Dark Mornings

It's that time of year when the morning rides seem a little more stressful, and not necessarily because they're faster.  Lately, like since I crashed on a training ride in the dark because I slammed into a block of concrete nobody saw, I've been keeping my headlight on the highest setting a lot more. Man, that really drains the battery fast, though. I'm recharging it practically after every weekday ride. Earlier this week Brandon got hit by a car over on Robert E. Lee near the 17th street canal. I hate that stretch of road, between the canal and West End, where there's no shoulder at all and lots of broken concrete and manhole covers on the right edge. Brandon was kind of lucky, at least as far as injuries to, and got away with a broken thumb and ton or road rash. I've been following Steve Tilford's blog and it sounds like he's having a pretty rough time of it.  It's been two weeks since he crashed on his head in a training race after hitting a dog and fractured his skull.  Seems like the severe headaches haven't really diminished much at all yet. For someone like Steve, two weeks off the bike, all by itself, is torture. I think it's going to be a lot longer than that before he's able to ride again, though. I'm pretty sure Steve should not be blogging or reading computer screens or pretty much doing anything, since the consensus seems to be that all those things tend to interfere with recovery from a TBI, but I'm really not surprised and can certainly understand his need to stay connected and keep the blog going.  I'd probably be doing the same thing.

So I've been trying out a couple of new things on the bike lately.  Since I'd cracked my Giro Aeon when I crashed (apparently both times), I got one of the new Giro Synthe helmets.  As usual, I got the small size. My head circumference is precisely at the upper limit of the small size and the lower limit of the medium.  Comparing the old and new helmets, it's clear that the inside of the styrofoam is pretty much exactly the same shape and size.  Problem is, the new Synthe has this kind of plastic band thing that is supposed to create some space between your head and the helmet. Naturally that meant it was too tight since I didn't have any space to spare at the limit. As I usually do, I made some minor field modifications to the back to accommodate my apparently elongated skull, and then another modification to allow the band thing to sit flush against the front of the helmet.  That seemed to make it work OK for now, although it was still fairly tight.  It was obvious, however, that once winter came and I wanted to put a skullcap underneath it, I was going to have a problem. So, since they were on super closeout sale (I'm guessing there's a new version coming out soon), I went ahead and got a medium size as well.  That resulted in a couple of problems. For one, the straps are fixed at the back of the helmet, unlike all of the previous ones I've had.  That means that one side can't be shortened at all. Since my head is the smallest for the medium size helmet, that put the buckle so far over on the other side that there was practically no adjustability left for the other strap. I ended up folding the strap over itself and stitching it to shorten it, with kind of solved that problem.  The other problem, though, is that the larger helmet comes down far enough on the front and sides that it's contacting my glasses and kind of pushing them down on my nose.  Not good.  So perhaps I will now have a warm-weather helmet and a cold-weather helmet.  We'll see.  It's kind of the same problem I've had all my life trying to buy pants!

Pretty nice weather for the end of October.

Meanwhile, I finally got hold of that 80 mm stem I wanted to try.  It's all of 10 mm shorter than my current one, so I didn't know if I would even be able to notice a difference, but after using it for a couple of days I think I like it. For some reason 3T changed it from having two bolts for the steerer like my other, older ones have, to only one and increased the torque spec by 1.5 Nm. All to save the weight of one little bolt?  Go figure.  Anyway, it's working out fine, so I think I'll keep it on there and put the 9 cm stem on the track bike that I haven't ridden more than a couple of times all year.

Unfortunately, nothing seems to be helping with the wrist injury much, although it has changed a bit. Initially, the thing that was hurting the most was around the base of the thumb.  Now, that's feeling a lot better, but the outside of the wrist seems to be hurting more. I don't get the sharp pain when I hit a bump any more, so that's an improvement, and just riding along it doesn't hurt very much in most positions.  For some reason, though, when I lift it off the bars to change position, it seems to hurt the most. I guess it's just one of those ligament things that is going to take some time to heal.

I've been up on the river levee bike path a couple of times this week and it looks like everything is open now except for whatever temporary closures are still needed way upriver where they are building a new conveyor for the big grain elevator. Apparently when they need to work on that, they have to shut down both the bike path on the levee and River Road.  Getting around that is practically impossible.

This weekend is the start of Wes' cyclocross series.  I was scheduled to officiate on Sunday in Baton Rouge, but got Ricky to find a substitute so I could either not go at all or at least leave early.  Candy is having our annual Halloween party on Sunday evening, and with the last race in Baton Rouge not ending until 3:30 at best, plus probably an hour and a half to get home if I cut and run, that would be cutting things a little close, plus she'd be without a car for the last-minute grocery store trip(s) that always seem to be necessary.  I'm trying to decide if I should drive up and help out with the early races with the larger fields and then head back before the Cat. 1/2/3 race starts. I'd kind of like to get in some more practice with CrossMgr anyway.  We've had nearly a month of picture perfect riding weather around here, and it looks like it will last through the weekend at least. In fact, it will be pretty warm. Looks for certain we'll make it all the way through October without even having to search for the knee-warmers.

Blue Skies and Tire Boots

The collegiate ride had riders from ULL, Nicholls, LSU, and Tulane.

It was another weekend of great weather down here, unless of course you are plant life in which case things are getting kind of desperate water-wise.  For the Saturday Giro Ride I pulled on the arm-warmers for the first time this season. Although the pre-dawn temperature was just a few degrees below 60F, it was pretty windy and  felt substantially colder. Although it eventually warmed up to the upper 60s, I was never inclined to stuff them into my pocket. Out on Chef Highway I was toward the back of a long skinny line of riders when I heard a loud explosion followed by the sound of something metallic bouncing around on the asphalt.  One of the guys had slashed a pretty good hole in his tire.  A few of us stopped to help, which was a good thing because we needed the piece of an old Mr. Tuffy I had in my bag in order to get him rolling again. Even so, we didn't dare put more than about 40 psi in the tire, fortunately on the front wheel, for fear of blowing the entire tire boot right through the gaping, bulging hole.  He headed back home (don't know if he made it) and we continued on, eventually turning around to get back into the group that was already on its way back. Other than a mile or two where four of us were bridging across a big gap that happened at an intersection, it was a moderately paced Giro.

Lots of narrow shady roads

Sunday morning there was the Collegiate Family Ride up in St. Francisville.  Quentin had reserved one of Tulane's new passenger vans, and I was to pick it up at 6:45 am from the parking lot on campus.  Problem was, nobody was there.  I went back and checked the emails about it and realized that the person handling that must have thought the trip was on Saturday rather than Sunday. So I had to run back home and take my own car to meet the rest of the group.  Luckily there was another car available and only five of us going after one had backed out at the last minute, so it was no problem, but it would have been nice to have been able to work out the still unresolved issue of how many bikes we can get into the thing, which will depend on whether we can remove the rear seats. On the way over, along the elevated portion of I-10 where it crosses the marsh between New Orleans and LaPlace we spotted four bald eagles, presumably two mating pairs.  Nice to see them returning to the area for the winter.

The weather was pretty much as good as it gets.

There was a decent sized group for the ride this year, and by the time we arrived the temperature was just warm enough to leave the arm-warmers in the car.  This was a nice controlled-pace 60 miles or so on pretty quiet roads, which was nice. My injured hand/wrist is still hurting.  It seems to be more of a wrist problem now than hand problem, and the 12-hour naproxin that I took kept it from being very bothersome. We hadn't gone fifteen miles when one of the riders hit something and slashed his tire pretty badly.  Luckily I had put more tire boot material into my bag the night before.  This hole was so big I needed two pieces of Mr. Tuffy to keep the tube from blowing out, so Dustin gave him directions to the nearest gas station with instructions to sit tight and wait from rescue.  I guess he made it there. Later, of course, Dustin had us riding through a small section of gravel which of course resulted in another flat. Then, as we approached a fence line, a white horse snuck through a hole in it and started running alongside the group. When he turned toward the middle of the road everyone pretty much came to a stop, not knowing what he would do next.  Then we gingerly rode by as he watched us.  As if that wasn't enough, the whole group almost got taken out by a truck and trailer that came speeding around a bend on a narrow country road.  Lucky nobody was over on the left side.

Hope this horse made it back home safely

I felt pretty good on this ride.  The weather was perfect and the pace was moderate, so I was never stressed.  It was a nice morning to look at the scenery.  I spent most of the ride at the back keeping track of the newer riders who I knew would eventually hit their limits.  I think a few of them had never ridden more than forty miles at one time. The front of the group kept the pace down in the 16-21 mph range most of the time, at least until we were approaching "Red Bug Hill" a couple of miles before the finish. Naturally it became a race from there to the end so the group pretty much blew apart.  I turned back and picked up a few of the stragglers to pace them in the last couple of miles. Afterward we all drove into Baton Rouge for a late lunch at Kaminari Sushi and Hibachi, near the LSU campus. For a buffet style sushi place it was reasonably decent and inexpensive, which more than met my standards for that sort of thing.

So I was surprised to find Steve Tilford actually posting stuff to his blog.  Well, actually I'm not all that surprised since it's Steve Tilford, but if it was pretty much anybody else I'd be surprised. He's still having constant headaches and other neurological difficulties as a result of cracking his head on the road about 11 days ago. He hasn't been sleeping much and really doesn't have the energy to read emails or that sort of thing, which is expected after a severe head injury. He probably shouldn't be trying to type on the computer either, although he has been keeping it very short. On the plus side, his writing is pretty much normal, so that's a good sign.

Of course nobody noticed this inconspicuous label.

Meanwhile, I'd been waiting for a couple of weeks for an 80mm stem that I'd ordered.  When I had to get new handlebars I figured I'd see how a 1 cm shorter stem might feel and whether it would make any difference to my aging neck and back.  they called right away and told me it wasn't in stock but they could get one in a few days, and since I wasn't desperate for it, I was fine with that.  Anyway, when it still hadn't shown up by Saturday I called and they said they showed it had been delivered on the 11th and that the tracking said it had been left with an "agent." So this morning I made the rounds to the neighboring offices looking for it.  Turns out it had been shipped via USPS and they had delivered it to the university mail room.  The mail room had stuck a huge label on it with my office and name on it and brought it over to our satellite location along with the other mail.  Somehow it ended up in the personnel office a couple of doors over where we have a "slot." However, it didn't find its way into that particular slot, so nobody picked it up and it just sat there.  Shipping that little box involved the shipper, the US Postal Service, the University Mail Room, and the Personnel Department (aka the Workforce Management Office).  What could go wrong?

Bars and Braces

Sitting on the back of the group all morning.

I woke up this morning with the same dull ache in my wrist I've had for a week and decided it might be time to try something different.  I knew I'd miss the 5:45 group, since the alarm clock is precisely set to allow only the absolute minimum of time needed to dress, roll the bike out the door, and ride the half mile to the meeting spot. I went downstairs and dug up the clip-on aero bars and spent a few minutes bolting them to the bike. The idea was to minimize the repeated impacts to the wrist and hand in order to give them a chance to heal. Since I went down on the same hand I'd messed up a few weeks prior, it's been a constant problem, especially while riding, and most especially while riding on New Orleans streets in the dark.  So with the headlight no 'full' and steering with my elbows I finally headed out to the lakefront.  I don't ride with aero bars on a regular basis.  In fact, I typically bolt them to the bike minutes before a 3 or 4 mile stage race time trial stage, warm up, do the time trial, and immediately remove them.  So I was just a little bit apprehensive about a 2+ hour ride, mostly in the dark, that was going to include sitting on the back of the morning training ride train.

I rode out to Lakeshore Drive, and then town to Elysian Fields, where I looped around the traffic circle to head back to West End, waiting to get swept up by the group. Somewhere around Marconi The long, long line of riders rolled past and I easily latched onto the back, being careful to leave a little extra space between myself and the wheel ahead of me. I was a little uncomfortable having my hands so far from the brakes, but after a while I got used to it. I immediately noticed how much easier it was sitting in the draft in a TT position.  I also was glad to confirm my suspicion that doing so was a big relief for my hand and wrist.  So that was my morning ride.  A little shorter than usual, and a little easier than usual, but way better than sitting on the couch watching the sprained wrist heal.  I'm thinking I'll leave the aero bars on for the rest of the week and hope it helps speed things up a little bit.  Meanwhile, I'm wearing the wrist brace at work, although it does interfere with typing and pretty much everything else.  I guess it's worth a try, but realistically I know that this will just take time - probably a month or so of it - before things are more or less back to normal.

Injured Reserve on the Levee

The Bonnet Carré Spillway  

I hate riding when I'm injured, but I guess I hate not riding when I'm injured more. For the past week my riding has been a study in compromise. It's like being on injured reserve. I've been sitting on the back of the group rides, trying mostly unsuccessfully to limit the impact, both literal and figurative, on my achy wrist and thumb joint. The reality, though, is that it's practically impossible to ride the bike without putting a fair amount of pressure on that hand. The times when it would be nicest to have the hand off the bars are also precisely the times when a firm two-handed grip is most needed.

I rode the Saturday Giro, which fortunately turned out to be a bit on the tame side, as easily as I could, continually surfing around at the back for the best draft while constantly changing hand positions in search of something more comfortable. I'd taken some naproxin in the morning, and that definitely helped, but there were still plenty of bumps in the road to remind me that things were definitely not back to normal yet. The wrist was achy enough that when I got home I iced it for a while.  Don't really know if that helped or not.

So when Mignon sent a text suggesting a Sunday ride out to the Spillway on the relatively smooth bike path, I jumped at the chance. The weather around here continues to be unusually good for riding, although I'd have to say we are approaching drought conditions.  I don't think I've seen any significant rain in two or three weeks now. Anyway, we ended up with around fifteen people on Sunday. One of them was Brady, who was keeping the pace a bit higher than I'd been expecting.  It's funny how bad you feel when a group ride is faster than you were expecting.  I'm sure that if I'd done the Giro I would have felt fine, but for this ride I'd been expecting something in the 18-20 mph range and instead got something in the 21-24 mph range.  You wouldn't think it would matter much, but I guess I was just hoping for an easier ride and a chance to give the hand some rest. The good news is that the Mississippi River levee bike path work is almost complete.  The yellow lane divider has been put down on all of the repaired sections, practically all of the path has been cleared of dirt and rocks, and the contractor's two big mobile homes have been removed from the old PHI Helicopter site where they'd been for at least two or three years. The only remaining problems are the bypass around the new green pipes at Florida Street and the five or six places where the new asphalt has collapsed on the edges where I guess the underlying dirt hadn't been sufficiently compacted before a truck rolled over it. This morning I rode easy out to Williams Blvd. and back.  On the return trip I dropped down to River Road as usual to go around the green pipes and then was surprised to find the access road back up to the top on the other side blocked.  It looked like they were working  on repairing the collapsed asphalt up there, so that's a good thing.  I had to stay on River Road holding up traffic for a little while before I could take the next, unpaved, access road back up to the bike path.  A little while later I came across a guy walking his hybrid bike with a flat.  I asked him how far he had to go and when he said Carrollton Avenue, which was still a few miles away, I stopped and fixed the flat for him. That was my good deed for the day, I guess.

Meanwhile, I've been checking up on Steve Tilford's blog that is being updated by friends since he suffered a serious head injury on Friday during a group ride in Topeka.  We're talking fractured skull and brain bleed here, so he was in ICU for a few days and it was probably a bit of touch and go for a while there.  He'd been riding without a helmet when a dog ran into the bunch during a sprint. I suspect the no-helmet thing was an freak thing since just the day before he'd blogged about taking a bunch of old helmets to a community organization to give to riders who needed them. For those who don't know, Steve is the definition of old-school U.S. bike racer. There's an interview with him from 2010 here.  He's been racing about as long as I have, although always quite a few levels above.  He's been on the national team, raced in Europe and South America on numerous occasions, raced road and mountain bike at the highest levels, won a bunch of national championships and classic U.S. races, etc., and has just never stopped. They were writing articles about how old he is for over a decade now. It's been interesting reading his blog because I see him dealing with the same age-related issues as I, except for him it's like, "how come I'm having so much trouble winning this Pro/1 race," while for me it's like, "how come I'm getting dropped in a LAMBRA master's race." Anyway, I read this afternoon that he's been transferred out of the ICU and in classic tough old bike-racer fashion  "at 4:30am Steve decided it was time for a shower. He disabled his bed alarm,  rolled his IV stand into the bathroom and took one, he almost got away with it but for the noise from the water. He will not be going home until he can eat and drink without puking everything up."  I took it as a good sign, though, despite the fact he's clearly not quite out of the woods yet.  There's a pretty good chance of long-term neurological problems from that kind of injury, one of which is death, so the fact that he's communicating and responsive and all is probably a very encouraging thing. I wish Steve a quick and full recovery, and fully expect to see him back on the bike next Spring.

Not Too Broken

The X-Rays on Tuesday didn't show any obvious fractures, and it appears that the main issue isn't a broken scaphoid but instead an old and jacked-up Carpometacarpal Joint at the base of my thumb. This was both good and bad news, I guess. On the plus side, no bones appear to have been broken so there is no hand surgery in my immediate future.  On the minus side, it still hurts and serves as a constant reminder that I'm just that much older and arthritic, and the only cure will be to get younger. I went home (well, actually back to the office) with a  one-size-fits-all brace that comes almost all the way up to my elbow, to maybe give the joint(s) a little rest so they can heal faster, and the usual "ice and analgesics" advice. Wednesday morning I went out early and alone, wearing the brace, basically to see if I could actually ride a bike while wearing it. It was tolerable, and certainly did help to minimize the discomfort when riding over bumps in the road, but it was by no means comfortable and made it pretty difficult to do any effective braking with my left hand. So this morning I put two riding gloves on that hand and went out to meet the group.  It had all felt a lot better by yesterday evening, but in the morning I was still having trouble finding a comfortable place to hold the handlebar.  I quickly decided that I'd be spending the morning ride at the very, very back just to be on the safe side.  Fortunately, the group was going pretty easy and there was practically no wind to deal with. I took a few photos of the sunrise when we turned around out at Williams Blvd., but the camera was apparently not able to focus in the dim light. Suffice it to say the sunrise was pretty nice this morning.

The other day Danielle go a new 2-year brake tag (aka Inspection Sticker for those from outside New Orleans) and I was surprised to find that the entire design had been changed.  I mean, the New Orleans brake tag design had not significantly changed since at least 1969. Even more surprising, on the back of the sticker, facing the driver, was a "Share the Road" reminder.  Amazing.

So anyway, I guess I'll just take naproxen and wear the brace when it's feasible for a week or to and hope the hand and wrist calm back down to normal, whatever that is. It shouldn't keep me off the bike, but it's pretty likely to keep me well away from the front and may very well get me dropped now and then when I don't want to stand up to close a gap or go barreling through a bumpy section of road. Since I don't have any racing any time soon, that won't really be an issue.

What are the Odds?

Lakeshore Drive was wet from the surf breaking over the seawall on Saturday.  

Last weekend's weather was pretty great, assuming you don't mind a 10 mph wind. Actually, the weather's been pretty great for a pretty long time now around here. It also hasn't rained in a long time, which means the grass is turning brown and the back door won't close right.

Saturday's Giro Ride was unavoidably affected by the combination of crosswinds and whoever was on the front. Although I wouldn't say it was a super-hard or fast Giro, it was certainly a lot worse at the back than at the front. They had part of Lakeshore Drive closed off because the wind was blowing water across the road.  Naturally we rode through that anyway.  Riders were getting spit off the back for most of the way out Hayne Blvd. By the time we got a little ways down Chef Highway an actual paceline finally formed up and things got way better.  That is until Ben S inexplicably came blasting through after I'd taken my pull. I glanced over and nobody was going with him, so I slid over into what passes for his draft as he continued what looked like a sprint leadout.  Well, it would have looked like a sprint leadout if (a) we hadn't been two kilometers from the turnaound, and (b) there had been someone other than myself on his wheel. Once the rest of the pack closed the gap the paceline was pretty much shattered. On the return trip we had more of a tailwind, and around the time the group was getting up to a sustained 29-30 mph, I saw Jerry and another rider who had been dropped earlier making a U-turn to try and get back onto the group. Unfortunately, they executed that particular maneuver behind us rather than ahead of us, and when the group's rolling a tailwind at around 30 mph that rarely works.  I heard someone yell to them "SPRINT!" as we went past, but it was already too late. Jerry ended up riding like 100+ miles that day anyway, so he got in a pretty good workout anyway.

Photo opp. at the Spillway.  

For Sunday we had a planned NOBC ride out to the Spillway on the levee bike path. I think there were only about four of us at the start, but lots of people were waiting at various points along the levee to join the group, so I guess we had close to twenty at some point. The weather was great, although there was still a pretty good breeze blowing. Somewhere along the way out we lost Charlotte who flatted (didn't even realize she was gone until we got to the Spillway) and Robert Lee who was in town from Jackson (we found him on the way back - he'd stopped for food). Anyway, it was a great weekend for riding and I ended up with an unusual 300+ mile week.

Then it all went south on Monday.

Frank Colangelo at the front. Probably the oldest
NOBC member going back to 1969.

Monday morning I decided to do an easy recovery ride on the levee. The weather was still really nice and I was out the door half an hour before sunrise looking forward to some alone time with the bike. Turning onto Willow Street I decided to stay in the right lane, which meant crossing a whole bunch of curved streetcar tracks where they turn into the Streetcar Barn. Since they re-paved all of that last year, it hasn't been much of a problem to do that rather than swinging out into the oncoming traffic lane for a whole block to avoid them.  I was going 12 mph.  That particular morning, however, there was a streetcar kind of sticking out into the street that hadn't been pulled into the barn itself. As a result I couldn't go as far to the right, where the tracks are more perpendicular to the road, as usual.  That was my downfall, literally.  I was going to make a hard turn to the left to cut across them when I heard a car coming up from behind.  Well, the last set of tracks caught my front wheel and I fell like a sack of cement on my left side. Unfortunately, I also tried to stop my fall with my already injured left hand and when I got up I knew I'd done some damage.  What are the odds of falling on the same freaking hand twice in three weeks when you haven't crashed for well over a year prior? I was pretty pissed off, and it hurt pretty much, but I went ahead and rode around 20 miles hoping it would feel better eventually.

It didn't.

So I skipped riding this morning and will be visiting Tulane's Sports Medicine Institute where I'm fully expecting to see a pretty picture of a broken scaphoid in my left hand. It will be interesting to see if it had already been broken and was starting to heal from the crash three weeks ago. It definitely hurts more now than it did after the last crash, so I'm taking that as a bad sign. Anyway, I'm already thinking about how I'm going to keep riding with a brace or cast or even surgery.  I'm thinking some short clip-ons and heavily padded gel gloves?  We'll see. There's always the WattBikes, I guess.

Road Racing Season

Last weekend was the last event of the 2016 LAMBRA road racing season. The Team Time Trial and Criterium had been re-scheduled because of the disastrous flooding in August.  In fact, it was amazing that the folks down in Thibodaux and Houma were actually able to pull off the re-scheduled race since I'm some of them were still in the process of repairing their homes. On the plus side, the weather for the entire weekend was beautiful thanks to the season's first cool front. Morning temperatures were in the upper 60s with mid-day highs I guess in the low 80s.

The week before the event I started contacting people about trying to get a TTT team together. My first attempt was an email to what I considered the most likely group.  From that I got a quick positive reply from Steve, with whom I've done this particular TTT a number of times. After that was just silence. Eventually, one person said he was already committed to another team and another was out that weekend with baby duty. I then expanded the search to the whole NOBC email list but still didn't get a solid bite except for David, whose arm Steve had twisted.  He was not exactly enthusiastic, but still willing to fill out a 4-man squad if needed. By Friday night the situation had still not improved, so Steve and I were considering just riding it as a 2-man for the exercise.  I had to make the trip anyway since I had the USAC medals and the LAMBRA radios.

Early in the race as Adrian was closing the gap.

So I made the 1-hour drive Saturday morning, arriving early enough to help with registration a bit. I soon received a text from Steve saying he wasn't coming, so that pretty much ended any hope of my getting on the bike that morning. Turnout was pretty low, which wasn't too surprising under the circumstances.  There were a bunch of other things going on that weekend, and by this time in the season a lot of riders have already switched, mentally at least, into winter ride mode or cyclocross training mode or festival mode. On the plus side, results were quick and easy and I was back home in time for lunch.

Sunday's race started early, so I was out the door in the dark in order to get to the course around the time of the first race at 7 am.  Well, although the local club had done a fantastic job with the race and had lots of course marshals, police, jambalaya, drinks, awards, etc., turnout was again pretty dismal. The Women's and Junior's races had zero entries.

The Masters race had four, including me. I was not feeling too good for this one.  My left wrist and hand were still kind of hurt from the crash, so I didn't really know how they would hold up to the very technical 8-corner criterium. As usual, Kevin Landry attacked at the first opportunity. Peter responded and I went with him, but Adrian was I guess caught a little off-guard and got gapped off a bit. Our chase seemed more for show than effect, however, and within a lap or so Adrian was back with us. The rest of the race was essentially a nice smooth 3-man time trial at decidedly sub-maximal effort levels. I was a little surprised that Kevin didn't lap us, but I think he knew where we were and since he was planning on doing the Cat. 1/2/3 race later he had no reason to go any harder than necessary. By the time we were halfway through my left hand was going numb and I was glad we weren't going fast enough to require a lot of braking. The road were old city roads, so every once in a while I'd hit a bump on a right turn and really feel it in my left hand. Going into the last lap Adrian was on the front and so I figured I'd stay on his wheel in case Peter attacked. Coming into the last two turns I eased just a bit in order to give Adrian a gap for the three-block finish straight. He was able to hold out all the way to the line. My own attempt at a sprint was kind of short-lived and Peter came around me at the end easily. I think I still went home with $70 which more than covered entry fee and gas for both days, so that was nice.  I probably should have entered the Cat. 1/2/3 race since there were only six entries and prizes went seven deep, but I wasn't willing to put myself, or my hand, through an hour of corners.

Back to the Levee

Took a ride out to the Spillway on Saturday     

Since a lack of  Team Time Trial teammates, together with the necessity of my presence at said Team Time Trial, caused me to miss riding on Saturday morning altogether, I set my sights on the afternoon.

Near Moss Rd. - all clear

Fortunately, the weather around here has been pretty spectacular lately, and Saturday afternoon was sunny and dry and not particularly hot. Rather than trying to survive mid-day weekend traffic I decided to see what the river levee bike path had to offer.  I'd been out there the Monday before and found the barricade at Moss Road down but with heavy equipment still at work nearby, so we'd turned back. The levee work should be nearing completion around now, and as far as I can tell it's what I'd call "substantially complete," which is to say the bike path is fine except in a few places, although there's obviously more work to do around the edges, so to speak.

Dirt and ongoing work around
River Ridge

Out around Moss Road where there has been a barricade, fence and signage for the past year or more, it's now open.  There were no signs at all on Saturday, nor any indication that the bike path was closed, although the center stripe is missing and there are still some bulldozers working on the sides of the levee in a few places. I rode on through unimpeded.  There were a number of places where the path is covered with dirt, and a couple of little spots where it seems there's no asphalt at all. It's not at a point where I'd be comfortable doing a group ride at fast speeds, especially in the dark, but otherwise it was pretty nice.

Williams Blvd. - Kind of Clear

The area around the Florida Street pipes is a mess and is obviously serving as a major access point for heavy equipment, much of which was parked there.  It was necessary to pick my way through the tractors and mud and rocks, but fortunately it was dry and not much of a problem.

At Williams Blvd, where there had been more fences and barricades, I again found the path to be open, although the barricades were sitting there alongside the path. From here to the Jefferson Parish line where the levee-raising project ended there were a number of spots where the edges of the new bike path had already kind of caved in under the weight of cars, trucks, or other heavy equipment.  This was bad enough to be dangerous to a cyclist, especially in the dark. Riding alone during the day, however, made it easy to avoid the problem areas.

Some sections of missing asphalt

Farther down the bike path and up the river the big grain elevator has been building a huge new conveyor over the levee.  There they have put up this little narrow slightly elevated access lane with "walk your bike" signs.  It looks pretty permanent. I don't know if it is or not. At any rate, it's really only wide enough for one bike.

From there I rode all the way out to the Spillway.  The only thing I noticed was that much of the bike path in Jefferson Parish and above seems to have eroding edges where I assume the grass has degraded the asphalt. Effectively, the path is about a foot narrower than it used to be.

Grain elevator

They announced that they would start working on the Lakefront "levee lift" project some time this month, starting with Phase 1 from the western end of the bike path to Williams Blvd.  I guess that should take a couple of months at least, so it shouldn't affect the rest of the lakefront bike path, which is the part that the group ride uses.  Hopefully the river levee path will be back to normal before Phase II starts on the lakefront. One can hope.

Some broken up sections of new asphalt

More broken new asphalt