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.