Rolling On

I was up a little early Saturday morning for the Giro Ride.  Jon Tenny was in town for a visit and so on Friday John Chauvin had dropped off a bike for him to borrow.  Steve Martin was also in town, so the plan was to all get together for the ride out toward the lakefront.  This sort of thing doesn't usually work out perfectly, of course, so I figured I'd get up a few minutes early so that I'd at least have my own act together.  Amazingly, though, thanks to the miracle of text messaging, the plan came together perfectly and the three of us were on the road shortly after 6 am.  Our unexpected efficiency put us at Starbucks a few minutes before 6:30, so we had plenty of time to sit and chat while the other riders filtered in.  I had been expecting more of the dense fog that has been plaguing the area recently, and had dressed a bit more warmly than usual for the very unusual upper 50s temperature.  As it turned out, there was essentially no fog, and only a light wind.

On the way out, as we climbed over the Bayou St. John bridge, someone pointed at the sky behind us.  Three of us actually stopped to try and get a photo of a rather spectacular cloud that was rolling over the city.  I hoped it didn't have much rain in it, but it certainly looked ominous anyway.

Although the turnout was pretty large for this one, a lot of the riders were planning on doing a long ride out to Ft. Pike or Slidell, and I think that helped to keep the speed down just a bit on the way out.  I was just happy to be back on the bike.  I'd been able to get out on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but had overslept on Friday.  Anyway, the ride out to the turnaround was pretty normal - a fair amount of steady paceline with a few surges thrown in at random.  I spent a fair amount of time stuck near the back before finally biting the bullet and moving up to where there was still some rotation.  For the most part, we had a tailwind on the way out, and I was already starting to feel sorry for the guys who were doing the long ride.  It's easy to be seduced by a little tailwind, only to discover that by the time you are on your way back and fighting the headwind you don't have anything left. It was a pretty good ride.  We missed nearly all of the rain, and there was leftover King Cake waiting for us when I got home.

I think I'll try and make the northshore ride tomorrow.  It's been a really long time since I've done a ride that wasn't essentially flat as a pancake.  Hopefully the 30% chance of rain won't throw a monkey wrench into the works.