End of Dark

The wind's been shifting back around to the south lately, lifting the morning temperatures well out of arm-warmer range, at least until the next front arrives Halloween night.  Since I'll be departing for Mountain Time on Friday, I'll be off the bike for three days.  I hate that, but it will actually be a shorter lapse than usual.  For the past few years the USAC Local Associations conference has come immediately before the NCURA conference in D.C., and as a result it was usually five or six days before I saw the bike again.  This year the D.C. conference has been moved to August, so at least my losses will be limited.

Sunrise around here is currently at 7:12 am, so even the relatively late 6:40 am ride is starting in the dark.  Fortunately, however, this week will be the last of the dark rides for a little while.  For me, tomorrow will be my last.  By the time I'm back we will have moved our clocks backward and on Monday the sun will rise at 7:12.  For a few weeks the lights can come off the bike, but the reprieve won't last long as the days continue to shorten.  By November 30 sunrise will be back to 6:38, and by Christmas we'll already be a few miles down the road before the sun peeks over the horizon. To further complicate matters, the levee construction work that started earlier this month will, on some undetermined date, close off critical parts of the bike path and we'll all be looking for alternate morning ride solutions.  The infamous WeMoRi (Wednesday Morning Ride) around City Park and Lakeshore Drive starts at the insane hour of 5:45 am and I don't know that I will often be desperate enough to get up at 5 am in order to get to the start. One group is already pushing for another morning ride around City Park at around 6 am on Tuesdays.  Personally, I'm thinking that 6:30 would be more reasonable, especially if most of the ride was on Lakeshore Drive rather than a battle with stop lights and early commuter traffic on Wisner and Marconi.  It'll be bad enough just getting home from such a ride at 7:45 or so on Carrollton Avenue, so I can't say I'm looking forward to it.  There was a time, however, before the levee bike path was completed, that I routinely rode out to the lakefront on Carrollton to do my training ride on Lakeshore Drive, so I may be back to that some time in the next month or so.  We'll see.

In the meantime, I'm at least glad that there's no race or other big ride that I'll be missing next weekend (although it would be a great weekend for a long ride on the northshore).  The following weekend will be the cyclocross race up in Jackson on Saturday, followed by a 100 mi. collegiate ride with LSU from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, assuming of course I survive the cyclocross.

This morning's levee ride had a group of around ten, I guess.  There was a moderate breeze out of the southeast that didn't present too much of a problem and provided a bit of a tailwind for much of the outgoing part.  Tomorrow we're having our annual Halloween open house, so if you are in the neighborhood any time before 10:30 or so, stop by for a drink and something to eat.