Almost

On the last day of the last month of 2016 I pulled the bike down off its hook and rolled it out into the darkness. The forecast on weather.com was somewhat at odds with the reality above me, and I wondered if my last ride of the year would end up being a very short one.  The Garmin seemed to be stuck in "working" mode, probably updating its firmware, so I started Strava on my phone.  It wouldn't do to have the last ride of the year go unrecorded. It was about ten minutes before the Garmin started recording and about fifteen when a light rain started to fall.  I was most of the way to Starbucks already, and the rain was really light, so I pressed on, lured by the promise of that cup of hot Christmas Blend.  I'd dressed for temperatures in the 50s, despite the thermometer reading that was closer to 65.  I was expecting to get wet, the only questions being "when, how much, and for how long?"

At Starbucks there were just a couple of riders when I arrived, one of whom was one of the Nth Degree Juniors.  Ed and Stanton had arranged for a few of them to ride their first Giro Rides this morning.  I sat under the canvas awning listening to the raindrops and sipping my coffee as I checked the radar.  This little shower would be past us soon, so we'd at least be able to get in a few miles.  Rob had already bailed, but other riders started to arrive and by the time we were heading east on Lakeshore Drive there was a decent enough group.  Everyone in the group was award of the Juniors, which helped to keep the pace smooth and manageable.  Ed did a couple of pre-announced 5-minute intervals, and Jaden rode off the front a few times, but otherwise it was a very civilized Giro. We were almost back to the Casino bridge on the way back when it finally started to rain.  Fortunately it was a very light rain.

After the last of the group turned off on Harrison to finish their rides at Starbucks I continued alone on my way back home thinking, "Well, I almost made it back without getting wet."  Almost.  By then I was wet enough to be glad I'd over-dressed that morning but I never got wet enough to soak my socks all the way through, so the timing almost worked out perfectly.  Almost.

Almost 12,000

Back at home I uploaded the ride to Strava and checked my total 2016 mileage.  11,913 miles.  Almost 12k.  Almost. Still, a pretty decent year mileage-wise, comparable with recent years despite a missed week early in the year when I was sick and a number of missed weekends due to officiating or Tulane Cycling road trips.  Considering that I don't make any particular effort to accumulate a specific number of annual miles, it's kind of amazing how similar the past few years have been.  Tomorrow we're looking at a 50% chance of rain most of the day, so whether or not 2017 will start with a ride is going to be up in the air.

Winter Wet in Washington

The Chehalis Western Trail

The forecast wasn't looking very encouraging when I packed my bags, but not my bike, for Olympia last week. Our 7-day stay was offering no more hope than two partial days without rain, and since we were going to the Pacific northwest where the roads don't dry out until late Spring and moss grows on the north side of basically everything, I wasn't feeling very optimistic about being able to ride. There would, however, be a couple of bikes at the other end of the transcontinental flight, so I filled a bag with winter riding gear, shoes, pedals, and helmet, hoping for the best.

We arrived in Seattle after two remarkably on-time flights, rented a car, and made the drive down to Olympia under, of course, overcast skies with occasional light rain.  Overcast skies with occasional light rain pretty much defines winter in the upper-left corner of the contiguous US, once you add "with temperatures in the 30s and 40s." We were staying at a brand-new Hampton Inn about half a mile from The Daughter's house. The place was all shiny new and all of the staff acted like they'd just stepped out of hospitality training school.  Danielle and Shannon's new place was nice, even though it was packed with three visiting family members and three visiting family dogs in addition to Danielle's two dogs. If you'd like me to do the math for you, that's 7 people and 5 dogs.

A little park on the bike trail with a much-appreciated
bathroom.  Danielle's old Cannondale worked out fine.

The first chance to ride was the day before Christmas.  The streets were soaking wet, but it looked like the rain would hold off for a few hours.  I went to the garage to swap out Shannon's SPDs for my Keo pedals and hit a brick wall.  The drive-side pedal had pretty much welded itself to the crankarm.  I'd brought my pedal wrench, but couldn't get the thing to budge despite resorting to standing on the wrench, heating up the crankarm, etc., etc.  After half an hour I gave up and resorted to Plan B, which was to use Danielle's 650c Cannondale.  I think the frame size on that is 42.  Fortunately, there was enough seatpost, so I set it at my usual 65.1 cm, moved all of the steerer spacers from above to below the handlebar, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it would suffice.  Granted, the reach was way short, but since I'd be riding pretty slowly anyway I didn't figure it would matter much.

Just as the rain started and I headed home on Tuesday.

The temperature was 37F and the streets were wet, but it was still the best shot I'd have for a couple of days.  I downloaded a Strava Route from Danielle's account and uploaded to my Garmin 500, which was something I'd never tried before, but since the 56 mile loop would take me places I'd never been before, and I'd probably be cold and wet for the last half of it, I figured it was well worth experimenting.  As it turned out, it worked great, which is to say I never missed a turn despite starting out in the wrong direction and having to turn around after a mile or so.  I was wearing long tights on top of thermal knickers with shoe-covers, two layers underneath my winter riding jacket and a wind vest on top.  Long gloves with wind-resistant shell gloves over them completed the ensemble unless you count the liberal amount of chap-stick on my nose, lips and cheekbones.  As it turned out, I was plenty warm enough for the first part of the ride which was on the bike path.  Although it was covered with wet leaves and branches in a lot of places, it was otherwise pretty nice. After 12 miles on the Chehalis Western Trail bike path that I'd ridden a couple of year earlier I turned off onto a nice country road with a few little hills and some nice scenery, eventually riding through the town of Tenino.  From there I picked up "Old Highway 99" which I had hoped would be another nice, nearly abandoned, old country road.  Unfortunately it was relatively busy which kept me on the wide shoulder to the right of the rumble strip, which would have been OK except that it was covered with rocks and mud and stuff from all of the rain, and of course it was soaking wet.  By the time I got back into Olympia I looked like I'd just done a cyclocross race.  I took the bike into the back yard and hosed it, and my shoe-covers, down before peeling off the soaked clothes and throwing the whole muddy mess into the washer.

Christmas day was pretty much spend on the couch while three people worked the kitchen and a humongous turkey roasted in the oven.  On Monday we made a trip up to Seattle to take the Underground Seattle tour and visit the market and generally get out of the house.  It was pretty freaking cold and overcast the whole time, of course. The underground tour was interesting, as was the market, so worth the trip.

Underground in Seattle. Looked like my basement.

The next morning, on Tuesday, I stared at the weather map for a while and eventually decided to try and get in some miles before it started raining again.  The streets were still just as wet as they'd been three days earlier, and there was definitely more rain on the way, but by the time I headed out in the early afternoon the temperature was up to a relatively balmy 44 degrees.  Knowing I'd probably end up in the rain, I dressed almost as heavily as I had earlier in the week.  I made it about 17 miles before it started raining, so at that point I turned back to retrace my route back to the house. I arrived back pretty well soaked from head to foot, so the bike got another wash with the garden hose and the clothes got another trip through the washing machine. Anyway, considering the forecast when I'd left New Orleans, I was reasonably happy to have gotten in 94 miles during the visit.

Arctic Wolf at the Tacoma zoo

On Wednesday the weather was the best we'd seen with sunny skies and relatively moderate temperatures but we had a road trip that day to the zoo in Tacoma and by the time we got back from all of that it was too late for another ride.  Sunrise in Olympia was around 8 am and sunset around 4:30 pm, and riding in the dark on wet unfamiliar roads would have been a spectacularly bad idea during a holiday visit, so I put Danielle's seatpost and handlebars back where I'd found them and packed up the riding clothes.

Mount Ranier through the car window on the way to Tacoma.

The trip back home was not without its complications. We'd left ourselves plenty of spare time for the drive to Seattle since we'd have to return the car and there was a chance we'd get stuck in rush-hour traffic.  As it turned out, the traffic wasn't a problem at all.  We turned in the car and caught the shuttle to the airport where the Alaska Airlines check-in kiosk kind of crashed on us with a message reading "Oops!  Something went wrong.  Please see an agent."  As we were waiting in line for that Candy realized her phone was missing and we figured it must have fallen out in the rental car. We got the bags checked and then headed back to the shuttle and car rental station where, luckily, they had found the phone.  Finally returning to the airport we went through security where the scanner found a crumpled up cash register receipt in the bottom of one of my pockets which triggered a full body search.  I have no idea what the rationale for that might be.  Anyway, they failed to find any weapons of mass destruction on my person and we finally made our way to the gate, which we quickly discovered had been changed to another concourse.  It was a good thing we had given ourselves a whole extra hour!

Back on home turf Friday morning

On the long non-stop flight back home I re-read Erin's book "Postcards from the Sky" that I seem to read every time I'm on a long flight since it's one of the only books I have on my iPad.

Finally this morning I was back on my own bike with the temperature in the mid-40s, so I headed for the levee bike path and had a nice 50 miles, meeting up with Pat and Steve and Charlie and a couple of others along the way.

A Little Late

I thought I had plenty of time. It's probably less than a mile from my house to the 5:45 am meeting spot at the end of Nashville Avenue, so when the alarm went off twenty minutes before that I didn't rush. But there was a complication.  It was cold enough (around 40 degrees) that I'd need to make some wardrobe decisions. That always seems to suck up more time than I expect. I decided on a thin short-sleeve base layer, a warm long-sleeve base layer on top of that, a long-sleeve jersey on top of those, and a light vest. Then of course the dog wanted to go out.  By the time I got downstairs it was already 5:41.  I hurriedly put on shoes, then shoe-covers, riding gloves, then long gloves, and stuck my antique winter helmet cover over my nearly new Giro helmet. I rushed outside, turned on the tail and head lights, hit the start button on the Garmin that was still searching for satellites, and took off.  It was 5:45, so I was pretty sure I'd miss whoever was there. I blew past the deserted meeting spot and headed north into the wind scanning the road ahead for blinking red lights.  Nothing there.  I was probably two minutes behind Brian and Rich. Finally, as I rode down Jeff Davis Parkway, I saw a blinking red light in the distance turning left onto Canal. A little while later I turned onto Canal myself and could see that I was catching them, albeit slowly. I was all the way at the cemeteries at the end of Canal Street before I finally made contact.

On this chilly December morning the Tuesday morning ride's turnout was a little bit on the thin side, which was to be expected. I was pretty well dressed, maybe just a bit over-dressed, for the conditions, and it didn't take long for me to unzip the wind vest a few inches, but I never felt the need to pull the zipper down any farther. Like yesterday, the wind was mostly out of the north, so it was going to be an echelon day.  Unfortunately that put a few people into the left lane on Lakeshore Drive, which caused some problems when the drivers rushing to get to work went past. Otherwise, it was a good ride and my toes arrived back home in somewhat better condition than they had the day before.

Winter Wind

So for the record, December 19 was the first day I resorted to the riding jacket and shoe-covers.  I was glad I did, too.  While the 38-degree morning temperature might have been OK on some days, the 15 mph north wind made it feel a lot colder.  Despite the Facebook Event I'd sent out a couple of days earlier, there wasn't anyone waiting for me up on the levee at 6:30 am.  I was not even slightly surprised by that. Perhaps if I'd done a good long hard training ride on Sunday I would have skipped riding this morning. In actual fact,  however, I'd spent most of Sunday looking out the window at the incessant rain while sitting on the couch eating anything that didn't run away when I reached for it. I was so tired of watching Hallmark Christmas movies that I went to bed around 8:30.  I'm sure the guy eventually ended up with the girl and she decided not to take that great job offer in New York or marry the rich guy or whatever in order to stay in the cute little country town with the white Christmas and Santa's sleigh, and reindeer, and where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.

My mellow Monday ride wasn't quite as mellow as usual.  With what seemed like mostly crosswinds and headwinds the whole time, maintaining 19 mph took a bit of effort. After ten miles or so the cold was starting to get to my fingers and toes, but I was determined to at least put in the miles this morning, even if I did occasionally see 13 mph on the computer, which I did. On the plus side, the levee bike path was practically deserted. I saw a few of the regular dog-walkers, and one cyclist on her way to work, but there were long sections where I could comfortably put my head down as I plowed into the wind.

There's an article in VeloNews today about a survey and prospective study that Chris Stockburger, who is now an orthopedist, is doing out of Wash. U. on cycling related injuries. Should be interesting. if it's done right.

So it looks like I have, at best, four more riding days this year.  I'll probably end the year with something like 11,700 miles, more or less, depending on the weather and other complications. I missed a chunk of riding in January when I got sick and was off the bike for almost a week, and then a few weekends were lost due to officiating duties or travel to collegiate races or whatever, so I can't complain.  I do wish more of those miles had been in races, though.

December Rain Day

Dramatic weather change as the cold front arrived

Man, the weather's been all over the place lately, at least around here.  I know I shouldn't be complaining.  After all, I was able to ride every day this week, except today. It's 11 degrees at noon in Chicago, and 31 in Olympia where I'll be next Thursday. Here it's more about the dramatic weather swings rather than the absolute temperature.  Sure, I could go out right now in the light rain and gusty wind and, properly attired, get in a good ride (and probably a couple of flat tires), but it'll be nice and dry tomorrow, and it's December, and I'm going to be off the bike for a whole week soon anyway, so why risk it? I think this morning, however, at least deserves mention.  I left home shortly after 6 am to ride out to Starbucks where the Giro starts. The temperature was a relatively balmy 61F with a light south wind.  I rode out in the dark wearing just my summer kit.  I'd checked the weather and they weren't predicting rain until around 10:30, so it seemed like getting in the Giro ride was a viable option. I walked into Starbucks, picked up a coffee, and when I walked out the door it was like I'd stepped through a portal into an alternate universe. Within minutes the wind shifted from southerly to northerly and from nearly calm to 30 mph gusts. As I hurried to finish my drink I could hear the canvas awning above me flapping wildly in the wind. A few minutes later as I stood up to leave I heard the raindrops. Fortunately, the rain was still very scattered and light, so I surfed the tailwinds back home, arriving still mostly dry.  The temperature must have fallen ten degrees in the interim. I felt like I should at least get some character points for trying.

Thursday morning on the lakefront

The prior week of riding included everything from warm wet streets and flat tires to cold and windy conditions. I think it hit 80 degrees a couple of days ago. Thursday morning's ride was another one of those crosswind days out on the lakefront that made for a long morning. Yesterday's Giro Ride was pretty nice.  The weather was still warm and the wind wasn't too bad. Although the streets were kind of wet because they were sweating from the humidity, there was a good turnout that kept the pace brisk but fairly consistent. Out on Chef highway we passed a few of the earlier SaMoRi group on the side of the road fixing a flat.  Then, on the way back, they turned around and got in with our group. It turned out they had had like four flats. The rest of their group was ahead of us, and a while later, on Hayne, we caught up with them, so we rode back in to Lakeshore Drive with an unusually large group.

Heading back on Hayne Blvd. with the Giro

Things at work have slowed to a crawl. Exams are over for most of the students and the response I get to most things lately has ended with "after the holidays." Dustin and some of the Tulane riders did a ride yesterday on some of the Rouge-Roubaix course, which was probably pretty nice except for the gravel, or because of the gravel, depending on your perspective.  Personally, I am not much of a fan of riding a road bike fast over loose gravel on unfamiliar roads. In fact, I have kind of a love-hate relationship with Rouge-Roubaix.  I don't know how many times I've ridden it.  Maybe five or six times.  One thing I am sure of, though, is that I've never finished it in any condition better than shattered. Those last twenty miles have always started as torture and ended as hell, even when I was in pretty good shape and placing respectably back around '05. For the past few years I've instead been officiating the race in consideration of my increasingly fragile bones and risk-aversion.

Anyway, thanks to the relative lag at work I'm ticking off items on my LAMBRA transition list, changing contacts on websites, paying the web hosting and insurance, and generally trying to put things in some sort of order so the new officers don't have anything urgent to deal with for a couple of months.

We'll be heading off to Olympia on Thursday for about a week. The warmest temperature in the forecast for that period is 48 degrees and the coldest 34 with the usual chance of rain for the Pacific northwest.  I'm not bringing a bike.  I'm kind of considering bringing shoes, pedals and riding clothes just in case an opportunity arises, but it probably won't be worth it under the circumstances. I'd practically need to bring a whole separate bag just for riding clothes, I think.

December Transitions

Sunday's races in Natchez were nice and mostly dry, in stark contrast to the prior week.

Just realized it's been a while since I logged anything here.  That's always an indication of how pre-occupied I am, I guess. I have always found December to be a difficult month. The weather around here is always entirely unpredictable in December, kind of like the elections that we always have in December.  And then there is the ever-present threat of Christmas hanging over my head. It's always money I don't really have, food I shouldn't really be eating, drinks I really shouldn't be drinking, and rides I really shouldn't be skipping.

So two weekends ago I drove up to Ridgeland, MS to help officiate the cyclocross race there. The weather forecast was pretty bad - basically rain and cold the whole weekend. Halfway there the windshield on the Volvo started leaking, so I had drops of cold water falling onto my left thigh.  Before I left to return on Sunday I stopped at the drugstore and got some of that putty stuff you use to stick pictures to the wall of your dorm room and used it to seal up the seam at the top of the windshield. The rain was lighter on the way home, and I only had one drop of water fall onto my leg.. so I guess that was good.  Someone cracked the tail light a couple of weeks ago and that's currently being held together with packing tape.  I guess I'll have to bring the car in after the holidays and get all that fixed.  What a pain.

The mud at Ridgeland was impressive

So the Ridgeland race was held in a semi-private park with mountain bike trails and is actually a pretty great place for a cyclocross race. There's some real terrain, some singletrack, and a nice big shelter with electricity. There was only one problem this year - the weather.  Yeah, I know the cx guys like to compare themselves to Belgians, which is a joke best appreciated by real Belgians, but when push comes to shove, racing cyclocross in mud with the consistency of peanut butter during a rainstorm in 40-degree weather can't possibly be much fun. Even just sitting there for six hours freezing my butt off in front of a computer was pretty painful. About halfway through each race riders would start to run out of brakes, or to be more specific, brake pads.  I think the local shop sold all of the disc brake pads they had in stock between the end of Saturday's races and the start of Sunday's races. The races themselves went fine, although turnout was a bit low, probably thanks to the weather.

Some of the NOBC crew at Apolline for the meeting

That Saturday night we had our annual LAMBRA meeting and elected (more like drafted) a whole slate of new officers,  I was glad to see enough people step up to the plate to fill out the slots.  I don't even remember how long I've been president of LAMBRA, so it will be nice to take a step back as we get the new officers up to speed over the next month or so. I hope they know what they've gotten themselves into! My main goal is to handle the even permit approvals and try and transition the LCCS points series from a manual process to an automated one via the USAC system, like they do for the Florida series and the recent Alabama cyclocross series. Hopefully I'll have a little more time to give to the NOBC and Tour de La next year. The following Monday we had an NOBC party where we "elected" new officers, so those transitions are also in the works. I'm hoping to focus more on the Tour de La for 2017 since Bob and Roberta are backing off a bit from their prior roles as president and secretary/treasurer where they had been doing a lot of the legwork and fundraising.  Although I can write up a pretty good sponsorship proposal, I'm quite awful at the actual fundraising part of the process, so hopefully I'll have some competent help!

All that were left on Thursday.

This past week we finally got some actual cold weather, which is to say we actually fired up the central heat for the first time. It even dipped down into the upper 30s for a little while. The local morning training ride turnout has been down a bit as a result.  Thursday morning it was cold and there was a pretty stiff wind blowing for the early morning ride.  Rob was out there on his track bike for some reason and was really pushing the pace. He ended up off the front on the way back on Lakeshore Drive, taking a couple of guys with him.  The rest of the group was left scrapping for shelter and without much apparent desire to rally a chase.  Soon, one of the breakaway riders came back, then the other. Then Rob went home at the end of Lakeshore Drive, along with most of the others.  We ended up with only four for the ride out to Kenner, one of whom lives out that way and went home when we were halfway back, so it turned out to be a rather slow, but somewhat painful ride.  Even so, knowing I would not be able to ride on Sunday at all, I was glad I hadn't hidden under the covers.

Too much traffic to avoid the water!

On Friday there were just four of us for the Tulane coffee ride, which wasn't too surprising since classes were over and final exams were looming.  It was even colder than Thursday had been, and extremely windy. The north wind was blowing water over the seawall along the lakefront, and the combination of wet legs and cold temperatures made me very glad our next stop was Fair Grinds. Last Saturday I went out to meet the Giro Ride, arriving at Starbucks a bit after 6:30 am.  I was the only rider there.  I got my coffee and sat down inside since it was pretty cold and windy, and waited ..... and waited.  At 6:45 I was starting to wonder if I'd be riding by myself.  Finally riders started to filter in, but the count was still very low by the time we rolled out at 7:00.  Pretty much nobody seemed to want to push the pace that day.  A few people rolled off the front early on the way back, but the rest of the group was definitely in winter ride mode.  I'm pretty sure it was the slowest Giro Ride we've done all year, at least most of it.

Yesterday I went up to Natchez for the final cyclocross race of the season, which was also the LAMBRA cyclocross championship. The weather was really nice.  It was a little chilly sitting there doing nothing, but for the riders, they barely needed arm-warmers.  Turnout was pretty disappointing, which I don't really get. Wes puts a ton of work into setting up these races, so there are good courses, food and drink, parking, good results, announcing, series podiums, race podiums, championship medals, series trophies, and nice weather, plus lots of advance notice, facebook events, calendar listings, etc.  For all that, there was a total of maybe 40 riders.  For the women's race there were more officials and announcers than there were riders. Now, cyclocross may not be quite my cup of tea, but if I wasn't still dealing with this wrist injury that won't heal I probably would have ridden one of the races on my old mountain bike or the old Pennine just for fun like I did last year.  Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out the CrossMgr software, but at least it keeps me occupied when the actual races have only six riders in them. Having come from a time when results were rarely published, often wrong, and never deeper than the prizelists, I feel a certain obligation to get placings and finish times for everyone in the race.  I think it may be some form of cycling-related OCD. Anyway, the officiating was pretty painless, and the drive down US 61 from Natchez to St. Francisville is one of my favorites - 4 lanes, no traffic, nice scenery.  Of course, from there to New Orleans is pure hell, especially on a Sunday evening. It was basically an hour and a half of not being able to use cruise-control.

Anyway, so far the month of December has been pretty bad for me as far as riding goes.  A few missed days because of cyclocross officiating and a lot of slower-than-usual training rides.  It'll only get worse later in the month, I'm afraid.  I can't wait until January when I'm hoping to finally get some winter rides on the northshore together.

Crosswinds

The cold front that came through Wednesday morning turned everything right around pretty quickly. When I looked at the radar early yesterday morning there was an ominous line of heavy rain moving in our direction.  Outside, the streets looked a little wet. I had a morning meeting, and looking at the hourly forecast it was looking like I could probably get in a ride, but then the rain was going to hit exactly when I would be riding to work. I decided it would be a good day to skip a ride and go to my meeting half an hour early. It was a good decision. I got there right before it started raining.  The cold front, and all of the really heavy rain, came through during the meeting. Afterward I hopped on the bike to make a run for the office before the next line of rain arrived, but hadn't gone five blocks before I had to stop and put on the rain jacket, so I aborted the attempt and headed for the on-campus PJs coffee where I waited it out with a blueberry scone until it was just a light drizzle.

This morning the temperature was a little warmer than expected - around 50F - so I went out dressed fairly lightly. It would have been fine except for the wind that was screaming out of the north at 15-20 mph, so I was a little chilly at first. I rode out to the lakefront with the usual crew, and of course the wind along Lakeshore Drive turned out to be pretty brutal. Rob was out there on his track bike for some reason, and was kind of pushing the pace.  Heading east we had a cross-headwind, so it was pretty slow going with a line of riders clinging to the gutter imagining that they were drafting, which they really weren't. After the Seabrook loop there was a little bit of tailwind component to the crosswind, which just made it faster but not easier.  Things were pretty broken up by the time we got to West End where all but four of us called it a day.  Brian, Geoff, Rich and I made it out to Williams on the bike path.  With the crosswind, the four of us needed the whole width of the path to eschelon. As they say, it was a "table for four." The best draft was when I had my front wheel all the way up alongside the bottom bracket of the rider ahead of me.  That kind of thing requires constant attention, so although the speeds were low, the stress level was pretty high.  At one point I dropped back a bit to take a picture and almost couldn't get back on. Even so, I was glad I stuck it out.

The weather this weekend up in Ridgeland where I'll be officiating cyclocross is not looking very nice, at least for those of us who will be standing in the mud all day. The chance of rain for Saturday at race time ranges from 75% to 85% with a temperature of 49F.

Saturday night we'll be having the annual LAMBRA meeting and electing new officers. I'm kind of looking forward to cutting back on the LAMBRA work a little bit so I can focus more on the NOBC and Tour de Louisiane.

Wet Roads

Not too wet at all in some places - heading back along the lake in Metairie.

The first thing I did this morning was look out the window to see how shiny the streets looked.  There  had been a little of bit of rain just before I'd turned in for the night, and the forecast was kind of all over the place, which is to say they were using the word "scattered" a lot. The second thing I did was to check the radar, which looked fine. The decision to go out for a ride when the streets are wet can be difficult. For sure, your bike is going to be a mess when you're done. Possibly you'll slip on some bit of slick road or paint stripe or manhole cover and crash. Your chances of flatting go up exponentially when the streets are wet. So it was no big surprise when I arrived at the meeting spot at 5:45 am and nobody else was there.

Not looking too good for tomorrow morning's ride

The temperature was a balmy 70 degrees, maybe a couple of degrees higher, with a damp and humid south wind.  I rode out to the lakefront to find a few of the usual suspects, and down the road we picked up the already disconnected group that does a lap of the lakefront as we're (well, I'm) riding out there. I assume someone had flatted.  As we approached the loop at Seabrook, someone else flatted but told us to go ahead.  I think a couple of guys stayed to help anyway. The pace was easy today, which kept the wheel spray to a minimum, but as we neared Elysian Fields Matt dropped back, apparently with another flat. The rest continued on, but by the time we were on the bike path there were just five of us left. With the easy pace and partial tailwind we were taking long, steady pulls all the way out to the casino. Coming back, we had more of a headwind, and eventually lost two more people as one turned off to head home and another dropped off the back, possibly with yet another flat (we didn't notice he was gone until later).

I rode back home into a moderate headwind, and as I came up the driveway onto the sidewalk I felt my front rim hit the ground. I guess if you're going to flat, having it hold out until you're standing at your door back home is the best scenario.  I walked around to the front and sprayed the bike with the garden hose to remove most of the road grit, brought it inside, dried it off a bit, and lubed the chain. Despite the 40 miles on wet roads, I really wasn't too wet or cold, and considering the forecast for tomorrow, and the fact that I'll be off the bike all weekend to officiate cyclocross up in Jackson, I was glad I'd ridden.

Long Thanksgiving Weekend

Sunday's Giro heading out a bit faster than usual.

By Wednesday afternoon the office was deserted, except of course for me. The emails had stopped coming long ago, and so after my one mid-afternoon meeting on the main campus I just went home rather than pointlessly riding back to the office for another hour of boredom. I had no plans for Thanksgiving other than a morning holiday Giro Ride.

Thursday morning I rode out to Starbucks wondering if anyone would show up. There had been a suggestion for a Thanksgiving Giro, and I'd dutifully sent something out to the NOBC about it, but there had been only one or two comments. As it turned out, we had a pretty decent group out there by the time we started. The weather was pretty nice and the pace was smooth and steady. Nothing to write home about, really, which sometimes makes for a perfectly fine bike ride. On Friday I went out with Danielle and a couple others for the regular Tulane coffee ride. Most of the undergrads were out of town for the holiday, but we ended up with five people and an extra-long stay at Fair Grinds since nobody had any reason to rush back.

Small group for the Tulane coffee ride - just medical and graduate students

Saturday and Sunday were two more Giro Rides for me. On Saturday I made a point of doing a fair amount of work since it seemed like I'd been taking it easy for weeks. The weather was cool without being cold, but there was a pretty strong wind blowing. Fortunately for the group it was more easterly than northerly, which kept the crosswinds at a minimum and contributed to the 37 mph top speed for the day. Even Woody showed up for that one. He's been taking some time off the bike and had been notably absent for a couple of weeks. Jaden and a few others were on the front a lot pushing the pace, so it was mostly a solid training ride. We had three riders on hand who were in town from Canada, having ridden down the Natchez Trace from Nashville to Natchez, and from there eventually down to New Orleans.  They had done the ride an the fast track, logging daily mileages of 125, 190, 60, and 170, so I was pretty impressed that they were able to hang in with the Giro without any apparent problems.

Visiting Snowbirds from Ontario enjoying the warm weather.

I was even more impressed that they showed up again on Sunday. Sunday's Giro was a little unusual. The turnout was, not surprisingly, a little low.  Dustin's wedding the night before had pulled away a number of riders, plus it was fairly chilly that morning. Three or four riders who don't do the Giro on a regular basis were there and, unaware, I guess, of the usual protocol were kind of pushing the pace from the start. Halfway down Lakeshore Drive, where we're usually spilling along at an easy conversational pace, someone rolled up alongside me, looked over, and asked, "Is there something going on I don't know about?"  With a little headwind we were kind of strung out going maybe 23, which isn't all that fast, but was faster than the more typical 18 mph for the warmup part of the ride. It wasn't what you'd call "hard," just "different." It was kind of repeated after the turnaround where we'd normally have more of a lull in the speed.  I was spending most of my time safely tucked into the paceline, so it was more interesting than anything else. One thing I noticed was how strongly Rachel has been riding. When we got back onto Lakeshore Drive, a few of the riders at the front continued pushing the pace rather than easing up to talk as usual. Fortunately, the Canada contingent was not showing any signs of distress, although a number of riders backed off after we crossed the Seabrook bridge.  I rode most of the way back uptown with the visiting riders plus a couple others, which provided some nice conversation.

This pair is getting to be a common sight along the river.

So on Sunday evening I posted something on the NOBC Facebook page saying I'd be
riding from the pipes on the river bike path at 6:30.  I had been doing this for the past few weeks anyway, and figured I'd see if anyone else might be interested in meeting me.  Well, apparently not.  The weather had warmed up considerable since Sunday morning as the wind had shifted to the southeast, so I had a comfortable Monday ride.  Along the way I saw the pair of eagles that we've been seeing routinely near Colonial Country Club, and I also saw what must have been a juvenile eagle a couple of miles farther upriver. We're expecting some rain this evening and tomorrow, but a the moment it's looking OK for tomorrow morning's ride. The south wind will be with us for another day or so until the next cold front comes through Wednesday morning, bringing with it more rain.  I'll be up in Jackson this weekend to officiate the cyclocross race and have the LAMBRA Board meeting. At the moment, the weather up there for the weekend is looking to be in the 40s and 50s with rain.

The wrist is still a problem, and I may end up resorting to another visit to the doctor about it.  The pain has been focused on the end of my ulna, so I'm guessing maybe I tore one of those ulnar tendons. It only hurts when I make certain movements under load, like drinking from a coffee cup or flexing the wrist like I was doing a push-up, which I definitely can't even attempt.  Otherwise, there's practically no pain at all, so it's kind of strange.

Crosswinds and 'Cross

A big group turned out for the combined Saturday ride, but it didn't stay together for very long.

This morning, Monday, was the first ride in weather I'd call "cold" so far this fall. The temperature was actually in the 40s when I headed out the door for a much-anticipated solo ride up the river on the levee bike path. The brutal crosswinds we'd had last Saturday were long gone, and as the sun rose I could feel the warmth on my back. I'd had to dig deep down into the bottom of the drawer that morning to locate the long tights and long-sleeve jersey, but was glad I'd done so. It's critical to over-dress a bit on those first colder winter rides so you don't have that fear of freezing in the back of your mind the next time.

It was an interesting weekend.  On Saturday Brian had kind of tried to organize a big group ride combining the Giro Ride with the earlier WeMo group and the later STCC group. In his head he was imagining a nice controlled paceline ride with 60 or 70 riders. I think a lot of the other riders were imagining the same. That morning when I saw the 18-24 mph north wind, however, I was imagining carnage. Although the STCC ride and the WeMo ride are intentionally controlled pace-wise, the Giro isn't. Also, there is no "leadership" for the Giro Ride, so there's no way to even be sure you've contacted everyone who rides it, much less impose any sort of restrictions on it.  In the beginning, there was just the Giro.  The other rides formed because those riders wanted a more controlled and somewhat less demanding ride, so I knew putting them all together probably wouldn't last too long. As it turned out, there were a number of people on the Giro who had no idea that Brian had organized this combined ride.  They were also mostly the people at the front.  On the plus side, we started out with at least 60 riders that morning as we rolled down Lakeshore Drive, bypassing the east end of the road because the waves were splashing over the seawall due to the wind. Once the group got down from the bridges onto Hayne Blvd. the pace picked up just like any regular Giro Ride, made worse by the crosswind.  Naturally, as the speed increased, so did the gaps, and by the time we rounded the curve at the end of Hayne Blvd. it looked like just the regular Giro group. Picking up the tailwind heading south from Hayne and across the interstate to the service road the speed was well into the 30s, and when I looked back as we turned onto the service road I couldn't even see whatever was left of the group. Mind you, I'd never gotten even remotely close to the front and had to really redline a few times to close gaps just to stay in contact. In that regard, it was basically just another Giro Ride. I spent about 90% of the stretch down Chef Highway balancing in the six inches between the fog line and the rumble strip, scrapping for a little bit of draft. When the road curved right after Highway 11 and the wind became a full direct crosswind things near the back started coming apart very quickly. Riders were dropping like flies and I had to make some more big efforts to close gaps up to the rapidly dwindling front group.  The ride back offered a little more tailwind along Chef and Hayne, so speeds got up pretty high there, but at least the necessary effort level was a little lower than it had been on the way out. Except for the wind issues, it was pretty much a regular Giro Ride from my perspective at the back and I hoped it wouldn't piss off too many of the people from the other group who may have been led to believe it would be an easier ride.

Great photo by Murat from Sunday's cyclocross race in Audubon Park

That afternoon I rode over to Audubon Park to check out construction of the new flyover that the DSGP was putting up for Sunday's cyclocross race.  It was pretty impressive - and big.  My fears that it might be some poorly constructed makeshift arrangement disappeared when I saw the huge trailer full of pre-fabricated sections made with three-quarter inch plywood and enough framing to build a small house. I  helped out as much as I could, although the injured wrist made me reluctant to do any heavy lifting.  Since it was the first time they had put all the pieces together, it took a while to figure out where everything went and in what order, but by the time I left for home at 4:30 it looked like they had it more or less under control, although I was pretty sure they would be working well in to the night before it was finished. One thing that seeing it confirmed was that I would definitely not be trying to race, even if at a slow pace and at the back. Just looking at the transitions was enough to make my wrist hurt and I knew I'd just do more damage it I tried.

The flyover certainly made things interesting

On Sunday I brought the old Trek mountain bike out to the race, along with a car full of stuff for the officiating setup. I even rode most of a lap around the course.  I walked it up and down the flyover, though, for obvious reasons. I had already handed Rusty my Garmin so he could log one lap of the route. I then converted the FIT file to a GPX file to upload into CrossMgr for the animation.  The first race, which was a combined Cat. 5 and Junior race, was kind of chaotic from an officiating standpoint because of the relatively large field and the fact that Ricky was riding it rather than helping officiate it. I wouldn't be surprised if we got a couple of the placings wrong down beyond 10th place.  I was just using CrossMgr, and Tim was scoring on paper, but he wasn't very successful with it so I didn't really have any backup data for a couple of things I wasn't too sure about.  Nobody has complained so far, so I guess that's good.  Ben Spain took a header coming down the flyover and looked like he hit pretty hard, on his head. He seemed OK afterward but went to the doctor to get checked out just in case. Otherwise, the races went pretty well. It was still a long day.  I left around 4 or so and spent probably another two hours cleaning up the registration and results information, posting to the website, etc.  There were a bunch of one-day license riders and various registration screw-ups that I had to clear up in order to put up decent looking results.  That meant going through the stack of release forms and trying to decipher a lot of very poor handwriting, often followed by looking up stuff on the USAC site to fill in the gaps.

Looks like it'll be in the upper 40s tomorrow morning and then gradually warming up toward the weekend. We probably won't see the anything in the 40s again for another couple of weeks, which is pretty typical November weather down here.

This morning I had a nice easy spin on the bike path out to the end of Jefferson Parish and back.  I ran into Donald for a little while before he had to peel off to head home at Jefferson Playground.

Not Quite Yet

A very calm Thursday morning ride on the lakefront bike path

The mornings this week have been a little cooler - cooler enough for a base layer and occasionally a pair of arm-warmers. However, it has not quite yet been what you'd call cold. It's looking like we'll get a brief taste of "cold" pretty soon, though.  Although it's 77F down here at the moment, at 4 pm on Friday, the forecast for tomorrow morning is calling for 57, which wouldn't seem too bad except that it will be accompanied by winds in the 18-22 mph range. That should make the morning ride somewhat interesting. On Sunday there's a cyclocross race here in New Orleans at Audubon park, and for that we're looking at an early morning temperature of 46, which qualifies as "cold" in my book. Luckily the actual racing, in which I will not be participating, doesn't start until 10:00, by which time it should be substantially warmer.

So last Wednesday I made it over to Baton Rouge with a few of the Tulane riders for a little velodrome time. There was a nice group of at least fifteen when we finally arrived after crawling through rush hour traffic just to get out of New Orleans at 5 pm. A number of riders were entirely new to track, so we started out with some simple little paceline work. I found myself to be quite uneasy in that group and was leaving a pretty good gap between myself and the rider in front of me. My problem wrist was hurting a bit more than normal, probably because I was white-knuckling the bars a lot more than usual. They did a couple of short scratch races and a miss-and-out, neither of which I did.  Instead, I rode laps in-between the races. I really, really didn't want to be taking any chances of crashing again when my wrist was obviously still hurt. Immediately after the first sprint in the miss-and-out there was a crash near the back of the field that took two of the guys down. One walked away with a whole lot of road rash.  I guess the rider in back wasn't ready for the pace to ease up or perhaps one of them forgot he was on a fixed gear and tried to coast.

Teamwork (Ben's bottom bracket was creaking so much they pushed him for a while so as not to wake up the neighbors.)

The cyclocross race on Sunday is supposed to have a flyover that they will be building, or finishing building, on Saturday.  Since I'll be officiating I'm planning on going over there to check it out and make sure it isn't too sketchy.  I expect they'll do a reasonably good job with it, but wouldn't want any surprises in the morning.

Thursday morning's ride was remarkably smooth.  For some reason it seemed like nobody wanted to go too hard. Perhaps it was the time of year and the really great weather we had that morning. This morning we did the regular TU coffee ride.  It seems like we are hanging around the coffee shop longer and longer each time.  I didn't get home until almost 9 and had to rush to work.  Still better than watching the news, which frankly I have been avoiding as much as possible for the past two months. If someone would just email me when it's safe to go back to watching it without causing a dangerous elevation of blood pressure, I'd appreciate it.

In a Chair up in Ruston

Last weekend was a two-day cyclocross race up in Ruston, Louisiana that I'd agreed to help officiate. Ordinarily, I might have planned to jump into maybe the masters race just to salvage a little bit of the weekend, training-wise, but my left wrist is still giving me trouble and I knew that a hilly cyclocross race would be practically the worst possible thing I could do.  So I left the bikes at home and walked out the house around 4:30 am for the long drive, arriving just about 45 minutes before the 10 am start of the first race. Way up north in Ruston it was a whole lot colder than New Orleans, but the sky was clear and the wind calm, so it wasn't a problem at all. Anyway, I rushed to get the computer set up so I could track the race with CrossMgr, just barely getting it all together in time for the start of the first race.  Unfortunately, help was in short supply and Ricky, the other official, was riding in that race, so I was pretty much on my own, trying to manually enter bib numbers as riders crossed the finish on each lap while concurrently trying to write them down on paper. Naturally I screwed up a few of the electronic entries since I hadn't used the program since last year, but since the field was small and the course was hilly it didn't cause any issues.

The race was held at Lincoln Parish Park where there was an established mountain bike course with some pretty significant hills. It hadn't really rained up there in weeks, however, so the ground was hard and sandy, and included a stretch along a sand beach.  Even so, lap times were in the 6:30 - 7:00 range. I was kind of disappointed with all of the errors I made logging lap times on the first day, but with such small fields the results were easy anyway.  After the race a bunch of us went down the road to eat the Log Cabin Grill, and then Ricky and I drove over to Monroe where he had found me a temporarily unoccupied apartment for the night.

Sunday morning started out in the upper 30s, but by race time it was probably closer to 60.  This time I had a lot more time to get organized and set up the CrossMgr software.  Ricky had cropped out one lap of his race from the prior day so that I could load it into the program for the race animation feature, which is pretty cool.  Here's the HTML file that the program can create, in this case, Sunday's Cat. 1/2/3 race.  The races went well and scoring was easy because of the somewhat predictable low turnout in that part of the state, so I had a pretty nice relaxing day of mostly sitting in a chair and clicking on bib numbers.  The software supports chip timing, which would make things really easy, especially for large fields where it would be almost essential.  What I like most about it from an officiating standpoint is that it helps calculate how many laps a timed race will be based on the average lap time for the first two laps.  Also, of course, it helps a lot with keeping track of lapped riders and detecting those who aren't showing  up at the finish when expected because of some incident elsewhere on the course. Anyway, I got in zero riding for the weekend and about ten hours of solo driving.  Glad I sprung for Sirius XM in the car.

Next Sunday we have another cyclocross race here in New Orleans.  Somehow, Wes has apparently gotten permission to hold it on the "Fly" which is part of Audubon Park between the levee and the river.  I suspect it may be a pretty short and fast course and I'm kind of expecting to see some complications with pedestrians since it's a pretty busy public park in a metro area.  On the plus side, I would also expect to see a pretty big turnout. Should be interesting. Unfortunately, my wrist is still causing problems if I have to twist it or anything, so there won't be any cyclocrossing for me.

On Saturday Brian Baum has kind of organized a big super-Giro, combining three of the traditional rides that do the same route but at different times on Saturdays. The idea is to make it a smooth paceline kind of ride.  I'm not too sure about how that is going to go down with the racing rank and file who are accustomed to using the Saturday Giro as a hard training ride. It will be mixing Cat. 2 level bike racers who spend most of the time somewhere north of 25 mph with local fitness riders who tend to stop at stores twice during a 45 mile ride to eat, so it should be interesting to see what happens.

An East Wind.....

"There's an east wind coming all the same..... It will be cold and bitter....., and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared."

This morning I finally resorted to arm-warmers. The most recent cool front has thus far brought two days of strong east-northeast wind; so strong in fact that yesterday's WeMoRi was barely recognizable.  There were probably only ten riders out there when I arrived, latching onto a little break of three.  Looking back, I couldn't even make out the rest of the group, and it was only when it briefly came back together on Marconi that I realized how few there actually were. It fractured once again on the half-lap of Lakeshore Drive and I spent the rest of the lap glued to the wheel of the big guy ahead of me as the tailwind blew us toward West End at 30-34 mph. It was fun, but I was nursing my once-again re-injured left wrist and didn't enjoy it as much as I might have.

I'd been walking the dog the prior evening and as we went past the neighbor's house I noticed him up on a ladder working on his porch light.  The front door was partially open, and all of a sudden his two dogs came blasting out of the house in full stride toward Renzo who doesn't respond well to such things. I had to swing him around by the collar to keep him from attacking the two smaller dogs and in the process really wrenched my left wrist.....again. It was bad enough that I was feeling it all night, and after the WeMoRi I noticed it was swollen a bit.  Damn.  This is getting really old, but then again reading Steve Tilford's blog chronicling his TBI recovery does kind of put into perspective.

Anyway, this morning the temperature was a little cooler, I think around 59 or so, and the wind a little stronger, I guess around 15 mph. Out at the Lakefront we had a pretty decent sized group, though, for the lap of Lakeshore Drive, but a lot of them turned back for home at the end rather than heading over to the bike path for the stretch out to the casino boat at Williams Blvd.  Of course, there was still that strong tailwind, so we averaged something over 28 mph all the way out there. Knowing it would be a very long ride back, I took myself out of the rotation pretty early.  As expected, the ride back was kind of hard.  We were down to like four riders by then, and 18-19 mph was a struggle even with a smooth paceline in place.  Seemed like it took forever, but at least I hadn't killed myself on the way out and was pretty comfortable taking my pulls.  The wrist was feeling better after spending the night with a wrist brace on it, so hopefully the dog-walking incident won't turn out to have been much of a setback.  I've got an Ace bandage thing on it at work, which is interfering a bit with typing but manageable.

Speaking of setbacks, the recent presidential election was a surprise. Living in New Orleans and working at a university you kind of start to think that the majority of people are, at least, reasonable. While I didn't like either candidate much at all, I really thought that when push came to shove more people would have been reluctant to vote for someone with such a volatile temperament for president, especially when the alternative's policies and efforts would have clearly been somewhat balanced by a congress in control of the purse strings.  I just wish there had been better options, which is all I will say about that. I'm a white person, one who didn't leave what is probably one of the more ethnically diverse cities in the country in order to move out to the suburbs or elsewhere where I could complain about the city without actually living in it and where we've had lots of experience with both good and bad leadership from numerous flavors of people. Yeah, I'm offended by this stuff, but at least I know enough not to sort all the people into convenient little buckets based on skin color, which incidentally, is represented by a pretty extremely broad gradient around here. Get it together, people.

V2V - VII

Post-ride at Varsity Sports in New Orleans

The month-long string of dry days and nice riding weather was coming to an end. Indeed, as I write this on Monday afternoon it's still raining and the news is full of photos of flooded streets. So the weekend cool front was going to fall apart after the weekend, making Sunday a must-ride day. Looking at the various Facebook posts and Strava files, it seems like everyone had some big mileage on his or her plate. Wes was leading a small group on one of the semiannual Tour de Lac rides around Lake Pontchartrain, a distance of around 200 miles, Sunday morning. A number of local riders logged something in excess of 100 on Saturday. Alison C. put in 124, which admittedly is pretty normal for her. I felt a little guilty for doing only the Giro Ride on Saturday.

Sunday was the 7th annual Varsity to Varsity (V2V) ride from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. This is a collegiate ride started by LSU and subsequently joined by some of the Tulane riders. As a point-to-point ride of around 105 miles, it poses some logistical challenges.  For the LSU riders, they need a way to get home. For the Tulane riders, they need a way to get there for the 7:30 am start. That's where I come in. This year we got two minivans from the university's new shared motor pool (they're long-term rental from Enterprise) on Saturday afternoon, so at 5 am on Sunday morning I found myself walking from home to the university parking lot, just a few blocks away, in order to hop in the van and drive down to the cycling facility on Broadway Street to load up bikes and riders. As often seems to happen, the ten riders originally signed up for the ride had dwindled. A couple had backed out, a couple were already in Baton Rouge, and a couple had already gotten their bikes transported to Baton Rouge. As a result, my van had only three people and two bikes in it, including myself.  The other van had two people. Anyway, we arrived at 7 am in time to pick up some coffee and drop everyone off at Varsity Sports on Perkins. After a group photo, we Quentin and I headed back for New Orleans.  The plan was to pick up our own bikes, meet back at the university parking lot, return the minivans, and head upriver on the bike path and River Road until we met the group coming down from Baton Rouge. Once I got onto the interstate I kept looking in the mirror for Quentin, but wasn't seeing him.  How could he be going that slowly?  He'd been talking with someone as I pulled out but couldn't have been more than a few minutes behind me.  I was halfway back when he called to say that they had shut down the interstate right behind me because of an accident and he'd had to make a long detour.  I ended up waiting about twenty minutes for him at LaPlace since we needed to put gas in the vans anyway.  While I was there, Wes' Tour de Lac group rolled in for a rest stop.  Coincidence.

Heading back downriver to New Orleans

By the time we were on the bikes we were a good 45 minutes behind schedule and I was wondering if we'd make it much past the Spillway before meeting the group. Once we got up onto the bike path, though, I started thinking otherwise.  We had a pretty nice tailwind, which meant the group, which would be riding at conversational pace anyway, would have a pretty significant headwind all the way down to New Orleans. If that wasn't enough, Quentin was riding a borrowed TT bike and wearing a skinsuit and TT helmet.  There's a whole story behind that, of course.  Anyway, right after we started he noticed the bike felt strange, as if one crankarm was longer than the other.  It turned out that someone had installed the crankarms wrong so that they were a good five degrees out of parallel. For the record, he ended up riding about fifty miles like that. Not that it was slowing him down. For most of the ride upriver I was just sitting in his draft as we cruised along at 25 - 27 mph. The net result was that we got in a good 45 miles before meeting the group somewhere well past Reserve and practically where I'd met them the prior year when I hadn't been delayed.  Along the way I nearly crashed when we were riding on the levee bike path in St. John parish and came to an unexpectedly sharp right-hand curve going 27 mph.  I ran out of asphalt and launched out over the levee on the river side, miraculously staying upright, but having put a lot of pressure on my right wrist.

The rest of the ride back to New Orleans was pretty steady.  I suggested we take the St. John section of bike path in order to get off of River Road for a little while. Once up there I went up to the front and told them that when the asphalt ended at the parish line there wasn't a road back down to the street level, so we'd need to ride down the grass.  Well, that apparently didn't get communicated to anyone else and so when they hit the gravel they just kept going like lemmings, which kind of shattered the group.  After a little while a few of us rode down the grass and got back onto the road, soon coming across the rest of the group that was stopped to change the inevitable flat tire.

So I ended up with about 90 miles for the day, some of which was pretty brisk, which made for a good ride on the first day of standard time and last day of the October drought.

Halloween and Plunging Into November

The front of the Sunday Giro heading back along the service road.  

The long streak of nice riding weather continues.  We went the entire month of October with any rain unless you count four hundredths of an inch one day that wasn't enough to get the street wet.  It looks like that trend will continue for at least another week, too.  The plants are starting to really suffer and the back door is really hard to close now since the piers holding up the back room that was once a porch have sunken along with the dried-out ground. The morning temperatures have been fairly cool, but still not even cool enough to pull out the arm-warmers.  That won't likely happen until the end of the week when a cold front is supposed to come through. Perhaps then it will start to feel like Fall, especially when we have to set the clocks back by an hour this weekend.

Speaking of DST, which won't end until next Sunday, it's been just so very dark in the mornings! I am really reluctant to ride too fast when it's dark, and being the short guy at the back of the paceline just makes it worse. Even in broad daylight I usually need to look underneath the riders ahead of me to see what's up the road, so it's considerably more comfortable to stay near the front. Sunrise right now is around 7:15, so that's an hour and a half of riding on weekdays before sunrise, which means a good hour of riding in the dark.

Last weekend I ended up riding both the Saturday and Sunday Giro Rides.  That hadn't been the plan, but it turned out to be for the best. I'd been scheduled to help officiate the cyclocross race on Sunday up in Baton Rouge, and really would have liked to have gone. It was being held in Perkins Road Park where the Baton Rouge Velodrome is, and the course included a lap on the track and then another lap around the outside of the track. Candy had decided to do our usual Halloween party on Sunday, the day before Halloween, rather than have the hassle of trying to do it after work. It worked out very well and a lot of people were able to come and hang around that otherwise wouldn't have been able to do so.  When I looked at the race schedule for Baton Rouge, though, I saw that the last race wasn't scheduled to start until 2:30, so even if everything was on time and I just cut and ran the minute that race was over, I probably wouldn't have gotten back home until 5:00 or 5:30, plus I would have had the car all day too.  So I called Ricky and he got Mike to stand in for me, which was nice.  That also meant I got to ride the Sunday Giro, which had a fairly small group because of all the stuff going on that weekend.  It was a nice ride, though, and I ended up with a good 300-mile week.

Bat-baby and family stopped by for the party.

The day before, on Saturday, I hadn't been back home from the Saturday Giro very long before the phone rang and I found out that the wife and daughter were at the grocery store and the car wouldn't start.  They got a jump from someone and made it back home, but obviously something was wrong with the battery or starter or electronics or alternator. I put the voltmeter on it and the battery was showing 11 volts and the car was reporting "low battery." Trying to start it, I could hear it turn over maybe once, but it didn't have enough power to do much more than that except make noise. Of course it was a weekend, and the car wouldn't start, so my options were limited. I could try and charge the battery with my old antique battery charger so I could maybe drive to the dealership on Monday and get the electrical system checked out, or I could cross my fingers, pull the battery, and use the scooter to run down to the local auto parts store for a replacement, hoping that it was just a shorted battery. After checking online at NAPA, I decided to go for the latter option since the battery was on sale.  So far, so good.  It's a good thing though that I had gotten out of the officiating thing in Baton Rouge, because even if I'd replaced the battery I wouldn't have been all that confident about driving up there just in case it was a charging problem and not a battery problem.  Anyway, the cyclocross race looked like a big success with 100+ entries, although the ground was bone dry and the temperature by mid-day was nothing less than hot.

So the Halloween party went well. Every last drop of Candy's gumbo was consumed, as well as all of my pasta salad.  I drank entirely too much wine, of course, and we have about five pounds of leftover brisket and chicken from Whole Foods.  Halloween night itself was very busy in the neighborhood. For a while the street along our block was so clogged with kids and parents that the occasional cars couldn't get through. We were going pretty much non-stop from 6:15 until 8:30, at which point the average age of the trick-or-treaters went from 10 to around 18 and we decided it was time to turn off the lights and shut it down. We went through a ton of candy, as usual, but then this morning I was dismayed to find even more of it still in the house.  Candy can always be counted upon to get more than needed.

So we have new neighbors.  A couple bought the house next door and moved in on Friday. They immediately started a major painting and fixing-up effort that involved lots of their extended family and/or friends.  I was hoping they would stop by for the party, but they have been painting and working on the house non-stop every day from early morning until late at night. I'm exhausted just from watching them.

Next weekend is the annual LSU/Tulane Varsity to Varsity ride from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. We're hoping to get one of the big new Tulane passenger vans so I can shuttle most of the group up to BR for the 7 am start, and then rush back home and start riding upriver to meet the group somewhere around LaPlace.  The weather should be pretty nice since the cold front is supposed to be coming through some time on Friday, I think.  The temperature in Baton Rouge will probably be in the 50s when they start but should be in the mid-70s by the time they get to New Orleans. The predicted 9 mph ENE wind may slow them down a little bit, but probably not too much since the pace is fairly well controlled for that ride. Last year I did the same thing and got in around 90 miles, so hopefully I'll be able to do the same this year. We may need another person to drive a car up there with bikes since we really don't know what we can fit in to the passenger van, assuming we can get one.  The wrist is still an issue for me, but I think there has been a steady but slow improvement over the past couple of weeks. The outside of the wrist around the end of the radius still hurts when doing certain things and I suspect it will be a few weeks more before all of that subsides.  On the plus side, it has been interfering less and less with riding.  The left shoulder is also still causing some pain when reaching back for things, like the seat-belt in the car.  I think that will also be a long time healing.

This morning's Tuesday ride was pretty normal, for the most part.  A few of the usual players were absent and I think that kept the pace a little slower than usual. Mike W got into the group as it headed toward the Metairie lake bike path from Lakeshore Drive, and other than the usual unsteadiness that we're all pretty used to things seemed fine until we got close to the turnaround. Somewhere within the last kilometer he accelerated past the group in his big fixed gear. The front couple of riders didn't respond and so came around at a little faster pace just holding around 30 mph until I and everyone else saw the couple that was walking on the path ahead of us.  There was also someone coming from the other direction, so at that point I eased up and signaled for everyone to slow down. Mike, however, just continued his long sprint and I think literally brushed one of the pedestrians as he went by at, I'd guess, 32 mph. I mean, really?  Robin was coming from the other direction and saw it all, including the part where I just threw up my hands in disbelief.  He paused to apologize to the walkers, which was nice.