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.