Finished with February

February always turns out to be the hardest month for riding. "Hard" in the sense that it's hard to get out on the bike and actually do anything resembling training.  If it's not the weather, it's something else. I'm sure that way back when they were working out the details of the Gregorian calendar, making adjustments for Mardi Gras (oh, I mean Easter), and the Council of Nicea's dubious decrees, someone must have said, "Hey guys, we're going to have to cut a couple of days off of one of these months to make this thing work," to which someone else replied, "Take it out of February, the sooner that damned month is over the better."

So anyway, I'm always kind of glad to see February come to an end. Once we're into March the days start to get noticeably longer, the morning temperatures a little milder, and I start thinking a little more seriously about racing.  This year, we practically get to celebrate the end of February because in a few hours it will be the start of Mardi Gras weekend, aka the weekend before Mardi Gras.  Almost anyone who is in town this time of year has friends and relatives visiting and the streets and sidewalks and neutral grounds are busy with people sporting somewhat eccentric attire, even by New Orleans standards. The weather this year looks promising.  The weekend looks to be mild and dry with daytime temperatures in the 70s.  Monday is still on the fence with a cold front and 50% chance of rain, but if that pushes through on schedule, Mardi Gras day should be cooler, with a high in the mid-50s, but dry.  We can hope.

Last night I ventured out on the bike to catch the Muses parade.  Down around Fat Harry's the crowd was pretty thick and we didn't push our way past the ladders and through the crowd for a while.  About halfway through, however, the crowd started to thin a little bit and, growing tired of missing the best part of the parade, namely the various marching or riding groups and bands between the floats, we squeezed past the tall people and got a great spot just in time to see Keith and the Rolling Elvi come past, and later this whole group with elaborately decorated tricycles.  In my rush to get out there in time (I had to bring the geriatric dog to the vet at 5:00 for a $250 last-minute appointment to deal with various issues, one of which quite odiferous) I'd forgotten to bring my camera, so I got only a few marginal photos with my phone.  Anyway, the parade was great but I didn't finally get to bed until midnight.

So this morning I woke up to find the sun close enough to the horizon that I was able to go out at 6:30 am without my lights, wearing sunglasses. Yeah!!  The earth is finally tilting back in the proper direction!  It was still in the low 40s, but the sky was clear and the slight southeast breeze promised a quick warm-up.  I rode out toward the lakefront via Jeff. Davis, where they still have one lane mostly blocked off while they finish up the curbs, but where you can ride on the blocked-off part pretty much all the way.  I turned west on Robt. E. Lee rather than Lakeshore Drive in order to get to the Lake Trail bike path sooner.  With just a slight tailwind, and the air already a bit warmer, the ride along the deserted path was nearly perfect.  So perfect, in fact, that I just couldn't make myself turn around until I was all the way out to the casino boat at Williams Blvd.  It was just one of those really nice morning rides.  The weekend is looking to be busy and I'll probably end up just doing Giro Rides because we have one house guest arriving this afternoon and I'm sure there will be a lot of interest in the daytime parades, so long rides in the country are probably not going to happen for me despite what looks to be awesome riding weather.  In the meantime, however, I need to finish up an analysis of the three-year rolling average of adjusted raw and normalized research and development expenditures for AAU universities.