Ten of Six

The usual last-minute photo before heading down to the start

I think perhaps the worst thing about returning every year to ride Six Gap is that the ride just crushes one's illusions. This was my tenth trip to Dahlonega and I can confirm that it didn't get any easier since last year.

As I have for the past few years, I went up with the Tulane riders of which there were eight. A couple of them weren't able to leave until 8 am on Saturday, and I knew that was going to make it difficult to arrive by the 6 pm deadline to pick up packets that evening. Complicating things a bit was the fact that we would be taking two of the Tulane motor pool vans that are equipped with GPS tracking, so it would be like having Big Brother looking over you shoulder at the speedometer. Fortunately, the weather was great all weekend and everyone arrived on time. The nine-hour drive went pretty well, although since we were pressed for time, lunch was a quick stop at a Subway for to-go sandwiches. Grayson was driving his own car ahead of us a bit, and we were all in communication via Zello. We were lagging behind the other van by maybe ten minutes, and as we approached Atlanta, Google Maps was initially showing an estimated arrival time right at 6 pm. That soon became 6:01, and then 6:02, and so on. Fortunately, Grayson talked the folks up there into waiting a few extra minutes for us, so when we finally arrived at maybe 6:10 we jumped out of the van and grabbed our packets immediately. I was particularly  happy to find that the bike shop tent at the Expo was still up, and, even better, they had a bottle of Montana Huckleberry HammerGel. I'd run out of it at home and was afraid I'd have to survive on Powerbars, so this was a great relief!

After picking up packets we went straight over to Pueblo's for dinner, and then made the 20-minute drive to Cleveland, GA (who knew there was a Cleveland in Georgia?) where we checked into a rather sketchy Knight's Inn along with a bunch of power company linemen. The room itself wasn't too bad, other than the soft spot in the floor and air-conditioner that seemed to be turning itself on and off randomly all night. Can't say I got a lot of sleep. Anyway, we were up early enough to go next-door to Dunkin Donuts for some coffee and donuts before heading back to Dahlonega. Of course it was still dark since we knew we had to get there by at least 6:30 to get a good parking spot in the school lot. That worked out really well. By the time the sun was starting to come up we headed down to the line for the 7:30 am start. We had 7 riders doing 6-Gap, one doing 3-Gap, and one doing the Valley Ride. The start was the usual scramble, and I pretty quickly lost track of the rest of the group, most of which were up closer to the front. I had done something bad to my back, probably when loading up the van, and was getting sharp pain on one side when I twisted just the right way, so I was being really careful not to do that. Even so, I wondered if it was going to turn into a show-stopper at some point during the ride.

Louisiana riders at 6-Gap

Soon enough I found myself in a pretty large group that was a bit behind the equally large lead group as we approached the first climbs. My legs were feeling pretty good and as usual I didn't have much trouble on the first couple of Gaps, although I was being a little conservative since I knew what was still to come. By the top of Jack's Gap, the first real climb, Grayson, Cameron, and Elliott were way, way up the road somewhere and Steve was somewhere ahead as well. I was fairly comfortable in the 39x25 and 39x27 for this climb as well as for the next one, but I knew that the longer, steeper sections of Hogpen were going to be a problem. After coming down Unicoi I caught up with Steve and we went up Hogpen in sight of each other at the blazing average speed of 8.3 mph for 45 minutes. Here, I was wishing I'd sprung for a cassette with a 29 as there were many times when my Garmin was auto-pausing (the speed sensor isn't working so the speed really jumps around when I'm in single digits like that!). Steve stopped at the rest stop, but I didn't, so that was the last I saw of him until afterward. After trudging up Wolfpen at 7.6 mph, I stopped to fill a water bottle and down a little cup of Coke, where I found Grayson and Cameron who had been stopping at the rest stops a lot, apparently. Elliott was already way up the road somewhere. We rode the downhill from Wolfpen, with a little group coming together at the bottom, but when the next section of climbing started I had to let them go. After the relatively short final climb up Woody Gap, I enjoyed the long downhill with the super-sharp 180 at the bottom and finally looked the clock. It was impossible to make it in under 6 hours for sure, but my legs were still functional, so although I was alone in a headwind I kind of pushed it for the final ten miles, rolling across the finish with 6:13 riding time on my Garmin and an official clock time of 6:15, which was essentially the same as last year. It was particularly encouraging to see that three of the Tulane riders, Grayson, Elliott, and Cameron, posted ride times well under 6 hours this year. It was also good that we had two new women riders making the trip. Kaitlyn did a pretty good 3-Gap time despite riding with a broken cleat, and I think Lucia had a nice time doing the Valley ride on her hybrid bike even though the handlebars slipped and she had to get someone at the rest stop to fix them. Meanwhile, Stan Prutz, who had just returned from doing three of those Haute stage races back-to-back in Europe, rode in at 5:38 which was of course the fastest time in the 55-98 age group and 37th overall.

The ride home was, for a change, uneventful. We didn't have to drive through any blinding rainstorms, there were no frantic midnight searches for gas stations that would take Tulane's fuel card, and even though we were stopped for about half an hour because of a major accident that shut down the Interstate, we still got back to New Orleans around 12:30 am or so, and that was driving with cruise control set at or slightly below the speed limit practically the whole way. Today I'm really feeling it, though. My back is sore, my quads are sore, and even my triceps are sore. So, basically situation normal. I went out for an easy 20 miles on the levee this morning just to spin the legs and was happy to see an eagle, which is a sure sign that Fall is coming - eventually.

Visitors

Thursday on the levee, heading back from the turnaround.    

The awesome cooler weather that graced us with a nice long visit recently was great, until it wasn't any more, which was around last Wednesday. The evening before, I'd gotten together for dinner at High Hat with Roger Brown, a high-school classmate from Jesuit who was visiting town from Chicago. That morning I went out in the really, really dark and met the WeMoRi which for some reason didn't seem to be killing it as much as usual. With an early meeting at work I had to skip my usual twenty minutes of lounging around at Starbucks and instead rushed through a quick shower and pedaled off to work, once again beating the odds by not getting run over by any cars, trucks, buses or dumbass wannabe "track" cyclists commuting on brakeless fix-gear bikes with time trial handlebars set so far forward it would make Graeme Obree cringe.

Ripped that thing right off with my awesome arm power.

That evening Rich Hirschinger, visiting from L.A., came over to borrow a bike while he was in town for a conference. Rich rides with the Velo Club la Grange, so I was particularly pleased to be able to repay the club in some small way for lending me a bike some years back when I was in L.A. for about a week watching Danielle's UI team compete at gymnastics nationals. Also, he's a Tulane Biology alumnus. Anyway, as I was removing the Keo pedals from my Orbea in order to install Rich's Speedplays, I inadvertently ripped my Thompson seatpost apart with my awesome upper body strength. Oops. Fortunately, it was easy to resort to Plan B, which was to set him up on the old Cervelo instead. That worked out OK, although the shifters are so worn out and finicky that there was a time or two when he couldn't shift into a high gear when he needed it, at least until I explained to him the secret handshake required.

Rich came out for the Thursday levee ride, which was nice and smooth and uneventful. By then you could feel the humidity moving back into the city, and I knew that our brief respite from summer would soon be over. Afterward we stopped for coffee at Zotz and I filled him in on the Tulane Friday Coffee Ride and Sunday Giro Ride info, since he was planning on making both of those. I also mentioned that U2 was in town for a concert and I think he'd snagged tickets within about an hour of that. He did show up Friday morning for the Tulane ride, which included a coffee stop at Fair Grinds. That evening I went out to the Airport to pick up Danielle who was finally coming back for the semester.

Ray and I got back a good five minutes before the lazy puncture-ridden main group. No, we weren't going that fast.

The Saturday morning Giro was a little messy. There are a lot of rides and things going on this time of year, including the Pensacola stage race, so although there was a good-sized group on hand, we were missing a few of the regulars. Anyway, that didn't keep things from getting fast on Hayne Blvd. Unfortunately, it remained fast after the turn onto Paris Road where they are doing all sorts of road construction that forces us to ride through some bad patches of asphalt, so of course someone pinch-flatted. Most of us waited, although a small group kept going, never to be seen again since they didn't wait around at the turnaround. As we started back, Ray and I rolled casually ahead as the rest of the group emerged from the shade of the pee-pee tree and attempted to avoid having to actually pedal their bikes. Soon, our pace started creeping up and before I knew it we were in 2-man time trial mode, which in this case was more like 1.5-man time trial mode, with me taking much shorter pulls than Ray. The whole time I'm expecting the group to come flying by at like 30 mph, but every time I looked back I saw nothing but empty road. So we went all the way to the turn-off onto the service road, at which point we eased up. We were all the way to Hayne Blvd. before I could see the group starting to approach from behind, and then they were gone again -- someone had flatted.  So we ended up riding the entire way back alone. I turned around on Lakeshore Drive and went all the way back to the fountain before finding the remnant of the main group. Strange Giro.

Heading out for the Sunday Giro

Sunday's Giro had a particularly small group, which of course meant there weren't as many places to hide from the wind. We had a nice paceline going most of the way out on Chef Highway, which was nice, but by 8 am it was clear that the summer humidity was back in full force. Unaccustomed to this level of humidity, Rich was going through his water at a fairly rapid rate, and as the pace ramped up on the return trip I could see that he was starting to suffer a bit. When it got fast leading up to the Goodyear Sign sprint on Chef Highway, Rich came off the back with a couple others. It turned out that my old Campi 9-speed shifter wouldn't give him access to anything smaller than the fifteen tooth cog because he didn't know the trick of pushing the paddle lever all the way out so the worn-out shifter could complete the earlier shift. I sent the other Rich ahead to slow the front of the group so I could make sure he didn't miss the turn onto the service road, at which point I told him how to make the thing actually shift. I guess those shifters have, conservatively, 40,000 miles on them.

Next weekend is Six Gap, so assuming that the Tulane guys get things lined up travel-wise and we're actually going, I figure I will be taking it easy this week. Regardless, I think the legs are probably due for a little recovery time.

Weather Here and There

A very mixed MS Tour Training Ride group

The cold front that saved most of the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Irma ushered in a long stretch of fairly spectacular weather that we don't usually see until closer to October. Of course, it was all accompanied by brisk northerly winds, but under the circumstances I'm not complaining. I spend much of the weekend watching the Weather Channel and having flash-backs from 2005, but got to enjoy some nice weekend rides.

Saturday was the usual Giro Ride. As I rode out to Starbucks that morning I paused to zip up my jersey since it was a relatively frigid 72 degrees. They've been doing a bunch of re-paving work along Hayne Blvd. lately and it seems like every time we ride through there somebody flats or something. On Saturday, somewhere between Hayne and the Interstate (is that technically Hayne, or Paris Rd.?) Jaden hit a hole hard enough to dislodge his water bottle and jam it between his wheel and chainstay before ejecting it. All I saw was a water bottle go flying that I nearly hit. A few of us slowed down thinking someone had flatted, but the front of the group kept going. As it turned out, Jaden had tweaked his rear wheel and started heading back home. At that point Woody and a couple others who had stopped with Jaden caught up to me as I was soft-pedaling up the overpass and we started trying to chase back to the group. Most of them had slowed down so we made contact back on Chef Highway without too much of a problem. In a way I was kind of disappointed because I'd been hoping for a nice team time-trial with a group of four or five all the way out to Venetian Isles. Anyway, Jaden apparently changed his mind and turned back around and met up with us at Venetian where borrowed a multi-tool to, I think, loosen up his aero rear brake so it would't rub on his now-wavy rear wheel. It was a fairly fast Giro, regardless, and other than the wind, the weather was perfect.

Nice day, nice roads

On Sunday we had a small group that met up at Lee Road Middle School for a northshore ride. There was a MS Tour training ride scheduled to leave from there at 8:00, so we planned on leaving at 7:45. We were late, and then we turned back because Jaden and Stephen who had started with us suddenly disappeared. Apparently they had decided to do the MS tour route instead. Our route was basically the same for the first twenty miles, so shortly after we got going we were caught by a fairly big group that had left at 8:00. We merged in with them until we turned off onto Choctaw Road. At that point it was just Steve, Pat and me. I was determined to get in some intensity here and there, which Pat wasn't too interested in, so Steve and I spend some time pushing it up ahead and then circling back to pick  up Pat. He was never more than a minute behind, so it wasn't a problem at all. When we got back to Lee Road for the final five miles or so we saw Jim coming the other way. He had intended to go with us but had missed the turn so had finished with the MS tour group and then headed back to find us. He turned around and went to the front and dragged us in the last few miles. All-in-all it was a great ride with spectacular weather.

Historical marker at the top of our loop

Meanwhile, Hurricane Irma was already starting to diminish after slamming through the Keys and tracking up the east side of Florida. My brother and family in Orlando lost power around 7 pm on Sunday night but otherwise everything was OK over there. There are a number of folks in New Orleans from places like Tampa right now, but I guess they will be anxious to return home as soon as they can. It looks like much of Florida was spared the worst-case scenario that, for a while, was looking like a real possibility.

Three in a Row

A turbulent world.  

I woke up, briefly, around midnight to thunder and lightning. It was the welcome cold front that will, we are assuming, save us here in Louisiana from the approaching hurricanes. Yes.  Plural. The air was noticeably cooler than usual this morning when I went out in the dark to meet up with the WeMoRi group on the Lakefront. That's if you can call 75F cool, which I definitely can. Of course, there was also a north wind. With some lingering cloud cover, it remained dark for a long time this morning, and with various sections of street lights along Lakeshore Drive out, I was glad I'd added a second rear light to the bike before leaving. I hovered around in the darkness between Marconi and Shelter #2 for a while until I saw the cluster of blinky lights coming and rushed to make the turn back onto Marconi before being absorbed into the group, which this morning meant hanging onto the tail end and sprinting onto Robert E. Lee to close a gap before finally catching my breath halfway down Wisner.

An hour later, sitting at Starbucks with my cup of coffee, I checked Mike's Weather Page to see what the latest was on Irma. The morning forecast models had shifted it a bit to the east, but I knew they couldn't really be trusted quite yet. Still, it was comforting to know that the cold front had moved through as expected and the models were still in agreement about the rather dramatic turn to the north on Saturday. Hopefully by the time it gets up to the Orlando area where my brother lives it will have lost some intensity. By afternoon we had three named hurricanes all in a row. Irma's the big one, still at Category 5, and trailing behind it out in the Atlantic is Jose which is expected to turn north well before reaching us (we hope). Over in the western Gulf, Katia has just been upgraded to a hurricane and is heading into Mexico. Looks like we're going to luck out on all three of these this time around. We now have a FB page for the Cajun Airlift - a bunch of pilots that seem to be loosely connected with the Commemorative Air Force who have been airlifting supplies into the areas affected most by Hurricane Harvey and who are expecting to be needed again in Florida. It looks like the BVI, Puerto Rico and Cuba will be hit pretty hard first, and it looks quite bad for a lot of the Bahamas. The only good news is that the hurricane is moving fairly fast, currently at 16 mph.

Labor Day Weekend Rides - Cat. 5 is Bad

A few of the Tulane riders on the Independence ride

Finally a few days without rain in the forecast. Sitting at Pagoda Cafe with the Tulane group on Friday morning I learned that they were planning a ride up in Independence for Saturday. Feeling the need to get out in the country a bit, I decided to tag along. Quentin, Elliot and I headed out right on time for the one-hour drive, parking along the railroad tracks near the BBQ place where we'd later have lunch.

First TUCA ride of the semester

The ride turned out to be a pretty steady 58 miles, a bit shorter and easier than I'd expected but still a good ride. The first hour or so felt almost cool, which is to say it was below 80F. For a minute or two I thought I could see Fall coming, but an hour later when the temperature was approaching 90 I realized it was just wishful thinking. I felt pretty good on this ride, probably thanks to the prior week's rain and resulting reduced mileage and intensity. It didn't seem like any of the riders were ever in difficulty, so I'll take that as a good sign for the team. By the time we got back it was good and hot, and I was glad to be able to sit down in the air-conditioning for a quick lunch before hitting the road back to New Orleans. That evening we walked over to the Tulane stadium to watch the season opener against Grambling. Tulane won the game pretty convincingly, although Grambling's band most definitely won half-time.  It was rather sad seeing the tiny Tulane band sitting in the end zone waiting for the huge Grambling band to finish its performance.

Giro Ride heads out along Lakeshore Drive

Sunday was a Giro Ride day and pretty uneventful. The pace was fairly moderate, relatively speaking, with an average speed just under 23 mph and a very brief max of around 40. I wasn't feeling much of an effect from the prior day's ride in the hills, so I guess that was good.

Monday turned out to be a holiday Giro Ride. Nobody seemed interested in organizing anything special for Labor Day, which I guess was OK, although I might have been easily convinced to do a northshore ride if something like that had materialized. We had a brief stop on Haynes Blvd. when Noel flatted, but otherwise it was steady and reasonably fast on the way out and about half of the way back. Things got kind of conversational toward the end of the ride, though, at least until we got close to the overpasses where it sped up. Naturally, there was a nice little sprint to the top of the Seabrook bridge. Along Lakeshore Drive Taco started rolling off the front as we were cooling down and I eventually made the effort to catch up to him for the ride back uptown which turned out to be a little faster than usual for some reason. This morning's long levee ride started with only three of us, although we picked up a few more along the way. Somewhere out around Kenner, Dustin Ducote's headlight suddenly disconnected and hit the ground, so we waited for him to retrieve it. Then, as we were going down "the dip" his rear tire went flat. We continued on, though, planning to pick him up on the way back. Heading back we came upon him on the side of the bike path with his bike upside-down fixing another flat. He was not having a good day.

So Hurricane Irma is looking worse and worse. It's now a Cat. 5, which is bad in both cycling and hurricanes, but for very different reasons. The forecast track keeps shifting south and west, which is bad for us. Our only hope is the on-time arrival of a cold front later this week that should force it to turn north. Unfortunately, it's looking more and more like that turn won't happen until it's on top of Florida. Although the jury's still out as to whether it will track up the east of west coast of Florida, there's not much doubt that it will be one or the other. I guess we'll have a better picture by Thursday or so. My instinct keeps telling me that this thing is going to enter the Gulf, however. When hurricanes get to be that big and strong they start making their own weather and not responding the way the forecast models predict. If it remains Category 5 and hits Florida it will not be good at all.

Meanwhile, I've been thinking I'll do Six Gap again in a few weeks, followed by the last road race up in Shreveport. I could possibly make the Pensacola stage race the 16th and 17th, but that would make three long road trips in the same month and I'm not sure I'm quite up to that. We'll see. Stranger things have happened.