As always happens before a road trip, all sorts of complications at work and home started popping up by Thursday, and even by Friday morning I didn't know for sure when I'd be able to leave town. The roofer called in the morning and scheduled a 3 pm meeting to look at the leaking roof, so once that was locked in, I was pretty much committed to leave work by 2:30. By "leave work" I mean literally leaving a lot of work undone. Ergo, this week is going to be rough. Anyway, the roof is going to be upwards of $2,300.
It wasn't until around 4 pm that we started fighting our way out of New Orleans, but once we got past the city and onto I-55 things smoothed out, so we made it up to the cabins at Natchez State Park right in time for dinner, which had just been put together by the riders who'd gone up earlier in the day. This year it was a combined Tulane and LSU camp, so we had I think 14 or 15 riders on hand. Jamie had come in from Jackson, to which she recently relocated, to join us, which was nice since I got to have my own bed in a different cabin, which would prove to be invaluable Saturday night. The most amazing thing about the whole weekend, however, was the weather. Temperatures ranged from the upper 50s to mid-70s, with a clear sky on Saturday and partly cloudy sky on Sunday. Other than the 15 mph south wind, it was nearly perfect for riding.
So Saturday's ride actually worked out pretty nicely. Naturally, I went out over-dressed since it was still January and how can you not be wearing at least knee-warmers in January. I ended up with a lot of stuff crammed into my pockets.
It's always a challenge when there is such a wide range of abilities. We had a 60+ mile route mapped out, which included a mile or so of gravel, divided into basically two loops that met in the middle. About halfway through the first loop we turned onto Church Road, which was that nasty chip-seal. The group split right away, with plans to re-group at the end of the road. I guess the front of the group got there well over five minutes ahead of the end of the group, so we decided to route some riders a slightly shorter way to Natchez, while the others took the turn-off onto the gravel road and added a few miles. Amazingly it worked out perfectly with the two groups meeting up at the entrance to the Natchez Trace within a few minutes of each other. A subsequent attempt to practice paceline riding was like trying to teach cats to team time trial, but anyway we arrived back at the cabins more or less together. Later that afternoon we went out on the grass and practiced some of the usual bike-handling skills and sprinting.
Saturday evening started out with dinner (more pasta of course), and then they started playing one of those group card games. That went on late into the night, although after a couple of glasses of wine I headed back to the quiet cabin. I'd had a flat tire on the Saturday ride, and when I got back to the cabin I found it was nearly flat again, so I swapped out the tube with the other one I'd brought, checking the inside of the tire, but finding nothing. Well, that was the start of a lot of tire changing.
Sunday morning I didn't get very far before the tire went flat again. I again ran my finger inside of the tire, pulled out a couple of very small bits of rock or glass that didn't seem significant, and put the slow-leak tube I'd taken out the night before in there. We rode into Natchez for coffee, after which one group headed straight back to the cabins while the other group took off on a longer loop to the southeast. Well, of course the tire went soft yet again. I nursed it along for a few more miles but finally had to stop and borrow a tube from Quentin. The pace on this loop had been relatively brisk since it was just the faster riders, and so I was spending a fair amount of time hanging out at the back of the paceline thanks to the combination of low tire pressure and low leg power. It was fine, though. Eventually we turned onto State Park Road, which was full of rough pavement, holes, and fresh road repairs that consisted of asphalt with loose crushed rocks on top. As we turned into the park, about three miles from the cabin, I felt the tire going soft again. I thought I'd be able to make it all the way back, but after everyone passed me it just went completely flat and after squirming down a couple of downhills I called Danielle to come pick me up. Somewhere along the way I lost my CO2 inflater.
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