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.