Riding, Rainstorms, and Rest

The WeMoRi Gossip Lap

The weather around here has been occasionally dramatic lately.  After Sunday's race some big thunderstorms rolled through, causing lots of street flooding and some power outages.  We had to abort an attempt to feed the cat we've been taking care of (the one that belongs to the doctor who is still in the hospital after heart bypass surgery) because the streets were too flooded.  We ended up stranded on some relatively high ground (we're talking inches here, not feet) for about 45 minutes until we could even get back to the house.  It's been kind of hit-and-miss like that all week.  On Wednesday I went out to meet the early morning WeMoRi group, knowing that the prospects for the remainder of the day were entirely up in the air.  I met the group right at Lakeshore Drive, so got in about ten miles of reasonably fast riding for the first lap around City Park.  Their second lap is always done at gossip pace.  Sometime I think the main attraction of that particular group ride is actually the gossip rather than the training.  Anyway, there was more rain that afternoon so I didn't even try to go out to the lakefront.  The rain had stopped, but it was clearly just a lull because the city was entirely surrounded by rain, some of it pretty heavy.  By 7:30 it was storming again, complete with more minor street flooding.  Kenny had gone out toward Kenner, gotten a flat just as the sky opened up, couldn't get the flat fixed, rode I don't know how many miles in the rain on a flat, and finally called for extraction.  Last night is stormed again for a couple of hours.  More is predicted for this afternoon, for whatever that's worth.

Lisa Colvin, one of the LAMBRA officials and coaches who had been in Europe getting her UCI coaching certification, was airlifted from Monroe to New Orleans last night.  She caught some virus while over there and it has developed into myocarditis, so it's fairly serious. She's over at Ochsner's CCU, probably along with Fred whose cat we've been taking care of.  Lane, her husband and also a LAMBRA official and our event permit approver, drove down in the middle of the night.  I guess he got in around 2 am or so.

I was glad to see no rain nearby this morning.  We had a very small group for the Thursday levee ride, but at least we got in the full ride, mostly at a steady 23 mph pace except for the time I spent fixing the flat tire I got when I rolled through a patch of gravel or something.  Even though I didn't get to do the training race yesterday evening I am still feeling like I need a rest.  Last night we got an email from a Tulane faculty member who is about to leave for a new job in Santiago, Chile.  He did some track racing in college and grad school at Northwestern and is giving the Tulane cycling team some nice equipment that he doesn't want to take with him. It includes a couple of very nice track frames, a road bike, and a mountain bike, in addition to some miscellaneous parts.  Perfect timing, since we are planning to get the WattBikes unpacked and set up in the cycling center over the weekend.