Coffee and Cold Air

Coffee Ride stop at the Fair Grinds coffee house

With this morning's temperature down around the mid-40s, it was finally time to look for the shoe-covers and skullcap. I knew the easy Friday coffee ride was going to feel particularly chilly since the wind was still blowing pretty strongly and the pace isn't normally sufficient to generate much body heat. The sky, however, was clear and blue (once the sun came up), so that was nice.  We hadn't even gotten off of campus before Dustin got a flat, but he set about going for the flat-fixing record and I don't think we were delayed more than five minutes. We'd started a few minutes late, though, so three riders had to turn back at Elysian Fields.  The rest of us did the usual lap of Lakeshore Drive and then stopped at Fair Grinds. I took a couple of photos of the antique artwork on the walls there.

Out on the Lakefront

This weekend there are cyclocross races up in Ridgeland, which is basically a suburb of Jackson, Mississippi.  I won't be able to make it up there tomorrow since I need to bring Danielle and her dogs to the airport in the afternoon, so I guess that will be a Giro Ride morning for me.  Jaden sent something out about doing an extended Giro out to Slidell, so if the timing looks like it will work I may tag along for that, and by "tag along" I mean suck wheels. I guess I'll bring the bike up to Jackson, but it will depend on what the officiating situation looks like whether or not I'll actually race. I'd really like to be able to post complete lap times and finish times for all of the races, but to do that I'm going to need a number-caller to help, especially for the first lap or so. Since they give the riders only one number, and half the time you can't read it until they are already past the finish line, it is nearly impossible to read and type in multiple numbers when a small group is still intact.

Jeff Davis Overpass, heading north

I had hoped to get new tires on the car this weekend, but it doesn't look like that's going to work too well, so perhaps I will have to take some time during the week next week to do that. I've been nursing a slow leak in one of the rear tires for a couple of months now, and since the tires have something like 37,000 miles on them now and we're planning a road trip to Orlando over Christmas, I guess I may as well bite the bullet and get it all over with.

The city has officially set December 10 as the date on which the old Wisner overpass will be closed for demolition and rebuilding.  There's a little interview with some members of the Crescent City Cyclists about it on wwltv.  The planned bike path part of the project may not really be usable by people going more than ten miles per hour, but I guess I'll have to see it first to know. It may turn out to be worth using on the way out to the lake, although I see no real possibility of it being useful on the way back unless you were already on the winding little bike path along the bayou that is entirely unsafe for anyone moving at any reasonable speed.