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.