The 411 on the 911s

Despite the cold temperatures this weekend, there were a lot of people out on their bikes. I went out to the Saturday Giro Ride knowing I wouldn't be able to do the whole thing. We were having our annual LAMBRA business meeting immediately afterward, and I needed to get there a little early, pick up some refreshments, and run off some copies.

The Giro headed out into a mostly east wind, which kept the speed down a bit. I was feeling pretty good - even better after I turned around and had a nice little tailwind riding solo back home. When I got home I found that the wife had taken the car to the grocery store, which kind of threw a monkey wrench into my plans. I ended up taking Danielle's scooter to the meeting and having her drive over a bit later with some drinks and the LCCS team trophy.  The meeting went pretty well.  We decided to keep the organizational and voting structure the same for now, so no changes to the bylaws. We'll be doing some kind of grant program for event promoters in 2016, for which I need to write up some criteria and figure out how much we can afford. We'll also be buying some serious radios.  I need to go back and find the information on those. We had investigated that early last year but never acted on it.

TU Cycling team members and med students
checking out Quentin's x-ray

So anyway, since I turned around early on the Giro Ride, I missed the crash.  Apparently Quentin's pedal came out of the crankarm in the middle of the Venetian Isles sprint. He landed on his head and face, breaking his nose and also a finger, and probably suffering a mild concussion.  I guess the pedal had been working its way out for a while and when he stood up to sprint it ripped through the last few threads. Quentin's on the Tulane team. On the plus side, there were at least two Tulane medical students also on the ride who got a little extra trauma experience.

Sunday there was an NOBC group ride on the northshore. I opted to do that one instead of the Tulane ride up in Independence.  It was damned cold when we started at 8 am, and the hour and a half into the north wind didn't help, either. I was quite surprised to count nearly 30 riders as we started out. When I dropped back after taking a brief pull I thought to myself, "This mix of riders in a headwind could get a little sketchy."  Well, shortly after turning off of Tung Road onto Lee Road there was a surge at the front and some gaps started to open.  I was sitting on Mike Lew's wheel as he started closing the gap.  Just as we got really close, toward the bottom of a little downhill, we suddenly saw riders going down up at the front. I guess some wheels got overlapped as they bunched up on the downhill.

Heading north toward Enon at the top of the Firetower hill

Anyway, two guys went down pretty hard, one of them especially so. He had what looked like a pretty deep gash on his forehead and someone immediately called 911.  We were pretty much out in the middle of nowhere.  A few of us rode back to the top of the hill to alert any cars, since everyone was still in the middle of the road.  Within a few minutes a fire truck arrived, followed immediately by three Sheriff's cars, and then the ambulance.  So that was the second 911 call of the weekend. A few people headed back to get a car to come back and pick up the bike while a couple others stayed on the site until they arrived.  That brought the group down to about 15 riders. In general the pace was controlled, although someone attacked one of those longish climbs on the backside of the course which split the group for a little while.  I saw them go and thought to myself, "It's way too early for me to be doing that kind of stuff." Anyway with the long delay because of the crash, a couple of nature stops and a few regrouping stops, the 65 mile ride took an exceptionally long time. After the ride a bunch of us went to Chimes for lunch, but it was so crowed that we would have had to wait half an hour or so (and we were hungry) so we went to that Greek place instead. It was probably after 3 pm before I got home.

I've still got some lung congestion, and Sunday's long ride in the cold doesn't seem to have helped at all.  In fact, since I got back from that ride I've felt more lung congestion than I had earlier, so I'm hoping I didn't do any real damage.  We're doing a hopefully easy Tulane ride today at 10 am since it's MLK day and the university is closed. The sun is out, but it's still in the 40s.  Looks like it might get up to 52 by noon, so I guess that's not too bad, although wardrobe selection under these conditions is going to be a little tricky.