The Preseason

Early morning clouds - may be getting a jump on hurricane season this year

Hurricane season around here doesn't officially start until June 1, and even then we don't generally see much until late July. It seems that this year, however, we'll have a little pre-season action starting this week. Although it's looking like the little disturbance down in the Gulf will be nowhere close to hurricane strength, and probably not even up to tropical storm levels, we may be seeing a bit more rain than normal, at least through the weekend. Hopefully it won't have much of an impact on the road race scheduled for Sunday up in St. Francisville. In fact, the weather is likely to be better there than here. This morning up on the levee I could see some big clouds building up - the kind you usually don't see until later in the day. The 6 am levee rides are now starting with enough daylight to make blinky lights unnecessary, and although I know it won't last much longer, the air still feels pretty comfortable for the first half hour or so until the sun gets farther above the horizon. Today we started out with, I think, four, but picked up four more along the way, then one turned back early, then on the return trip we picked up Scott. There was practically no wind at all, so the pace was smooth and steady at a comfortable 22-25 mph for the most part. I was a little surprised to be feeling my quads so much toward the ends of my pulls since Sunday's ride was an easy one and Monday's easier yet. Go figure. Old legs take a long time to recover, I guess. Anyway, the forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday is looking pretty normal, but for Friday through Monday they're putting the rain chances at 80%. It's still way too early to put much faith in that, however, and I'd say there's a decent chance that riding and racing won't be affected significantly. We'll see.