The South Wind

Coming over Watchtower Hill on the way to Enon on Sunday

The forecast for Saturday morning looked pretty good, relatively speaking. An early morning temperature around 50, warming considerably during the day. I didn't even bother to check again Saturday morning as I headed out to Starbucks a bit after 6 am to meet the Giro Ride group.

Wet streets and rain decimated the Saturday Giro,
leaving only 4 of us to do the full route.

When I arrived, though, one of the guys immediately commented on the approaching rain.  Rain?  Wasn't expecting that. I checked the radar and it looked like there was a decent enough chance that the rain would skirt the city to the west. By 7 am there was a good-sized group on hand, and we rolled out as usual to the lakefront, heading east. Behind us I would see some dark clouds, all of which should have been moving slowly toward the northeast, so at least we were going in the right direction. It wasn't long, though, before I started to feel the raindrops. Then there was a flat on Hayne Blvd. for which I think most of the group stopped. By the time we started up again riders were already talking about turning back early. At Chef Highway, we caught up with the front of the group that hadn't stopped for the first flat. They were busy fixing another flat. By then there was a very light rain falling and the streets were good and wet. We headed down Chef and when the group saw the 5:45 group on its way back, almost everyone turned around. I did too. Then I noticed that a few riders had not, so I turned around again. It was too large of a gap for me to close, so I just rode steadily to the turnaround where what was left of the group, four riders including myself, started back. Other than the wheel spray and messy bikes, it wasn't that bad of a ride thanks to the warmer temperature. When I got home I had to spray down the bike and throw all of my clothes into the washer, but at least I never got too cold.

Great weather for the Sunday Winter Ride Series #2

On Sunday we had the second NOBC Winter Ride Series ride. I'd decided to do the same loop we'd done two weeks ago, which hadn't been my original plan. I figured a lot of riders had gotten pretty far behind on their training because of the cancelled WRS ride the prior week and the freezing temperatures and everything. I'd originally planned to add 15 or 20 miles to the ride for this week, but decided to keep it at the same 65 miles we'd done two weeks prior. Although the temperature was 48 or so at the start, we had a clear blue sky and lots of sun, and it warmed up quickly. The ride was smooth and steady, ramping up a bit toward the end, which was a lot of fun. I certainly felt like I'd gotten my money's worth out of the ride. At the start, there was hardly any wind at all, but as we turned back toward the south an hour or two later we were confronted by an increasing south wind. I guess is was around 8 - 10 mph by the time we got back to the cars.

So despite the freezing temperatures and sleet and ice that shut down the City of New Orleans for two full days earlier in the week, I ended up with a respectable 276 miles in the books. Granted, most of those miles were barely zone 2 quality, but hey, it's still January. This morning I'd been expecting rain, but that never happened, so I got in a nice little recovery ride on the levee before work.

At the moment the wind is shifting back around to the north which should push the morning lows back into the 40 through Thursday when it will be back out of the east along with more rain. That is looking to be the cycle for the next week or two - chilly mornings, lots of wind shifting around from north to southeast, and rain preceding each shift. Situation normal.

Spocalypse of '18

Tuesday morning 

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards New Orleans? 

(apologies to W.B. Yeats). 

Sunday Giro returning - things split up on the way back

The weekend weather had been cold - very cold. Saturday's Giro Ride turnout could be counted on one hand, and the usual route was discarded because of the 35° air. I ended up riding the lakefront levee with a visitor from New Jersey (I think), so got in 50 miles or so. Sunday, it was even colder, 32°, but the turnout was better and we did the usual Giro. Go figure. By noon on Sunday it was much, much warmer, but apparently winter wasn't done with us quite yet.

Someone left the sprinkler on Saturday night
along the Lafitte Greenway

The respite from serious cold weather was predicted to be brief, and since Monday was MLK day and I was therefore off from work I planned for a longish ride out to the Spillway. I also planned to start after, rather than before, sunrise. It was still a little chilly, but in comparison to some of the previous mornings, the low 40s at 8 am seemed practically balmy. I'd sent out some notices about the ride in case there were any others who might be interested, but that had netted me only Pat. It was fine, though.

Out at the Spillway Monday morning. A little windy but otherwise beautiful.

I wanted to get some miles in the bank early in the week because it was looking like Wednesday and possibly Thursday would be out of the question, riding-wise. We put in 50-something easy miles riding up the river under a clear blue sky with a moderate wind, averaging under 17 mph.

Just a few of  us on Tuesday morning

Tuesday morning would be colder for the pre-dawn Tuesday ride, but the real weather wouldn't arrive until Wednesday night. Tuesday morning's ride netted us only four riders, one of which we lost at Williams Blvd. despite the relatively mild 43° temperature. The wind, however, was already noticeably increasing ahead of the cold front slowly creeping its way across Louisiana from the northwest. With only three of us and a significant wind we cut the ride a little short in order to get back on time.

Wednesday morning. Unusual and slippery and cold,
but not as bad as it was elsewhere.

By the time I rode to work an hour or so later, the wind was probably over 10 mph, but the front was still a long way off. By mid-afternoon that day, however, the weather warnings started coming out. Rain, sleet, and snow were already causing massive traffic problems to the west in a state with no salt trucks or snow plows, and drivers who are adept at dealing with rain but completely overconfident about driving on ice. By 4:30 the city, along with practically every school in the state, had shut down, was in the process of shutting down, and had announced a closure for at least the following day. My office basically evacuated at 4:30, and I rode home into a stiff wind. It wasn't until late Tuesday night that the rain and sleet started. If there was any snow around my house, I didn't see it, but the sleet was impressive enough. By morning everything was covered with a layer of ice, including the streets, and every interstate highway into and out of the city had been shut down. The temperature in town got down into the lower 20s, I guess, but the real problem was the ice. It was like being snowed in without the snow. There were a lot of reports of frozen plumbing, and I was glad that my pipes all run through the enclosed basement where the temperature never dipped below 48° or so. Needless to say, I didn't ride. Not that I didn't think about it, of course, but I didn't want to risk starting out the year with a broken bone from slipping on ice.

Fortunately, I had a new chain and headset that I'd been waiting to install, so at least there was something productive I could do at home other than repeatedly raid the refrigerator. I scanned a few old NOBC things for the website before they turned to dust, but otherwise just hung around the house bored out of my mind. I don't think the temperature ever got much above freezing. Candy and Danielle decided to walk over to the Tulane Reily Center to work out. Candy slipped on ice and hit her head pretty good, but they stayed for an hour anyway. When they got back she asked if I thought she should go to the ER to get checked out, but since she wasn't showing any concussion symptoms other than a mild headache where she'd hit, we decided to just keep her under observation. Late Wednesday night Tulane send out another notice that the university would remained closed today. For those right in town, travel was back to normal, but I think things were still a mess outside of the metro area. Right now the temperature is at 27° officially, although the thermometer on my front porch is showing 31°. At any rate, things will finally start warming up and I'm planning on going for a ride around noon, by which time it should be above freezing. Should be in the 60s by Saturday. This has been one of the worst winters so far that we've seen in at least ten years. Last winter I hardly missed any riding at all because of the cold. This year, I've already missed a number of ride days. Fortunately, other than rain, I don't see anything below 40° for the next ten days.

Warmer, Wetter, Colder

Finally fixing the pot hole that caused the crash back on July 14th. Better late than never, I guess.

It's that time of year. Every morning it's like a whole new weather adventure.

On Wednesday I rode out to meet the WeMoRi in humid 59° air. The streets were still damp, but at least there was no rain around. Based on the forecast, I'd expected it to be dangerously foggy, so despite the warm temperature I'd put on a vest, shoe-covers, and long tights since I just knew I'd be wet. It wasn't very foggy at all, however, and by the time I got out to City Park the vest was already in my pocket, the jersey was un-zipped, and I was wishing I hadn't worn a base layer. Out on Lakeshore Drive I switched my tail light from retina-burning mode to group-ride mode and rode back and forth between the bridge and the levee a couple of times, passing one of the guys who had already flatted. I saw Sam come flying by with the group in not-too-hot pursuit. I slotted in toward the front with a nice little easterly tailwind, cruising over the bridge. We approached the wet left turn onto Marconi at 25 mph, and as I crossed the slick metal floodgate track I felt my front wheel slide a good foot or two before thankfully grabbing the asphalt on the other side. We passed Kenneth Legeai on the side of the road fixing a flat. A minute later, on Robert E. Lee, two riders bumped each other right in front of me. I thought for sure one of them was going  down and took quick evasive action, but luckily they both kept it upright. Sam was still way off the front, but for me, entirely out of sight and out of mind. We came back together at the end of Marconi, but then Sam took off again with a couple others who he soon dropped, and it stayed that way. At the end, Chris went to the front early and dragged us up to 30 mph for a long time before a few riders sprinted past at the last moment.

It was 4 am this morning and I could hear the rain falling outside. I hadn't been expecting that. The temperature was 63°, however, and when the clock finally got around to 5:45 am I could see the rain had stopped. The streets, of course, were soaking wet and full of puddles. Perfect conditions for the rain bike. Shorts, summer jersey, and shoe-covers. I headed out to the levee where, predictably, nobody showed up, and headed out with the idea that I might make it nearly to Ormond before the clock forced me to turn back. The bike path was soaked, of course, but with fenders and shoe-covers and new tires with Mr. Tuffy's I just plowed through the puddles with reckless abandon. Here and there were stretches of thick fog where the southeast wind was blowing it off the river and over the levee. I was maybe a mile past Williams Blvd when I saw the police patrol car with flashing lights coming toward me. As I approached, he waved me down and told me that the road just ahead was closed. I'd already passed a number of sections of repaired asphalt, so wasn't too surprised to find more work going on, although I wasn't too happy about the whole path being closed thing. Neither was the police officer who had apparently not been informed about it either. Anyway, I had to turn back early because of that, and so rode all the way back to Audubon Park where I put in one lap on the bike lane before heading back home. It was nice to be riding bare-legged for a change, but it won't last. This south wind will be shifting around to the west and northwest tonight and tomorrow morning, and the forecast for 6 am seems to be changing from hour to hour. Right now it's looking like the colder air and heaviest rain will hit around midnight, with the temperature dropping down into the 40s by 7 am. A high of 74° today, and a high of 49° tomorrow. We won't be back into the 50s until Monday. They've got the rain probability fluctuating between 10 and 25% until 9:00 tomorrow, so I guess anything could happen. Most likely the streets will still be wet, though, so it may be another ride on the trusty rain bike.

The weekend is looking like it will be clear and pretty cold. Saturday morning's forecast is at 33-34° with a 13-18 mph north wind right now, which is not conducive to a good Giro Ride turnout. They have it dropping down to 29° on Saturday, so Sunday morning might be around 35° here and in the upper 20s on the northshore. I'm guessing the Sunday northshore Winter Training Ride won't have any takers, but I'll wait until tomorrow to make the call on that. 

Winter Rides

I don't remember exactly when it was that I started an NOBC Winter Ride Series. It was probably some time around the mid-90s. One of the first web pages and first photos that I put on the NOBC website was for the "virtual training ride" which was one of the early northshore winter rides. I think I took the photos with a Kodak pocket instamatic camera. My rationale for these rides was pretty simple. If you put yourself in charge of a weekly ride series in the middle of the winter, you are under some presumed obligation to actually show up for them. Also, you have established a somewhat firm placeholder on the calendar for those Sunday mornings that provides a credible excuse for avoiding whatever else life might try to foist upon you on those days. In the beginning, there were only a few riders who actually lived on the northshore. Now, there are lots of them. Anyway, after due consultation with club members last week, I posted five dates for the 2018 WRS that should take us right up to Mardi Gras, which of course is the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the day that is 46 days (40 fasting days, if the six Sundays, which are not days of fast, are excluded) before Easter, which itself is, using the Gregorian calendar, the Sunday between March 22 and April 25 inclusive, within about seven days after the astronomical full moon. 

So naturally it will be February 13 this year.

Earlier in the week I'd been worried that our first WTR would get rained out, but the forecast slowly shifted and eventually moved the rain from Sunday to Sunday afternoon to Monday. Now, the only problem with riding on the northshore rather than the southshore in the winter is that the temperature will always be 5-10 degrees colder up there in the frigid north of south Louisiana above the lake. On the plus side, the tree-lined winding country roads do sometimes provide some occasional shelter from the wind. On this particular Sunday the temperature started out at around 45°F with maybe a 7 mph wind. By the end of our 65 mile ride it would be up to 64°F with what must have been a 12-14 mph wind. Not really too bad by winter standards, really.

The start of the winter rides continues to migrate farther and farther north as more and more people build two-car garages where there used to be piney woods and farmland. The early rides started at the Tammany Trace trailhead just north of I-12. Wanting to get to the more interesting and hilly sections faster, they later moved to Abita Springs, and then to the Lee Road Middle School. This year we moved a few more miles north on Lee Road to the relatively new Ball Park. This was my first ride from there and I liked the location and fact that there's a nicely maintained bathroom and parking area. We had twelve or thirteen riders on hand for this ride, and looking around I could see that it wouldn't be one of the hammerfests that we sometimes have. I was initially a little worried that the ride would be too easy, but after a kind of slow start things settled into a nice tempo pace that was just what I'd been hoping for, especially for my first ride in a couple of months that involved hills of any sort. Later that evening, walking down the stairs at home, I was kind of surprised that my quads were sore. I guess that's just proof of how much I need to get over there and ride somewhere that isn't flat.

As expected, it was raining this morning so I skipped riding altogether. I might have gone out on the rain bike that I recently equipped with new wide, heavy tires and new Mr. Tuffy's, and new heavy inner tubes, the installation of which took a significant toll on my thumbs and CMC joints. But I didn't. Tomorrow morning should be a pleasant 53°F, and Wednesday morning should be close to 60, so at the moment the rest of the week isn't looking too bad. Things will get cold again, like in the 30s, for Friday and through the weekend, but as usual that means it will probably be dry and windy as well, so hopefully there won't be any more missed days this week. The only problem is that Sunday morning will probably be very cold, like in the 20s, which could kind of kill WTR #2. We'll see.

Chilled Out, Wimped Out

Oh, so that explains why I was so cold this morning.

I made a classic mistake this morning. I think my outdoor thermometer must have been showing a higher temperature than it really was, which was apparently 32°F, otherwise known as freezing.

I apparently went out under-dressed for reality.

Up on the levee in the dark was just Darren, who was probably wearing half of what I was. Still, I was already chilled and not really looking forward to the ride. We started out side-by-side, but I was just feeling colder and colder, so I dropped back into his draft, thinking it might give me a chance to warm up a bit. He cranked the pace up a notch because he was feeling pretty cold by then himself and thought the extra effort would warm him up. I don't know if it was working for him, but it definitely wasn't for me. As we approached Williams Blvd. I pulled up alongside and told him I'd be turning around in hopes of getting home before hypothermia set in. I never did warm up, so turning back early was definitely a good call today. Some days are just like that. You start out on the wrong foot, or in this case you get too cold too fast, and there's just nothing you can do after that to fix. Today was one of those days. I trudged back home, fingers and toes getting colder and colder the whole way. With considerable difficulty I got my frozen arms to turn the key in the lock at home. Then I had trouble opening the plastic snap buckle on my helmet strap because my fingers weren't working so well. All-in-all, it was not a fun ride, but at least there was hot coffee at the end.

Tomorrow morning is looking like it will be nearly as cold as today. The 7 am forecast is showing 33° F. This time, though, I will definitely not be under-dressed. On the plus side, Saturday should be pretty nice. Sunday morning is still a little bit up in the air, and I'm waiting until tomorrow afternoon to see what the hourly forecast shows before deciding what to do about my planned northshore ride. If we're lucky, we'll be able to get in a good ride with temperatures in the 40s and 50s before the rain moves in. If we're not lucky, the rain will move in halfway through the ride. If we're really not lucky, it'll be obvious that we'll get rained on right away and the ride will be scratched. We'll see. All I know is that my normal training routine has been suffering a lot for over two weeks now and it's really taking its toll both mentally and physically.

Cold Snap

It was all over the news. Winter Armageddon was upon us. Lists of school closings were hastily prepared as news outlets promulgated both time-tested and untested strategies to avoid exploding the water pipes. Which faucets to leave open? How much water is "pencil-thin?" Does anyone under the age of 35 know what a pencil is? Granted, the northshore would be getting cold enough, long enough, to burst un-insulated plumbing, what little of it there might be over there. In the city itself, south of the lake, plumbing precautions were merely precautionary despite the numerous raised century-old houses under which hung miles of un-insulated galvanized pipe with leaky rust-stained joints . The coldest night would be Monday, with temperatures in the city dipping down to 27 and 28° F for four or five hours. Nothing to ignore, but not the kind of thing that would bring the city to a standstill, at least not more of a standstill than normal.

So I went out Monday morning with the temperature in the mid to upper-30s dressed more for the 15 mph north wind than the temperature. Thermal knickers with tights on top and my trusty NOBC Giordana winter jacket with a couple of layers underneath. I was quite comfortable temperature-wise, even with the biting north wind that made maintaining 15 mph a bit of a challenge. The levee was, unsurprisingly, deserted. I saw one cyclist and a couple of dog-walkers, but otherwise I had the whole river levee bike path to myself, which was a good thing when the occasional crosswind gusts would redirect my front wheel. It was one of those character-building rides, I guess. It was also January 1, and of course one should do a ride on the first day of the new year simply on principle. I got back home no worse for the wear, logging an entirely unimpressive 30.4 miles. Later that day I saw that the northshore mileage mistress Alison had ridden 100 that morning in temperatures significantly lower. That night I left the old gas heater burning in the living room, along with a little electric heater in the basement strategically positioned underneath the bathroom plumbing. I loaded up the dishwasher and programmed it to start at 2 am just to be on the safe side, but it was a little overkill. I doubt the basement temperature ever got much below 50° F thanks to the general leakiness and lack of insulation between basement and living space.

Tuesday morning arrived as predicted. I glanced at the outdoor temperature, which was holding at 27° F, also as predicted, and decided it would be a good day to skip my morning ride. The winds were still in the over-10 mph range, and around here there's just no reason to deal with that on the one day every four years that it happens. I even took the car to work, which meant a windy five block walk from the Tidewater garage to the office that was rather chilly. I told myself I'd go over to Tulane in the evening and put in an hour or so on one of the WattBikes, but of course I never did.

By Wednesday morning the temperature was warmer, at a relatively balmy 36° F and the wind was lighter at maybe 8 mph. I figured the WeMoRi group would be pretty small, but conditions weren't so bad that nobody would show up. That's what I thought, anyway. So I headed for the lakefront in the dark, fighting a moderate north wind all the way, and hit Lakeshore Drive at Bayou St. John around 6:05 am. The group would normally be on its way back from the loop at Seabrook by then, so I headed over the Bayou St. John bridge that a boat has never gone under and rode back and forth between the traffic circle and the levee a few times looking for the cluster of blinky lights I was expecting. No blinky lights were in sight, though, so I figured they were going slowly because of the wind and the cold and so I went back over the bridge toward Marconi where I turned around and did a couple more back-and-forths on Lakeshore Drive. Still no lights. By then it was obvious that they weren't coming. Perhaps they had decided to skip the Lakeshore Drive section and just ride a couple of laps around City Park, so I went ahead and continued on the usual route, riding all the way around the park, still without seeing another rider. I figured, "What the hell, I may as well do the rest of the usual route since I'm out here anyway," which I did. By the time I got home my toes were pretty cold but otherwise I was pretty comfy and still wondering if I'd somehow missed the group. Checking Strava Flybys (I love that feature!) later in the morning I found the only other rider out there was Brian Bourgeois, and he hadn't even attempted to meet the group that didn't exist, instead riding rather randomly around the City Park area. In fact, We'd passed each other in the dark along Wisner, although at the time I couldn't tell who it was. Anyway, I ended up with precisely the same 30.4 miles I'd done on Monday and a minor sense of satisfaction that I'd gotten my ass out of bed and onto the bike in the first place. I'd post some photos, but I didn't take any. It's kind of difficult to manage the camera when wearing two or three pairs of gloves. It's looking like one more chilly morning in the low 30s, and then a warming trend with nothing below 45° F for the forseeable future. I'm hoping to put together a few Sunday northshore group rides over the next three or four weekends before the gravel races and other things start to complicate things.