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Another wet and foggy ride on the lakefront - Saturday's Giro Ride heading home

When I checked my Strava profile yesterday I was rather shocked to find that I'd ridden over 300 miles last week. I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised. After all, I was off from work the whole time and the weather, although often wet and messy, was never very cold. And then there was that New Year's Day group ride to Slidell on Thursday. That replaced the usual 40 miles with 94, so together with a longer than usual Monday ride and back-to-back Giro Rides on the weekend, it all kind of made sense. What I remember most about the past week, however, are wet streets, flat tires, and messy bikes.

New Year's Day, heading out

On Tuesday and Wednesday I met a visiting rider from Chattanooga, Tab Tollett, for the usual long Tuesday ride and then the usual WeMoRi. Tuesday the temperature was in the mid-50s, which was nice, but the lake trail was a mess with water still training off of the levee, just as it had been the day before when I'd ridden out there by myself. Both days I stopped to spray the grit off the bike with the garden hose before bringing it inside. Wednesday was cooler, starting out in the mid-40s, which was fine, except that there was an absolutely brutal northwest wind blowing. It was so brutal, in fact, that the WeMoRi riders decided to skip their usual lap on Lakeshore Drive and instead do an extra lap around City Park. Of course, since I usually meet them when the come off of Lakeshore Drive, I was surprised to see the whole group of blinking headlights flying down Wisner Blvd. just as we were coming down the overpass. There was no way we were going to catch them, so we cut across City Park and picked them up on Marconi for the next two laps. That worked out fine, actually.

Store Stop at Slidell

So on New Year's Day we had a big group of almost 20, I guess, that set out for a special "Holiday Giro" out to Slidell and back. It was in the 50s most of the time, and the wind had died down quite a bit, so it turned into a really nice ride that got me home with 94 miles at 20 mph. The group got kind of split up on the return trip, first when Matt apparently decided to adjust his saddle angle just as we were leaving the gas station, and later when someone flatted coming down the bridge at Fort Pike while a little group was 30 seconds off the front. The little group never knew and just kept hammering, since that stretch from Fort Pike to Venetian Isles on the way back is often pretty fast. Once we got the flat fixed and got rolling, we averaged about 25 mph but didn't catch until they sat up.

Saturday Giro, STILL with the wet roads and fog, but *shorts!

My legs were pretty trashed after the Slidell ride, and when I awoke on Friday to more we streets I decided on an easy ride on the old Pennine since I'd just converted it back from cyclocross mode to rain bike mode. I still had the CX wheel on the rear, but decided to put my regular rain wheel on the front since it had a Mr. Tuffy in it. Unfortunately, the Mr. Tuffy didn't stop a leak from developing near the valve hole where the tube must have rubbed through. I have a little adapter in there since the old rim has a hole designed for Schraeder valves and I was using Presta valve tubes. Anyway, I ended up having to make a very messy flat tire repair with everything already coated in wet road grime, so by the time I was finished with that I figured it was a sign that I should just go home, which I did.

The weekend turned out to be pretty nice. It was something like 68 degrees when I left home in, basically, summer kit. After a week of slogging around in knickers and long-sleeves and everything, it felt great to be riding in just shorts. I was still wearing shoe covers, however, because the streets basically never dried up all weekend. I followed that up with a repeat Giro Ride on Sunday where we ran into a ton of fog out on Chef Highway but otherwise had a pretty good ride.

So now it's back to normal, back to work, and back to the routine. The temperature was down around 40 this morning and it looks like it will be typical winter riding with morning temps around 40 until Thursday morning when another cold front is supposed to bring it down below freezing with a low of 26F and winds of "20-30 mph."  Not really looking forward to that.