Slidin' to Slidell

At 6 am the weather radar looked pretty good, and since the forecast wasn't calling for rain until afternoon, I stuck an extra Powerbar into my pocket before heading out the door to the Giro Ride.  As is usually the case this time of year, there had been talk of doing a "Long Giro" out to Slidell today.  The group hanging around at Starbucks before the ride was pretty big as we started out, and I guess it eventually got up to 45 or so by the time things really got going. Right off the bat, however, before we event got off of Lakeshore Drive, VJ flatted.  Fortunately it was still early enough that everyone waited.  Once over the bridges the pace picked up to 25-28 mph as usual, but also as usual I was staying safely tucked into the draft, especially since I was planning on doing the long ride out to Slidell and back.

When we turned onto Chef Highway I was surprised to see how foggy it was.  I reached back and turned on my rear blinky light, although I doubt it was foggy enough for anyone to miss such a big group. As we continued on, the fog just got thicker and thicker, and for a while I was seriously wondering if going out to Slidell was such a good idea.

As it turned out, there were over a dozen who were up for the long ride, so I tagged along too.  After a rather long nature break, we finally got a really smooth fast paceline going.  The road was pretty wet from all the fog, and after pulling off the front at one point I did a little ice skating on the paint stripe.  I was careful to stay off of the white line after that.

The ride back was a lot like the ride out had been.  Lots of fast paceline riding all the way to the turn off of Chef Highway.  After that things were a little less organized with some fast sections and some slow sections, and then finally a couple of hard efforts to the tops of the two bridges.  My legs were pretty tired by the time I got home, but nothing too severe.

The rain didn't arrive until late afternoon, but once it passed through it somehow stayed dry for the Krewe du Vieux.  Tomorrow I'm planning on the northshore ride, and hoping my legs are up to it after today's 90+ miles.