Visitor Cyclists

The Tuesday morning ride heads out on Lakeshore Drive in New Orleans

As the contact email for the NOBC and LAMBRA websites, among others, I get my share of emails and messages asking about riding in New Orleans.  Many of those come from visitors who are coming to town for conferences, holidays, or other occasions. I usually send them pretty detailed information about where to ride, when the groups rides are, and whatever other information I think they will need to survive cycling in New Orleans. If someone is asking specifically about group training rides I usually look them up on the USAC website to see if they have any race results and to see what license category they have. Recently I lent a bike to a rider from Indiana who was here to visit family. It turned out she had ridden the Little Indy 500, of Breaking Away fame, and her coach was Tom Saccone, who used to race around here. Small world. Right about the same time I was contacted by a medical student in town for a month to do a rotation in dermatology at Tulane. She's been riding my old Cervelo, broken shifters and all. Then, last week someone was trying to find a bike for a girl who was going to be in town to ride the Rapha Women's 100 ride, so she ended up with my Orbea. It's unusual for me to lend bikes to people, but that's because so few of them are short enough for a 50 cm frame.  Anyway, hopefully both bikes will find their way back to me soon.

This week has been pretty routine riding, made just a tad more difficult by the gradually increasing 5:30 am darkness and my closely linked difficulty getting out of bed in the dark. There were a few glorious weeks there when I didn't need to strap the headlight to the bike, but those days are gone now, and it'll just be getting darker and darker until the time change.

Yesterday we met up with a rider, Brian, from Dallas, who is in town for a conference.  He had contacted me earlier asking about group rides, so I sent him a bunch of information, including the Strava data for some recent rides to make sure he knew what he was getting himself into. Anyway, he turned out to be a perfectly stable and capable rider, plus the Tuesday ride wasn't particularly fast, so that worked out nicely all-around.

For some reason I was up earlier than usual this morning, so I decided to try and make it out to the lakefront in time to catch the start of the WeMoRi that leaves at 5:45. My timing worked out pretty well and I merged into the group around Canal Blvd. as it was just getting going. There was a pretty good tailwind from the west on the way out on Lakeshore Drive, but I was still surprised when I saw Woody go flying past the group just after we crossed Bayou St. John. A few riders went with him, so a little breakaway developed. I was equally surprised that the riders at the front of the group barely reacted to the rapidly growing gap. I mean, rule #1 in a tailwind is "don't let gaps open." After the Seabrook loop we turned into the headwind and another little group rode off the front as the rest of the group seemed to slow down even more. Clearly I should have made the effort to go with the second group, but I was fully expecting the other riders to pick up the pace, which didn't happpen. So anyway, the rest of the ride was nice and steady, if not particularly strenuous.

This weekend is a Team Time Trial and a Criterium down around Thibodaux. I have no idea if I'm riding the TTT since it depends on how many riders can be put together to make the necessary 4-rider teams.  Missing a time trial is really not a problem for me nowadays. Although there was a time when I could bolt on some aero bars and still be competitive, I think those days are gone. Almost everyone seems to have a dedicated TT bike while I'm still trying to figure out how I could afford a set of wheels that were built this century.