Rapidly Approaching

It's Wednesday and already last weekend seems like a long time ago.  The road season is rapidly approaching and for some it's already arrived.  The first LAMBRA races of the year we held up in Monroe last weekend.  I decided to skip them this year for a couple of somewhat shaky reasons, not the least of which is a longstanding unwillingness to subject myself to a 20 km time trial in February.  I'm never ready for that. Never.  The criterium is usually fun and appropriately low-key, but I wasn't up to the 4-hour drive this year, especially considering the fact that there are very few free weekends on my calendar for the next couple of months.  As it turned out, the even had quite a nice turnout and some good racing that I almost felt bad about missing.  Starting in March there are four collegiate races plus Rouge-Roubaix and a weekend race in LakeCharles, not to mention Mardi Gras on the 4th.

Katie is a local triathlete as you can
 clearly tell from her socks.

And so Saturday morning found me once again riding out to Starbucks for the local Giro Ride.  The temperature was pretty cool, but the forecast was promising it wouldn't stay that way.  I was way over-dressed and had the vest stuffed in my pocket before I even got to Starbucks.  The Giro group was about mid-sized and the pace fairly even, so it was a pretty routine training ride.  I was planning on doing the northshore ride on Sunday, so I didn't feel too bad about limiting my efforts, at least that's what I told myself.  The real fact of the matter was that I just wasn't feeling too sharp.

Saturday night was the Krewe du Vieux, and I made the mistake of offering to drive Danielle, James and his friend down to the French Quarter for it.  It was also the NBA All-Star weekend in New Orleans, so the very idea of venturing anywhere near the Quarter in an automobile was absolutely ludicrous.  Of course, I did it anyway as there just wasn't time to organize this group to take bikes down there.  Well, we got to Convention Center Blvd. and were immediately gridlocked.  A couple of blocks ahead I could see the Fulton St. Garage, for which I'd designed a website way back when normal people could do that sort of thing. They were offering parking for a $30 flat rate and we were about half a mile from the parade route. There was no way we were going to get much closer and even less of a chance we'd find a place to park if we did, so I bit the bullet and we drove up eight levels before finding a spot.  Fortunately the weather was great and the walk down through the Quarter to Faubourg Marigny was fun and entertaining with lots of exotic pimped-out cars and badly dressed overweight basketball groupies to make fun of.  The walking parade itself, which is always an unfettered political satire with an overarching theme that can be summarized by the word "penis," was enjoyable.  We stopped at Cafe' du Monde on the way back before making the walk to the garage, but even so I think I was back home by 10:30.  This was good because I was planning on the northshore ride the next morning.

So on Sunday I drove over to Puccino's with Danielle who hitched a ride with Sherri because they were doing a skills and training ride with the NOBC women out of Abita Springs. I was headed a little farther to meet the group at Lee Road Junior High. It was quite cold at the start, but I knew it would probably be twenty degrees warmer by the time we finished the 65 mile ride.  In spite of the great weather, there were only eight on hand at the start, and five of them were planning on turning back early, so by the time we were halfway around the course it was just Rob, VJ and me.  VJ started coming off the back on hills after a while, which wasn't too surprising since neither Rob nor I could offer him much of a draft above his handlebar level.  Even so, we had a pretty good ride and I felt like I got a nice little workout out of it.  I headed over to Abita Springs after we finished and arrived just in time to meet the NOBC women as they finished their ride, so the timing worked out perfectly.

The nice weather is still hanging on around here and I'm not complaining.  Tuesday's long levee ride was in a dense wet fog, but otherwise was good even though my legs felt like lead.  This morning the fog was very light, the temperature was around 70F, and the wind was light.  I decided to do a solo ride out to the lakefront and out along the bike path to the west.  That worked out well, and I was glad to see that they have finally put some fresh asphalt down on Jeff. Davis Parkway, which is nice alternative to Carrollton Avenue during rush hour.

On the bike side, I finally broke down and got a new cassette because I'm pretty sure the one that I've been training on for the past year is toast, judging by the chain. I've had a new chain ready to go for about a month, but then started to suspect that it was already too late to think that the cassette hadn't gotten worn to accommodate the stretched chain so I held off until I could get a cassette.  Damned things are expensive.  Anyway, it's looking like the Tulane Cycling space over here at Uptown Square will finally become available to us within the next month, so today I met Kenny over at Property Management to pick out some used furniture, and last night I worked out a diagram for installing the wall-mount bike holders for what will become the bike storage room.  Naturally our access to the space will come at the club's busiest time of the year, March, when there's a race every weekend, Mardi Gras, Spring Break, and who knows what else.  Looks like the next six weeks will be pretty busy.