Thanksgiving Day Giro

The emails and text messages started going 'round early on Wednesday.  Would there be a Giro Ride on Thanksgiving morning?  With nobody actually in charge of these rides, it took some time for a consensus to emerge, but by Wednesday night I was fairly certain there would be at least a few riders on hand. Locally we're at the beginning of another warming trend that should last until at least next Wednesday when the next cold front comes through.

Howard, just elected to his parish council

I went out with just arm-warmers, arriving at Starbucks with plenty of time to pick up my free birthday Americano as other riders started to arrive. There was a pretty stiff wind blowing straight out of the east, so I was glad to see that most everyone was in "holiday ride" mode. Out on Chef Highway we were riding directly into the 15-20 mph wind, and although we had a nice paceline going at first, it soon became apparent that 90% of the group wasn't really interested in seeing the front. So three or four of us kept things going, which wasn't too hard since we were probably not doing more than 22 mph most of the time. I knew things would be dramatically different once we turned around.

Noel

As expected, once the group started feeling the tailwind after the turnaround, the speeds started ramping up.  Still, even with the tailwind, we were cruising along at a relatively comfortable 28 mph or so most of the time. As we got closer to the Goodyear Sign Sprint, it got faster, of course, and I think some of the guys hit around 38 mph.  Apparently my 34.8 average was good enough to KOM that Strava segment, probably because I started it near the back of the paceline but finished closer to the front.

This morning I went out for an easy ride on the levee. I'm off work today and my only firm plan is to pick up a new headset from Bicycle World and install it so I won't have to keep steering in 2-degree increments.