First Named

Its name is Alberto

The "tropical disturbance" in the Gulf finally graduated to a "subtropical storm" and thereby acquired a name - the first of this hurricane season. As seems to always be the case, the long-range consensus storm track has it aimed squarely at New Orleans, which at this point practically guarantees it won't hit here. On the plus side, it doesn't look like much but a continuation of the scattered random thunderstorms we've been having lately, at least through Sunday, so I think the road race in St. Francisville this weekend should be OK, albeit perhaps a little wet, or not. It's still too early to bank on much other than the fact that some significant weather is moving generally north out of the Gulf of Mexico and should get here around Monday.

Trying to take a photo while riding, over my shoulder

Earlier in the week I'd thought for sure that my morning ride would be rained out at least one day, and probably two, but although there was rain here and there, the morning rides weren't really affected unless you count the guys who stayed in bed on Thursday because they could hear thunder.  I heard it too, around 5:30 am, and of course checked the weather radar immediately. There were some big thunderstorms around, but the weren't moving much at all. One of them was just barely skirting the southern-most section of the morning levee ride, but just barely, or not quite, or something like that. I decided to go out anyway because I was assuming there would be rain on Friday morning (there wasn't). When I got to the levee there were a couple of guys there, so we headed out, picking up Woody. As soon as the pace picked up we lost David who is still slowly recovering from a crash, and then one of the others turned back at the pipes, leaving just Woody and me. That put us into a kind of mild 2-man time trial mode, with Woody taking longer pulls and me shorter ones. Out around River Ridge we saw a coyote standing in the middle of the bike path ahead of us. Naturally he ran down the levee when we got close, watching us carefully as if trying to figure out if we were suitable for breakfast. Then, out at The Dip there were a few roseate spoonbills mixed in with the white egrets who have been hanging around a little pool of water that has been slowly drying up since the river went back down to normal levels. It's pretty rare to see any of those along the levee.

Somewhere out around Destrehan we saw the other Dave go by in the opposite direction on his TT bike. After turning around we continued trading pulls into a steadily increasing headwind. It was a long time before we caught up to Dave, who the got into the paceline with us. For some reason I was really starting to fade toward the end of the ride and got home pretty tired.