Weekend Before Christmas

I headed out Saturday morning knowing I would be overdressed by the end.  As I rode to Starbucks in the dark wearing my NOBC jacket over a long-sleeve thermal jersey, however, I was quite comfortable.  I was planning on doing the long ride out to Slidell again, and with the clear sky I was pretty sure it was going to warm up substantially by the time I got back home five hours later. I'd missed two days of riding during the week already, so at least my legs were finally feeling normal again. There was a good sized group on hand for the Giro Ride, and I decided early on that I'd take it easy on the way out, see how I felt when we stopped in Slidell, and then hopefully get some exercise on the way back.  Things went smoothly on the first part of the ride, especially once we crossed the Chef bridge and fell into a steady paceline.  The wind was light and the sun was shining and basically it was a great day for riding.  When we climbed the long bridge over the Rigoletts at Fort Pike the group got pretty strung out, and when the front of the group didn't slow down to regroup at the bottom a few riders got stranded in no-mans-land.  John and a couple of others dropped back, but the front of the pack never even looked back.  After the stop at the gas station in Slidell, it felt pretty chilly as we started out again, but of course we eventually warmed up.  After we crossed the bridge again I started spending more time at the front, which wasn't all that hard since we had a light tailwind most of the way back.  Later that afternoon I ended up spending three hours or so scraping paint off of an old door and kicking myself for not wearing a dust mask while doing it. Maybe I'll find a little time to do the other side of that door tomorrow, especially if it turns out to be as rainy as predicted.

So Sunday morning was a bit warmer and a lot more cloudy and the Giro group was a little smaller than it had been on Saturday.  It was just as well, since I was going to have to turn back early in order to make a brunch at Brennan's.  On the way out down Hayne Blvd. we came to one intersection where the front riders blew through the red light.  I looked over and saw the car in the left lane slowing down but the car in the right lane was going probably 50 mph and showing no indication of slowing down.  The rest of us had to slam on the brakes to avoid disaster.  The handful of riders who had gone through kept going, which I consider to be rather bad form for this sort of ride.  Anyway, I turned back at Chef Highway and got a nice workout riding home, and an hour later I was sitting at Brennan's sipping a gin Bloody Mary as my recovery drink.