Northshore Sunday

The Sunday northshore group on Old Military Road

The time for a long Sunday northshore ride was long overdue, and it didn't take long to convince a few of the more likely suspects to set something up. By Wednesday there was a Facebook event and emails and, eventually, a route. The weather was looking to be particularly good with a very rare "cool front" coming through on Saturday that would at least take the edge off of the last weekend in July. The 73-mile route that Mark H. had put together wasn't exactly the kind I would have mapped out, but it was pretty typical of most of the regular weekend northshore rides in that it had a lot of turns and twists and tended to lean toward the flatter roads. Most of the roads were quite nice, though, and my overall impression was that much of the second  half of the ride consisted of a bunch of short but great segments strung together with equally short connections on not quite so nice segments.

So after a particularly fast tailwind-assisted Saturday Giro Ride (one three mile stretch averaged well over 30 mph) I was looking forward to a ride in the country. Thanks to the empty July racing calendar and other complications I'd six straight weekends of back-to-back Giro Rides. I mean, the Giro is great and super convenient and all, but it's also dead flat unless you count overpasses, which can get old after a while. Sunday morning I left early to pick up Ben Luongo (yeah, that's Tom's son) and we made the drive over the Causeway to the Abita Springs trailhead, arriving with plenty of time for the planned 7:30 am ride. There were tons of riders there since another group ride was also leaving around that time, plus there's a regular Sunday morning farmer's market there. We got one of the last parking spots along the school fence. Thanks to the cool front, the relative humidity was relatively low, which made the 77 degree temperature feel relatively pleasant. It would eventually rise into the 90s by the ride's end, but even that felt less oppressive than normal.

Before we headed out on the Tammany Trace, we took a little group photo with some of the NOBC riders who were on hand. Once we got out of Abita Springs a bit I took a head count and came up with 27, which was both good and bad. On the good side, it's great to have a big group that allows for some conversation and all. On the bad side, it means there will be a wider range of abilities than you'd have with a smaller ride composed of just riders you know well. Rolling out we saw Antonio (aka Tony) turn around to join in, at which point I heard someone groan, "Oh no....."  Tony is a great guy but is also pretty well known for pushing the pace on northshore rides. On that count he would not disappoint on this day. As the pace started to ramp up the group pretty quickly formed into a long single file, cruising along at a nice clip and regrouping after the intersections. About 15 miles in we turned off of Fitzgerald Church Road onto Hwy. 40/437 and had to wait for some traffic to pass. Unbeknownst to most, maybe all, was that Mignon had paused to eat something and ended up off the back at the same time that the pace picked up and we got into somewhat hillier terrain. It was over ten miles later that Mark realized she was missing and turned back to find her and they weren't back with the group for another ten miles when we stopped at the store in Isabel. From there the turns became even more frequent. There was one particularly uncomfortable stretch on Highway 21 at Sun where the road was under construction, but eventually we were back on less-busy roads.When we turned into Money Hill, which is a gated community, there was a guard there who initially refused to let the group through. I don't know what transpired, but eventually he relented. Of course, if you have to get through one gate to get in, that means you will have to get through another to get out. Well the exit gate six or seven miles later didn't have a guard or anything and had to be triggered by a car, one of which appeared right on cue, although a few people ended up riding around the gate and through a ditch. By then a number of riders had turned off to make for shorter rides, so we were down to maybe half the riders we'd started with. The rest of the ride heading back to Abita Springs was pretty easy.

After the ride a bunch of us had lunch at the Abita Brew Pub where the beer is readily available. The food there is nothing to write home about, and they always seem to be severely understaffed, so it was a long wait for a hamburger and fries, but the company was nice and I was glad I had no pressure to get home.

All-in-all it was a nice 70+ mile ride, even if it was a bit easier than I'd been expecting. On the plus side, nobody bonked or otherwise got in over his head on the ride. We need to do these more often, I think.  Just as well that it wasn't too hard, I think, since on Monday I was feeling pretty tired when I went out for a solo recovery ride on the levee where I averaged a blazing 15 mph. This morning I had to miss the long Tuesday ride on the levee in order to bring Candy to the airport. She has a conference in Florida near Jacksonville and won't be back until Sunday evening. In the meantime We're trying to get a 4-man Team Time Trial team together for Saturday's race. It remains to be seen if we will be able to find four 55+ riders for that. Somehow these TTT teams always seem to get assembled at the last minute. I'm thinking I may bolt the aero bars onto the old Orbea for this one and maybe do a few miles on that one day this week.