Damned Cold

After last weekend's nice weather and even nicer rides, I forced myself out the door Monday morning on a much colder and brutally windy day. I didn't want to lose the momentum from the prior week's training, and although an easy recovery day was clearly needed, it turned into a slow and painful little ride all alone up on the levee.

By the next morning I was already starting to feel a sore throat coming on and since the weather had gotten even colder I decided to skip Tuesday morning.  It was all downhill from there.  Later that afternoon I went out and bought a box of zinc throat lozenges in hopes of at least slowing down viral replication long enough for my immune system to get the upper hand. Perhaps it helped, but at any rate I spent Wednesday at home, mostly in bed, as the soreness progressed closer and closer to my lungs. By Thursday I was feeling a bit better and although I made it in to work I skipped riding once again.  The thing I was trying to avoid was having the damned cold get into my chest, and since we were in the middle of an unusual cold snap that had the morning temperatures down into the low 40s, I figured riding would just be a bad idea.

So on Friday there was a small group planning on riding to Slidell in the morning.  I had the day off from work and the weather looked like it would be excellent.  The sore throat was gone and although there was a little lingering head and chest congestion, there was no cough and no fever.  My plan was to ride out to meet the group at the lakefront and see how it went.  If it got fast, or I started feeling badly, I'd turn around and limp home.  Considering the makeup of the seven rider group that I found out there, I was not expecting to see Slidell. 

Fortunately, everyone was on the same page and the pace on the way out remained steady and smooth at around 22 mph.  I claimed a spot at the back of the paceline after telling everyone that I wouldn't be taking pace, and enjoyed the exceptionally smooth ride offered up by a small group of well-experienced riders.  After the turnaround at Slidell I decided to get in on the action for the stretch back down Chef Highway and was surprised to find the legs ready and able.  Still, despite all of the wheelsucking I'd done, there was not denying that 92 miles at an average speed of 20.5 mph is still 92 miles any way you cut it.  My legs were sore, but otherwise I was feeling quite optimistic that I'd somehow averted the worst of that damned cold without losing a whole week of training.

Saturday morning I rolled out in the dark to meet the Giro.  The turnout prospect of warming temperatures and sunshine resulted in a rather large turnout this morning.  I was feeling pretty good under the circumstances and would have even taken a few pulls along Chef Highway if there had been any way of getting up to the front without literally pushing people out of the way. The pace was fast, but the wind was with us and so even the 27-29 mph pace along Hayne was insufficient to string things out very much. I latched onto Mark's wheel for the Venetian Isles sprint, backing off after the first 100 meters or so at 34 mph.  A moment later a string of riders came flying past on the left as I eased over to the right edge of the road.  The ride back was pretty typical and my plan to contest the Goodyear sprint was foiled when we caught the Fortier Blvd. stoplight and everything came to a stop.  Later, along Hayne, Charlie flatted and a few of us stopped for him as the bulk of the group, most of which was still together, continued on.  Tomorrow I'll do another Giro Ride before domestic entanglements consume the rest of Easter day.  So despite missing three days of riding I guess I'll end up with 220+ miles for the week which won't be too bad under the circumstances.

Team Kits and Group Rides

I was already looking forward to the weekend when I got the email.  The 2013 team kits had arrived and Mignon was taking the first stab at distribution that evening at Starbucks.  Not wanting to be caught wearing the "old" kit over the weekend, I headed over there at 7 pm to pick up my two jerseys, shorts and pair of gloves.  I was a little surprised that they had actually arrived on time as promised.  Over the years I'm become accustomed to taking jersey manufacturers' promised delivery times with more than a grain of salt.  We switched over from Giordana to Voler this year, primarily because of the convenience factor.  Voler set up a team store, everyone went there and ordered and paid for their kits, and then the whole batch was shipped together.  That relieved the club from the whole ordering process, and also eliminated the large cash outlay that we would typically have to make to get the order started.  Progress.....

So Saturday morning I pulled on the new stuff and headed back to the same Starbucks to meet the Giro Ride group.  I had managed a pretty decent week of training, and had already decided to cap it off with a hard weekend.  In that regard, the Giro did not fail to deliver.  The serious part of the Giro, around 40 miles, was ticked off at an average rate of 24.6 mph with the Goodyear sprint topping out just shy of 35 mph.  I was feeling pretty good, which I found rather surprising considering how much riding I'd done during the week, and so I spent a fair amount of time up in the rotation at the front. With the plan for Sunday involving a northshore ride, I rode back home wondering if I'd be paying for Saturday's efforts.  Back at home I spent some time up in the attic breathing fiberglass and dust while I decided how to support the pot rack that I later installed above the stove.  Along the way I found an old box of NOBC paperwork and pulled out one of the original Tour de Louisiana flyers from 1972, and what passed in 1975 for the Tour's Race Bible.  I just had to scan those and upload them to the NOBC website for posterity.  I sure miss those $3.25 entry fees.

Sunday morning it was cooler and very windy and I drove over to Puccino's to meet Mark McMurry. We were about a mile from the school where the ride starts when we suddenly ran into fog.  Fog?  I hadn't been expecting that. The dampness made it feel much cooler than I'd expected.  I put a T-shirt underneath my new jersey and pulled on the arm-warmers, and a few minutes later eleven of us rolled north for the standard 65 mile northshore ride.  With Mark, Ed, Daniel, Stephen, Jorge, Diego and others in attendance, and the fact that it was near the end of March, I knew this would not be a sightseeing ride.  It wasn't.  A few people turned around just past Enon when we stopped for the traditional nature break, and for the rest of the ride the pace remained fairly high. I was again a little surprised at how good I felt.  As usual, the eight mile stretch along Hwy 439, aided by a quartering tailwind, developed into a bit of a race as we attacked the climbs and hammered the flats, averaging a bit under 26 mph and continuing down Sie Jenkins Road before finally stopping to regroup.  Later, after turning south on Lee Road, the pace gradually started ramping up again, ending with a 35 mph sprint for the Enon town sign.  After riding tempo up the watchtower climb, Daniel put the hammer down after the Factory Road sprint and somehow we lost Ed. I thought we'd regroup at Tung Road, but they weren't taking any more prisoners and the pace remained steady for those last four boring  straight miles back to the parking lot, again averaging over 25 mph.  I was glad to finally have gotten in a solid week of riding, finishing up just shy of 300 miles with a fair amount of quality time.  Next week we'll be trying for a Thursday evening training race at the NOLA Motorsports Park where a couple of the guys have arranged or some free track time for us.  That should be interesting, although the jury remains out as to whether or not I will actually be able to get there by 6 pm.

Wednesday Double

Not quite keeping my head above water lately, I threw a little more gasoline on the fire Wednesday by adding the 6 pm Wednesday Night Worlds on top of my usual morning ride.  The weather was beautiful as I rode home from work, but a stiff wind was telling me that my first lakefront training race of the year would not be as accommodating as I'd have liked.  A quick change of clothes at home and I was out the door a few minutes after 5:30, figuring I'd probably miss the start.  That was fine with me since I could jump in on the second of four laps and avoid the first lap attacks.  Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, Jordan appeared beside me halfway to the lakefront, and as I latched onto his slightly faster wheel I thought, "this is messing up my plan to miss the first lap!"

As it turned out, the first lap was fine.  It was fairly fast, of course, but I was feeling OK and not at all concerned about he pace.  We weren't halfway into the second lap, however, when I found myself dropping back on the windward side after taking a pull to close a small gap and unable to find shelter until I was nearly at the end of a long string of riders in the gutter.  Up ahead, the gap had grown dangerously as the lead group chased Woody who I think had taken off solo after the fountain traffic circle.  Finally a few people took up the chase and we formed a little group trying to get back in contact with the lead group.  I was with Brian and Little Jorge and we were later joined by Judd and another rider who needed remedial sessions in paceline behavior.  For that matter, Brian wasn't really with the program either.  Every time we'd hit one of the little climbs over the levee Brian would basically attack, usually dropping whoever had just come off the front, and then he'd take a really long pull.  After a lap or two we had gotten ourselves within striking distance of the group, but then another surge blew our group apart once again and the gap opened up quickly after that.  Brian eventually dropped back after spending so much time in the wind, and halfway through the last lap the others disappeared too, so I just time trialed in the rest of the way.  It was a pretty good workout anyway, but a little frustrating because we could have easily gotten back into the group with a bit more cooperation.

This morning it was considerably cooler as I rode out to the levee in the dark for the Thursday morning ride.  The group was a little thin, but after a few miles Woody started pushing the pace up.  I was clearly feeling the double workout I'd had the day before, so I was taking only short pulls.  Even so, we were losing riders the whole time, and after Woody and some others turned back at the little dip we were left with only three, so we decided to turn around at the big dip a few miles ahead.  After the turnaround Brian went to the front and just motored at 20 mph into the headwind almost all the way back.

Hopefully I will be able to put in a more normal training week mileage-wise. Things are hopping at work lately, and this is the time of year when I get the most calls and emails from race promoters and riders, so time is short and I'm a little tired.....

Conference and Collegiate

It was still early in the week when I realized it was going to get complicated.  I was on call for Jury Duty all week, I was signed up for a conference downtown all day Thursday and most of Friday, and I had to get to Baton Rouge by Friday evening to start officiating for their weekend collegiate race.  The Daughter was scheduled to be in town Thursday through Monday.  One bit of luck came on Wednesday when I found out that I was released from Jury Duty for the remainder of the week.  The biggest complication then became transportation since I wasn't going to be able to take the car. 

The NCURA Pre-Award Conference started early on Thursday, so Wednesday was the last day I'd be able to throw a leg over a bike. I was scheduled to lead an ad hoc walking tour of the French Quarter Thrusday evening.  The conference itself was OK, starting with an excellent keynote address by Tulane's Maureen Lichtveld.  The rest of the day was a mix of sessions, some good, some not so good.  After the last session, around 5 pm, I saw that four or five people had signed up for the walking tour, so when everyone got together a little later we decided to do a quick one-hour walk through the French Quarter to Frenchman Street and back.  The idea was to be back in time for any of the 6:30 dinner groups.  Well, when I checked my watch as we were walking down Frenchman I realized it was already after 6:30, so that plan was out the window.  We ended up hunting around for a restaurant that didn't have too long of a wait, finally settling on the Palace Cafe' on Canal Street.  That actually turned out surprisingly well, although it wasn't until after 10:00 that I got back home.  Then on Friday I went straight from the conference to the Budget car rental place down on Canal St. around 4:30 to rent a car for the weekend, then rushed home, packed some clothes, loaded up the car with the PA system, traffic cones, signs, etc., and headed for LSU.  That trip, which normally would take maybe 75 minutes, took more like two hours by the time I crawled through ten miles of Baton Rouge gridlock.  On the plus side, I arrived at the Union early enough to relax a bit and get all of the pre-reg riders into the computer before heading back to the La Quinta hotel around 10:30.

Saturday morning I was up around 5 am to drive up to St. Francisville for the Road Race and Time Trial. Ricky, the other official, arrived from Monroe right on time, so while he got the finish line area set up, I handled race-day registration. It was chilly, but the races went quite smoothly and we got everything off pretty much on time.  Ricky was using the new RapidCam finish line camera, which came in quite handy for some of the close sprint finishes.  I was using my iPAD as backup, along with the other regular camera that we run at the finish.  After the road races, we had just enough time to run back into St. Francisville and grab a sandwich at Subway before heading back in time to get the evening time trials going.  Those went smoothly, and we got the results posted to the LAMBRA website around 8:00.  Sunday morning was another early wake-up for the criterium that was to be held around the state capitol building. The course was pretty nice from all reports, and even though we had to judge about a million 4-deep points primes in addition to the finishes of seven races, it all went pretty well and we had the final results posted about ten minutes after the last race ended.  I got back to New Orleans with plenty of time to walk over to Plum Street SnoBalls for some of the first snoballs of the season.  I was pretty tired by the time I got the final results posted to the website later that evening.  Tomorrow will be the first day I've been able to ride since Thursday, making it by far the worst riding week I've had since I broke my collarbone back at the end of September.

A Rough Rouge

This was an unusual Rouge-Robaix for me.  Rather than rushing up to St. Francisville in the wee hours of Sunday morning on the first day of Daylight Savings Time, I instead got to go up with the Tulane team, courtesy of one of their sponsors, on Saturday.  After first getting completely off track following the mapping software's directions to the Greenwood Plantation, we switched to plan B and headed back to St. Francisville to pick up our packets, eventually meeting the rest of the group at The Magnolia restaurant.  It was already pretty late by the time we got to our rooms at the bed and breakfast. Waiting in the office's mailbox were two envelopes, one with my name on it and the other with Kenny's name on it.  We asked Ben who was supposed to be in the second room, and it took us a while to figure out that he was telling us that we each had our own private rooms.  We looked at each other in disbelief, since that sort of thing does not normally happen with bike race travel.

We were up in the dark Sunday morning for a 5:30 am breakfast and a half-hour drive to the start of the race. It was still quite dark when we arrived around 6:30.  The Tulane riders were doing the Gran Fondo that started at 7 am, so once they were off I had a good hour to get my own act together for the 8:30 start of the Masters race.  I would be riding my old Orbea since it had a 27 tooth cog that I was pretty sure I'd want to have, and I wasn't up to buying a new Campi cassette for this race. Although it seemed to me that a lot of riders had been training quite seriously for this race, I was definitely not one of them.  The Masters race had 66 riders registered, although probably only about 60 that actually started.  The big nervous group squeezed onto the narrow country roads as I focused mainly on staying upright and out of trouble. The first of the four gravel sections this year would come at about 18 miles.  The speed was fairly slow, which kept the group all bunched up, and made it hard to move around.  Eventually I managed to get a little closer to the front and could see Woody and Frank doing the same.  Then came a sharp right turn onto the first gravel road where some riders ahead of me immediately lost it and I had to put a foot down just to get around the mess. The rocks on this section seemed huge and the front of the group was already way down the road.  I was really struggling on this section and it wasn't until we were nearly at the end of it about three miles later that I started feeling more comfortable.  By then I think a break was probably already off the front and long gone.  I came out of the gravel with a nice sized group and we could see another group maybe 40 seconds to a minute up the road.  It took a while to get organized but we eventually got going, but we were still about ten seconds behind them when we hit the second gravel road at 25 miles.  I don't know exactly what happened there, but I ended up alone for much of it.  By the time I got back to asphalt at 33 miles it was just Scott Gurganus and myself.  We could see a few riders ahead, but nothing much behind.  I knew our race was essentially over, so we settled in to a moderate pace.  I had seen Woody on the side of the gravel road with a flat, so this whole time I was hoping and expecting to see him come up behind us, but we never saw him again.  Apparently he had multiple flats.  Anyway, we were almost to Woodville when a sizable group of fifteen or twenty masters caught up to us.

So now I was in a group of about twenty that was rolling along toward the third gravel section at a fairly moderate pace.  I think they all knew that the real race was already fifteen minutes up the road so there was really no sense of urgency which I guess explains why our final time was 20-30 minutes slower than the leaders.  At one point along this stretch there was a dead armadillo in the middle of the road.  I was second or third wheel at the time and remember that two of us pointed to it and I think said something too.  Unfortunately, somewhere toward the back of the group two riders went down. I never heard the crash, just a loud "bang" that I figured was just someone's tire blowing out.  We were nearing the turn onto the last gravel section so it wasn't a good time to sit up and look back.  One of the riders who went down was Scott.  A bit before the turn Jayson took off alone (I think), without much reaction from the rest of the group.  After the turn there is a bit of broken up asphalt and a very sketchy little bridge with big gaps between the boards.  Somehow my rear tire slipped into one of the cracks and I almost went down.  Then we hit the long Blockhouse climb up to the Pond Store.  As usual, my front wheel washed out somewhere along the way and I had to walk for a while before I could get going again.  In all, I think was off and on the bike five times during this three mile stretch, including the sand pit at the bottom of the second downhill.  I can't imagine how anyone could have ridden through that.  Anyway, pretty much everything after that section is a blur as I was rapidly approaching zombie rider mode.  I came off the third gravel section more or less alone and motored along solo for a long time before other riders started to catch up or get caught.  Eventually we had a little group again but nobody was really pushing it.

The fourth and last gravel section was at 82 miles and by then my legs were pretty much toast.  I think everyone in my little group walked part of the way up the steepest section.  I was actually having good success getting back on the bike in uphill spots where there was some traction, but as usual everything blew apart over this stretch with individual riders scattered all along the road. I was starting to feel some minor leg cramps.  After coming off of the last gravel section there are another 25 miles that feature some of the worst excuses for asphalt you'll ever find, plus an increasingly brutal headwind.  We eventually accumulated about six riders along this stretch, most of whom were on their last legs, myself included.  This section of the course seems to go on forever, throwing in some steep little climbs and switching from acceptable to horrible road surfaces. Over the last ten miles or so one rider went to the front and held a steady pace, but we were starting to lose riders to cramps the closer we got.  By this point I was probably looking at my computer every thirty seconds hoping to see the mileage getting closer to 104.  I ended up sitting on the wheel of that one guy for the rest of the way in, finishing a good thirty minutes off what would be an acceptable pace for this race. I thought at first I could attribute the slow time to the additional gravel section and the wind, but looking at the times of the lead riders in most of the races, I really can't.  The Pro/1/2 winner's time was 4:23 this year, and the Master's race winner's time was 4:59.  Mine was 5:36!  That's a huge difference.

The Tulane rides, despite the fact that they were not doing the actual "race" managed to accumulate a number of crashes and injuries, including a trip to the hospital for Charlotte.  Overall, there seemed to be more crashes and flats than ever this year, but at least the temperature was comfortably warm.  Despite my relatively slow speed, my legs were absolutely trashed by the end and were sore enough to wake me up a couple of times last night.  When I got up this morning to find it raining, I was more than happy to take that as a valid excuse to skip even the easy recovery ride I'd been planning.  My NOBC teammates didn't fare too well eigher this year.  Chuck's derailleur broke in two before the start so he never even got to ride. Adrian finished around mid-pack in the Cat. 3/4 race with Fred quite a bit farther back.  Robert Monahan DNF'd.  New club member Sudan Robinson, however, finished quite well in the Cat. 4/5 race. Dennis D. finished the Masters race intact and Mignon rode well in the Women's race finishing with a group that included Allie, Louise and Stacey.

Friday Ride

I stood there for a while staring at the bikes, wondering if I should ride the Orbea or the Bianchi.  My plan for Rouge-Roubaix is to ride the Orbea, mainly because I have a 12-27 cassette for that bike and figure I'll want those two extra teeth about halfway up blockhouse hill, if I happen to still be on two wheels at that point.  Bike weight really isn't an issue for this race, especially since I always approach it more as a hard training ride than as a race.  Somehow at 6:15 am it seemed far too much work to swap the seat bag from one bike to the other, so I went out on the Bianchi as usual. The air felt colder than I'd expected, and I was glad I had pulled on my vest at the last minute, but at least the wind had eased a bit from the day before.  Up on the levee I met up with John who I don't think had ridden with us in quite a while, and Scott. It was just a regular smooth paceline ride today with each rider taking long pulls at 20-22 mph.  I guess I was lifting the pace 1 mph or so, feeling perhaps like I wasn't getting my heart rate up into training effect territory while at the same time wondering if I shouldn't be taking it easier in light of what was to come on Sunday.  For me, though, there has never seemed to be much of a difference whether or not I ride really easy a few days prior to a race.  As long as my legs aren't actually sore at the start, it doesn't seem to matter.  I'll probably meet the Giro tomorrow morning and ride halfway out with the group before turning back.  Anyway, I stopped at Zotz for a cup of coffee on the way home.  By then the temperature had risen considerably and it felt quite nice sitting there in the sun on Oak Street.

I have been feeling rather out of shape lately, having missed most of one weekend in Austin and the next in Orlando, along with a whole lot of shortened or missed weekday training rides.  Psychologically, I am not exactly in a good place going into this 104 mile ride, but it's not like I've never been here before.  Other than one or two years when I was kind of almost in shape, I have not taken this race too seriously.  The mileage is generally a bit over my head and the effort level, particularly the last 40 miles of it, is always a struggle, but you know, a bad day at Rouge-Roubaix is still better than a good day on the couch.  Tonight I'll swap wheels and cassettes around and generally make the Orbea more or less ready, scrounge around for gels or powerbars or whatever, and meet up with the Tulane riders around 1:30.  Then there will be a stop for packet pick-up, a group dinner, a bit of sleep, and a 5 am wake-up call.  Thus will begin what I think will be my forty-second road racing season.

Not Ready for Rouge

Ouch.....

It's been one thing after the other lately, each of which seems to have taken a bite out of my saddle time.  Such is life.  After the relatively easy, albeit long, drive back from Orlando on Monday we soon found ourselves at the veterinary ER with a dog with an eye problem.  Vets seem to kind of panic when dogs present with eye problems because if it is glaucoma things can progress very quickly to blindness.  The ER visit was inconclusive and we were sent  home with a tiny little bottle of antibiotic/corticosteroid eye drops and a planned visit to our regular vet on Wednesday.  The drops seemed to  help. On Tuesday morning I got out for a shortened ride in order to get back home in time to take The Wife to the airport for a trip back to Florida for a week-long conference.  That left me with full dog duties, a week of Jury Duty, and an empty refrigerator. Luckily I didn't have to go to Jury Duty that morning.  I was not so lucky on Wednesday, but at least I didn't have to report until 10:30, so I went out in the cold and wind to meet the morning ride group which turned out to be just Tom (yes, it was that windy).  It turned out to be a pretty decent workout. Later that afternoon I took the dog to the vet where we ruled out glaucoma, the dog got a checkup and shots, I got heartworm meds for both dogs, and the vet got a little under $400.  Guess I won't be getting that roof rack for the new car just yet.  This morning I had to cut the long ride short again since I had an early meeting and needed to build some dog-walking time into the schedule.  Then I had to negotiate the Broadway Street maze in the car since I was already running too late to make it by bike.  Broadway is normally not too bad, but right now there is a lot going on.  Traffic was backed up squeezing around the places where they are tearing up half of the road to replace plumbing in preparation for re-paving.  Once I got past that, it was again backed up where Tulane is driving piles for the new dorm next to The Boot.  I thought I was home free after that, but then they had St. Charles completely blocked off where they were doing work on the Loyola dorm, so I switched over to Lowerline, only to find that street blocked off for tree-trimming.  Yeah, I was a few minutes late getting to work.

So this Sunday is the infamous Rouge-Roubaix.  I will be staying with the Tulane team and some of the team sponsors this year at the Greenwood plantation B&B, most of whom will be riding the Gran Fondo rather than one of the races.  Normally I would just make the two-hour drive early on Sunday morning, so this introduces a new wrinkle, especially since I will need to find someone to walk the dogs while I'm gone. I'm planning on riding the old Orbea, mainly because I have a cassette for that bike with a 27t cog on it rather than the 25t I have on the Bianchi (and I am way too cheap right now to buy a new Campi cassette just for that race).  I guess I'll need to get that rear brake working first, though.  As usual, I am nowhere near being in shape for a 104 mile race that includes a bunch of steep gravel roads, especially since the last two weeks of training have been so weak, so I will be riding in survival mode from the outset.  To make matters worse, some last-minute road construction has caused some of the course to be re-routed, adding another gravel section  only 6 miles into the race, which will probably be utter chaos since everybody will still be fresh at that point. This one's gonna hurt. I just sent the registration and results spreadsheets to the promoter and chief official.  Looking at the pre-registration list (doesn't close until tonight), it looks like most of the fields will be pretty strong.  The Cat. 4/5 race hit its 75-rider field limit a week ago, which is rather frightening all by itself.  The Masters race is up to 57, so it will probably be at least 70 by race day.  The Pro/1/2 race is up to 43, and includes some pretty serious talent from 14 states plus Canada.

There was an interesting and very characteristic exchange (which is probably still going on) on the Tulane Cycling FB page this morning.  I just had to copy it down for posterity:

Graeme PrestonTulane Cycling: Anybody riding later today?

Charlotte Fournier I probably will be. Not sure what time yet though.
Graeme Preston keep me updated.
Mikołaj Altenberg I hope to, although my bars are untaped on one side at the moment.
David Feinswog Riding at 10. Need to be back for a 1pm lab.
David Feinswog Could be persuaded to ride at 230 instead though due to laziness
Graeme Preston charlotte, what do you think?
Mikołaj Altenberg I have class until 12:30, going at 230 would be good for me.
Graeme Preston David if you can wait lets shoot for 2:30. the more the merrier.
David Feinswog Ok. Im going to try and do 2-3 of kennys 10 min intervals so I may yo-yo on the return trip.
Charlotte Fournier 2:30 works for me
Graeme Preston omg, david that's what i'm gonna do!
Charlotte Fournier oh no i do not like the sound of this

Windy Windermere

It has been a very long week.  On Tuesday we broke down and bought a new car despite the fact that I still haven't received the money from my insurance company for the totalled one.  It was not inexpensive, but we really weren't in a good position to be spending a lot of time shopping around, plus we were planning to drive to Orlando on Friday.  The week's riding took a bit of a hit because of work and weather, which was rather frustrating since the prior week hadn't been very good either.  The Tulane team was heading to College Station for the A&M race on Friday, but without both Kenny and me.  As usual there were some last-minute issues with lodging and transportation.  I charged the hotel rooms on my credit card, although I still haven't seen the reimbursement from the Austin race two weeks ago.  At least one of the team made it over to Club Sports at the last possible time and got everyone registered online. In the midst of all of that, things got very busy at work on a couple of fronts, which always seems to happen when I plan to be out of the office.

So on Friday we took the new car out for a little ten-hour drive to Orlando.  Things were going smoothly until we turned south on I-75 where half of the drivers seemed intent on playing bumper cars with the other half of the cars.  I think we sat five separate crashes along the way, each of which slowed us down to a crawl for a few miles.  I had brought my bike with me, but whether I would ride on Saturday was definitely up in the air.  There was a late cold front that had come through, and Saturday morning was cold and windy.  We were scheduled to meet the family over at my brother's house around noon, so I ended up sleeping late and not riding at all.  The wedding itself was held outside at a local park near a lake in 25 mph winds and dropping evening temperatures.  We were glad to rush over to the reception after the short ceremony.  The reception, which wound down around 9 pm, was pretty informal with a DJ, dancing, food, and no alcohol, so naturally we stopped at a grocery store on our way back to the hotel and picked up a bottle of Kendall Jackson Merlot.

Sunday morning I was up early to drive out to the Windermere Ride about half an hour away.  I had a feeling turnout would be low thanks to the unseasonably low temperature and the brutal northwest wind.  I hadn't done this ride in a long time, but it was also unseasonably cold that time too.  Indeed, there were only a handful of riders this morning, and three of us were from out of town.  Perhaps it was the cold, or perhaps the prior night's dinner of olives, cheese, and wine, but I was not feeling very sharp as we headed out around 8:15 am.  After the first few miles, this ride gets fairly hilly and it wasn't long before I realized I'd better not get dropped because I had no idea where I was.  Fortunately, they were kind of keeping track of the riders off the back and regrouping now and then.  We were more than halfway through the 65 mile ride before I started to feel normal again.  By then the clouds had broken up and the temperature had risen into the 50s.  Over the last few miles riders (there had been only eight or nine) started peeling off to go home and by the time we got back to the cars there were only two of us.  Still, it was a good training ride. 

The Tulane team had a pretty hard race, I think, but still posted some good results for the weekend despite two minor crashes.  I was sorry I couldn't go to that one because they have an alumni race. Tomorrow morning I'll be back on the road early for the long drive back to New Orleans.