Predicting Turnout

Cruising through campus at 6:15 am on a Friday

You know, I've doing this bike riding thing for a pretty long time - like since the Nixon administration - and I've yet to be able to predict when people will show up for a group ride, or race, and when they won't. Back when I started, I guess it was the summer of '71, I distinctly remember showing up for a group ride at a parking lot on Causeway Blvd. where we were supposed to car-pool over to the northshore. It was cold and rainy. I pulled into a parking spot in the deserted lot and wondered, "where is everybody?" Well, it turns out that most people just won't go bike riding in the cold rain. It was one of many bicycle related learning experiences. What it wasn't, however, was predictable. Since then, there have been lots of other times when the riders showed up anyway, despite bone-chilling cold, 30 mph wind, and/or pelting rain. There have also been times when the weather was great and yet nobody showed up.

Like this morning. It was a pleasant 65 degrees here in New Orleans this morning for the 6:30 am Tulane Coffee Ride. The wind was light, the roads were mostly dry, and there was zero chance of rain. I'd gone out the door a little early since my normal ride time is 5:45 - 6:00, so took the long way around, cruising down Carrollton and St. Charles before turning into campus and riding the deserted walkways over to the Reily Center where I rode around in little circles looking at my watch and wondering why nobody what showing up. Still wondering. So I headed back through campus, across St. Charles, through Audubon Park, to the levee bike path where I did a nice easy recovery ride. It just didn't make sense to go out an deal with morning traffic all alone on a recovery day.

In fact, it was a recovery day that I sort of, kind of, maybe needed after doing a fairly credible effort on the Thursday morning levee ride. In addition to a few of the regulars, we had both Howard and Matt on hand, which kept the pace pretty respectable, at least on the way out. Since I missed riding on Monday because of an early meeting, I'd been feeling kind of mileage-deprived all week, and the fact that we'd shortened Tuesday's ride due to it being cold and windy and having only a few people show up, wasn't helping. Speaking of weather, it's supposed to rain buckets tonight, and maybe through Saturday morning, so the best I can hope for there is a Giro Ride on wet streets. The worst is a Giro Ride that doesn't happen because it's still raining. It should be better by afternoon, although the wind will be blowing at 10-15 mph. There's a cyclocross race up in Ridgeland Saturday and Sunday. Given that I know what the course looks like, and it'll definitely be wet on Saturday, I think I'll be staying close to home on Saturday. Not sure about Sunday. The weather is looking to be pretty great by then around here with temperatures in the 60s and 70s, light winds, and low rain chances.

Kenneth posted some video of the WeMoRi. If you've never ridden it, here's a sampling:

Wednesday night water main work. Here we go again.....

Meanwhile back at the homestead, we had another water main leak out in front of the house Wednesday morning. I saw the water when I went out for the WeMoRi at 5:45 am. By the time I got back around 7:30 it was already looking much worse. I called the Sewerage and Water Board, and also reported it online, since I knew it was going to escalate. This leak was right on the other side of the manhole cover from the big water main break they had repaired last January.  Just two day earlier they had finally replaced the asphalt from that leak. Yes, it took ten months for them to fix the street. The day before I had contacted them about removing the four big orange traffic barrels that have been sitting in front of the house since last January. They're still there. Fortunately, they showed up on Wednesday and by the time I got home the street was closed off and there was a ten foot high pile of mud next to a ten foot deep hole with a couple of men inside. The leak was repaired and by 9 or 10 pm they were packing the mud back into the hole. So now we have a big muddy mess, again, that I guess will take another 9 or 10 months to get fixed. This time there are no traffic barrels or anything, so it's a nice little surprise for people coming down Pine Street at night, I guess.