The Illusion of Power

It has been a busy pre-Mardi Gras weekend around here.  The threat of rainy weather for Fat Tuesday seems to have ramped up the general level of parade-going urgency. That same threat was probably responsible for the large turnout for the Saturday Giro Ride.  Well, that and the fact that the temperature was in the 60s. My mileage last week was already sagging, and so I talked The Wife in to picking up The Daughter from the airport so that I could make the Giro. 

Saturday morning felt colder than the thermometer would indicated thanks to a strong wind. I woke up early and decided to go ahead and hit the road anyway.  The sky was cloudy and I was a little overdressed because I knew it was going to remain both cloudy and windy all day.  Riding through City Park I passed the City Park Stables where the huge Budweiser trucks were parked.  Those are the ones that bring in the Clydesdales and related equipment.  They seem to be part of almost every major parade.

The Giro started out fast and pretty much stayed that way.  All the way out Chef Highway I had a tight grasp on the bars as I balanced between the white line and the rumble strip, alternatively sprinting and coasting.  The crosswind accordion effect was in full force.  I looked way up ahead and knew I should be up there, but once we really got rolling it would have taken a major effort, and I figured I was getting a pretty good workout doing paceline intervals anyway.  On the way back one of the guys had a flat near the back of the group and only a few of us stopped, but it was just as well since the rest of the ride was basically tailwind by that point.  I think my maximum speed was up around 38 mph that day when we were flying back down Chef Highway with a 20 mph tailwind.  Don't you just love that illusion of power that a strong tailwind provides?  Enjoy it while you can, because you're really not that strong.

Saturday evening we went over to Tulane's Tidewater Building on Canal Street to watch Endymion, which was great.  Getting out of there afterward in the car was, however, pure torture.  I think it took is half an hour to go three blocks.

Donald Davis is in town from Pensacola and he had called me about meeting up Sunday morning to ride out to the Giro.  So at 6:10 I was riding around in little circles on Pine Street wondering why he was late.  He and his son in law finally showed up about ten minutes late. Donald had survived the entire Rouge-Roubaix course on Saturday, but had two flats riding through New Orleans in the dark.  Anyway, we still arrived at Starbucks in plenty of time or coffee.  It was even more windy than it had been on Saturday and I knew the group would get blown apart sooner or later.  It turned out to be sooner.  We hadn't gone three miles down Hayne Blvd. with a 15-20 mph crosswind before the pack split. The whole ride I kept wanting to take a photo, but taking my hands off the bars wasn't worth the risk.  There were more than a couple of "Oh shit!" moments when the wind caught my front wheel and tried to blow me across the road.  Naturally Mike Williams was out there on a fixed gear TT bike with a disk wheel weaving all over the place. 

I was glad when we dropped him on Hayne, but then Donald had another flat approaching Chef Highway and he caught back up.  I was sticking with Donald since I knew he was out of tubes and CO2.  The pace ramped up gradually as we battled the headwind and crosswind out to Venetian Isles.  A little while later Donald's tire started going flat again.  By then we were on the way back and only the Tulane riders and I stayed with Donald to help.  We finally found the tiny piece of glass that had been causing the problem embedded in the tire, put in my last tube, and had a pretty good ride back, eventually catching up with some of the other riders who had themselves had another flat.

After the ride it was off to catch some of the Thoth parade on Henry Clay Avenue and then a quick lunch since The Daughter had a flight out at 5:30.  When we got home and checked on that flight, however, we found it delayed by two hours because of the winter storm, so she would miss a connecting flight in Minnesota. After numerous phone calls with Delta the best they could do was get her on a flight Mardi Gras morning almost two days later! Oh well, I guess we'll hope the weather holds out around here so we can catch a couple more parades tomorrow night.