Weather or Whether Not

It's been a week of crazy weather all-around, and down here in New Orleans we'd been spared the worst of it.  Last weekend was pretty nice, especially for the first weekend of January.  I went out to the Saturday Giro, which was a typical winter Giro, which is to say that a number of riders were planning on riding all the way out to Slidell so they weren't killing it on the way out.  That kept the pace relatively manageable which meant that I got home with legs that were only slightly sore.  Slightly sore was better than very sore because I'd decided to do the Northshore ride the next day.  After the Giro I rushed over to Mark's house for an NOBC meeting where we talked over some plans for the new year.  This was mostly about club rides, parties, training camp (which for us is kind of a party), etc.  One thing we did decide to do was to make a club effort to put together a Women's team composed of five or six or so riders who were willing to commit to a schedule of "A" races and in return get some club-provided perks.  If a good group comes together this could easily become a separately sponsored team within the club.  There was some talk of moving in that direction with other teams as well. 

After the meeting I stopped at Bud Logan's house and picked up the surviving copy of the video he made of the 1987 (I think) Race Across Louisiana.  I next need to get it converted to DVD, but that may be a little complicated because it was made in an unusual VHS format that incorporated an extra sound track for the music.  I'm checking on someone he has worked with over in Oregon, so we'll see.  If that doesn't work out I can always get it copied locally, although they may not be able to find the second audio track (which I think is mixed into the video track).

So Sunday I headed over to Puccino's to see if anyone was there who needed a ride, but nobody was around.  I did see Mignon's car so I figured there must be at least two people on the way.  I gave her a call just to be sure she wasn't across the street at Cafe' du Monde and expecting to get a ride, but she was already on the road with Sherri. That turned out to be funny because when I was about three-quarters of the way across the lake she called me back because, as she discovered after they got to Mandeville, Sherri thought they were riding with the slower Abita Springs group while Mignon was planning on riding with the Lee Road Jr. High group.  So I picked her up at a gas station because Sherri wasn't comfortable riding with the faster group, which in the end turned out to be not so fast.  The ride itself was great.  The big cold front was still many hours away so it warmed up to the upper 50s or maybe even 60 and I got in about 67 miles on roads that were not dead flat for the first time in a couple of months.  My neck was still sore by the end, but no worse than what is now usual.

By Monday morning the temperature was down to 31 or so and for a little while I debated with myself whether to ride or not.  The wind was in the 15-25 mph range out of the north so it was going to be hard to make it a recovery ride, but considering that this morning was supposed to be in the 20s, which it is, I decided to bundle up and ride anyway.  I think my average speed was in the 14 mph range, but I spent an hour and a half on the bike and other than cold feet had a pretty nice recovery ride.  This morning, however, I decided it would be a good day to skip riding.  It'll be a little better tomorrow.