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.