He had been walking casually down the middle of the bike path as I approached him from behind, and I was quite close by the time he heard me and bolted off toward the batture. Once he was sufficiently out of reach he stopped for a little while to watch me.  I did the same for a few seconds until he finally dashed off into the bushes. I guess I saw a couple other people out on the levee on my way out to the Little Dip, where I turned around, but otherwise it was just a cold and lonely ride.  I'd been hoping to see a rider or two from the morning group, but I guess that anyone who showed up either went all the way out to Destrehan.  More likely, though, nobody else showed up.

I fought a little bit of headwind most of the way back, and since I wasn't really in the mood to push myself, that brought my speed down into the 15-18 mph range.  The combination of wind and easy pace resulted in some seriously cold feet (I was using only those little toe-cover things) by the time I got back home, but thanks to my favorite NOBC winter jacket and tights, the rest of me was pretty comfortable.  It looks like a couple more chilly mornings before things start to warm up a bit around here, but it still beats the heck out of someplace like Minnesota.

Oh, SNAP!

Another cold front shuffled through the area last night, leaving us with a chilly, windy, and overcast morning today.  The outdoor thermometer read something like 48F as I rolled out of bed, but glancing out the window I could see the wind blowing the trees around and knew it would feel a little colder than that.  By the time I rounded up an appropriate wardrobe for the morning ride I had fewer than ten minutes to make it over to the levee to meet the Tuesday morning group at 6:15. The cloud cover made for a particularly dark morning as I rushed down Carrollton and Willow streets hoping I could at least minimize the damage and maybe have a chance to catch the group before it really got rolling.  As I climbed the bike path up to the levee I could see the meeting spot was deserted, although my watch told me I was only a minute or two late.  I looked up the road into the darkness searching for blinky red lights, but there were none.  It was entirely possible that the whole group had bailed out, because the chances that everyone would have left early on a morning like this were somewhere between slim and none.  A moment later Richard rolled up from behind, commenting, "It's not really all that cold!"  I replied something to the effect of, "If they think this is cold they're in for a big shock a few weeks from now."  So anyway, we settled into an even pace at 21-22 mph, picking up Luke at the playground and eventually a couple others along the way.  There was no question that we were going to shorten the usual long ride, considering the wind, number of riders, and resulting slower than normal speed.  The only question was whether to turn around at the Little Dip or the Big Dip.  We decided on the Big Dip, since most of the wind was of the crosswind variety, and with only four riders there was ample draft available in our mini-eschelon.  Somewhere out near the turnaround we caught the guy on the white Cannondale whose name I can never remember.  He was pushing the pace a little harder than the rest of us, and until we caught him I think he was assuming he'd missed the group and was in chase mode.

We were past the country club on the way back when he went to the front and ramped the pace up another notch.  I'd been spinning along happily in the small chainring all morning, but once the pace crept up to 25 or so I decided it was time to deploy the 53.  I shifted and felt something odd, and then my chain dropped off the inside of the small ring, accompanied by a rather nasty scraping noise.  I coasted to as stop as my front derailleur cage, which had slipped down and twisted to the inside, started scraping long shreds of aluminum off of my rear rim (glad it wasn't one of those expensive carbon ones!).  I didn't really know what to make of it all.  That derailleur had been sticky lately and a couple of times I'd had to reach down and give it a push to get it to go from the big to small chainring.  I figured it had really gotten bad and when I'd gone to shift, the cable had pulled the derailleur clamp down instead of moving the derailleur.  Anyway, I had to pull out the multi-tool and re-position it, but something still felt odd.  When I got home I took a good look at it and realized that the seat tube clamp that was part of the Campi record derailleur had actually snapped at the hinge.  Oh well.  Good thing I happen to have another front derailleur on hand. I would have taken a picture, but once you've seen one piece of broken aluminum, you've seen them all.

Hills and Hay Bales

Saturday was our annual LAMBRA business meeting during which we hash out the preliminary race calendar, proposals regarding the LCCS points series, amendments to Bylaws, etc.  This year there were a number of changes that were approved for 2012.  We finally formalized the composition of the LAMBRA Board, made some rather extensive changes to the way LCCS points are awarded and accumulated, etc. It all went pretty smoothly, and hopefully I'll find some time this evening to send out the preliminary calendar and bylaw changes and a summary of the LCCS changes (the language for which still needs to be finalized).  LAMBRA continues to make incremental steps in the right direction as the LCCS points format moves slightly more in the direction of rewarding race results rather than race attendance.  It should be interesting to see how it all works out.  Points totals will reflect each rider's top 5 races in each discipline (RR, TT/TTT, Crit).  Master 40+ races will be restricted to Cat. 1-4 only, points schedules will be extensively modified so that points awarded increase in relation to field size, etc.  I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to actually be able to track all of that without pulling my hair out after each race, but philosophically it's the right direction to go.  Since there was a cyclocross race near Jackson where the meeting had been, I had loaded my not-quite-a cyclocross bike into the car before leaving.  As it turned out, I'd forgotten things like gloves, tools and a few other minor items, but nothing that would stop me from riding.

Sunday morning I left the La Quinta early in search of coffee and found that the Starbucks on County Line Road that had been closed a few years ago was now a very nice Cups espresso shop, so I had a nice Americano for my ride out to the race location.  Unfortunately, the race location had been listed on the flyer as the intersection of two highways.  I spent a while driving up and down the roads there before finally spotting the race site.  I had wanted to get there early since I had the registration/results spreadsheet, and I wanted to help out with officiating the B race if needed (which it wasn't).  The temperature was in the 60s and the ground was dry, so that eliminated most of my worries.  Of course they were still setting up the course when I arrived, but eventually I pulled out the bike and rode a couple of laps of the course before the first race got underway.  This was going to be a fairly hard course, mainly because it was all through rather thick grass and almost all up and down, so basically there was almost no place to recover. 

Turnout for this race was quite small.  A lot of the cyclocross enthusiasm comes out of the Baton Rouge area, but a conflicting LSU football game the night before must have taken precedence for those guys.  One surprise that the course offered was the chance of getting a flat because of thorns.  The first race had, I think, three flats as a result, but luckily the organizers found the spot on the course where it was happening and removed most of the offending plants.

I started the A race with my usual cyclocross goal, which was to finish in one piece.  At the start, I was surprised to find myself suddenly in the lead, so against my better judgement I pushed the first couple of laps, which resulted in three of us opening a fairly significant gap.  This course was very much a roadie type of course, in that there was only one small barrier on the course and everything else was basically rideable, even though there were a lot of fairly steep climbs that would take you down to walking speed.  The one exception was a steep hill about two-thirds of the way around the course. I was able to ride this one for most of the race even though I was dramatically overgeared for it.  For all practical purposes, I spent all of the race in the lowest gear on the bike, which is a 44x27, I think.  By the end of the second lap the climbs were starting to wear on me and Jim and Randy went by pretty easily as I backed off a bit in order to ensure my own survival.  For a couple of the last laps I decided it would be easier to dismount and run up the steep hill rather than try to ride it in my overgeared and underpowered state.  I doubt I lost much time doing that, but it didn't matter anyway because by then there was nobody near me anyway.  Despite the small field, it was a lot of fun and exactly what I was looking for - a good hard 45 minute workout.

Eagle Season

Morning temperatures have been remarkably consistent this week, hovering around the 40F mark.  This has had a few consequences.  For one, I've been riding with long tights, shoe-covers and jackets.  For another, it's been getting harder and harder to get out of bed in time.  I was so late on Thursday that I didn't even make an attempt to meet the group.  Instead, I resigned myself to a solo ride up the river until I could see the group on its return trip.  Not a bad thing, this time of year, anyway.  As it turned out, the group I saw was small and had turned around early, so I probably rode only twenty miles, maybe less.  This morning it was more of the same.  Beautiful weather, really, just a bit on the chilly side in the morning.  I'd turned on my "early" alarm by mistake the night before, so when it woke me up half an hour before I really needed to get up, I went back to sleep.  Well, of course that meant that I woke up late again.  I rushed out to the levee, arriving a couple of minutes late, to find only Scott, so we headed off for a nice Friday ride, taking long steady pulls at 20-21 mph and enjoying the scenery.  On the way back, just where the bike path loops around the "stacks," something big caught my eye.  A bald eagle had just landed atop the telephone pole.  I had my sunglasses on and had to ask Scott if that was really what I thought it was.  Once I took off the glasses and could see the white head, though, it was obvious.  We stopped for a minute, and when we did a few of the Tulane riders arrived from the other direction, so we all rode back together.  This was the second eagle I'd seen in two weeks, the first having been the one that nests near the I-10/I-310 junction.  I'd seen that one on the way to the cyclocross race in Natchez, and then again last weekend on the way back from Baton Rouge.  It's nice to see those big guys making a comeback.

Tonight is a holiday/business party down at the Westin, and then tomorrow the LAMBRA meeting, followed on Sunday by another cyclocross race just north of Jackson.  I'm glad to see that the weather will be a little warmer for that.  Meanwhile in blogger land, something is broken at blogger.com that is causing some of the links in the "pages" gadget to redirect to my own blogger home page instead of the correct page.  It seems to be affecting only the links that are blogger.com links.  It's been going on for a week or so, and they're "working on it."