Back At It

On the way back along Chef Menteur Highway

After a good four hours of sleep I rolled out of bed and onto the bike.  The air outside was thick and humid, and it was dark enough to need both headlight and taillight.  I was a little early, so I took my time as I rode out to meet the Giro Ride. The biggest thing on my mind at the time was whether to have hot coffee or iced coffee.  It was a decision that turned out to be moot when I found the Starbucks to be closed.  It seemed that they had electricity, so perhaps they were having trouble getting enough staff back to work or something.  There were a couple of things we knew for sure about the Giro.  Lakeshore Drive was definitely unusable after having been submerged by the lake during the hurricane.  I also knew that once we got out past the levee on Highway 90, where the road had also been flooded, we'd probably have to deal with mud, debris and possibly standing water.

The turnout was surprisingly good, and the pace down Hayne Blvd. was pretty fast, perhaps just a little bit slower than normal.  It felt good to be back at it, but events of the past week had clearly taken their toll.  Basically, I felt like I had been off the bike for a month. As we had crossed the industrial canal bridge I'd looked down to see that the huge floodgates, finished only a month or so ago, were still closed.  Out on Chef Highway the floodgates east of the city were open, so we were able to ride over the levee there, but on the other side we found the right lane partially submerged and full of debris, forcing us into the left lane along with the trucks.  It didn't take us long to decide it was too dangerous to continue, so we turned around, ultimately cutting about ten miles off of the Giro route.

Here in the city things are slowly returning to normal.  The power company made a lot of progress on Sunday, but there are still a lot of areas without power.  On the way home we watched a caravan of a dozen power trucks as it turned onto Wisner heading into town. I'm glad that tomorrow is a holiday because we can all use the extra day to get things back in order before returning to business as usual on Tuesday.