The weather the past couple of days has been pretty spectacular, especially considering that it is the last weekend in November and lots of people elsewhere are selecting clothing options with frostbite protection in mind. As I write, it's 79F here in New Orleans. We won't see the 40s again until probably Thursday.
After an easy post-Thanksgiving ride on Friday I pulled the fork off of the Bianchi and headed over to Bicycle World to pick up a new headset. I was a little reluctant to attack the somewhat stuck lower race with hammer and screwdriver, so thought it best to let the pros use proper tools instead. I installed the headset, applied liberal amounts of grease in a probably futile attempt to prolong its life, and set the preload, knowing that it would probably change a bit after my next ride. I made a mental note to bring a multi-tool along for the Saturday northshore ride. With the weather expected to be in the 60s and 70s, I was looking forward to a nice ride in the rolling hills north of Covington -- in shorts and summer jersey.
So I headed across the lake solo, listening to 60s on 6, to meet the 8 am group ride out of Abita Springs. Naturally I'd forgotten to bring a multi-tool.
There was a pretty good turnout of around 20 riders, a typical northshore mix of triathletes, bike racer types, and those ubiquitous fast recreational types. It was also one of those ride routes that we'd probably never do if it was just bike racers. On the plus side the scenery was great, traffic was barely non-existent, and one of the dead-end roads we used had a couple of nice climbs on it. I was feeling pretty good and enjoyed chasing the occasional rider who would roll off the front. It's always amazing how good a new headset makes the bike feel after a couple of months of riding with a notchy one. You always get used to the old pitted headset and don't quite realize how bad it is until you finally break down and install a new one. Anyway, by the time I got home I could feel just a very slight bit of looseness in the headset, so before I went upstairs I got out the torque wrench and re-adjusted it. Should be good for a while now.
This morning I went out to the Sunday Giro Ride. It was a little warmer and fairly humid, but there was hardly a breath of wind. Although the holidays, together with the fact the Palmer riders were off on some kind of team meeting/ride thing, had reduced the group size a little bit, we still started off with at least twenty-five. As it had been on Thursday, the ride was unusually smooth and steady. Out on Chef Highway a long double rotating paceline formed up right away, with the speed gradually inching up into the mid-20s.
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| All back together |
As we approached the Highway 11 intersection I was kind of expecting things to get faster and the paceline to start to get shorter, but then I heard a very odd noise up ahead. Riders suddenly sat up as Big Rich coasted backwards, looking down at his rear derailleur. As I passed I saw that he'd lost the upper jockey wheel. Most of the group continued on, but Jeff and I stopped with him. In the big ring he was still able to ride, albeit with a slack chain, so we rode backwards on the nearly deserted 4-lane on the off-chance we might be able to find the missing jockey wheel. We never found it, of course, so as Rich headed off to limp back home with Jeff, I continued on to find the group on its way back. With a bit of a southeast wind starting to blow, the pace remained comfortably brisk all the way back. Rich, who had taken a shortcut, met up briefly with the group around the base of the Seabrook bridge, but by the time we turned off onto Marconi he was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if he'd taken a different route. A few rider were ahead of us and then everyone except Mignon turned off on Harrison, so it was just the two of us for the ride back uptown. I had been telling Steve about what happened to Rich's bike and he said he had a spare broken Campagnolo 11 speed derailleur at home, so I texted that to Rich. Later, however, Rich told me he'd actually had a spare one himself, so it was already fixed.
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