Full Winter Kit

All Chiefs, no Indians. Hopefully the street will soon be back like it was last January.

As expected, the temperature this morning was around 40°F. Fortunately I'd already dug through my bike clothes drawer and extracted the long tights and a long-sleeve jersey so I wouldn't be trying to find them in the dark among a drawer full of mostly black clothes. This would be the first day this Fall that I'd need a more or less full winter kit, which is something that means one thing if you're in Minnesota and quite another if you're in New Orleans. While the morning temperature might be described as comfortable by folks farther north, the sudden plunge we've experienced here over the past week made it feel particularly frigid. It was mostly in my head, of course, but even so, I went ahead and over-dressed. It's really no use going out and getting chilled on the first cold ride of the year. All that does is make you all that much less likely to step out the door the next morning.

Anyway, it still wasn't cold enough to need the shoe-covers or winter jacket or double-gloves, or even the wind vest. I did slip the toe-covers over my shoes, mostly because the streets were still a little wet from yesterday's unending rain. I got out the house a few minutes early, so rode into the north wind pretty slowly, arriving at Lakeshore Drive a bit after 6 am. The WeMoRi group usually gets back to Marconi around 6:10 or so, so I rode over the Bayou St. John bridge and a bit farther east before turning around and heading back toward Marconi. Despite my slow speed, when I turned onto Marconi I couldn't see any sign of the group. The eastern end of Lakeshore Drive had been closed the day before because the strong north wind from the cold front had pushed a lot of lake water onto the street. I wondered if it was still closed. When I got down to Robt. E. Lee with still no sign of the group, or for that matter any other bike rider at all, I thought that perhaps they had turned around early on Lakeshore Drive because of a road closure and I'd missed them, so I headed down Marconi in the opposite direction of the ride, figuring I'd see them approaching at some point. I got all the way down to City Park Avenue without seeing anyone, so I turned around, somewhat surprised that apparently nobody had showed up for the ride that morning. I went back to Lakeshore Drive, made the loop around the fountain, and finally saw three other riders. As it turned out, that was all there had been of the WeMoRi and I'd just missed them because they were going more slowly than usual. The weather really wasn't all that bad. I was quite comfortable the whole time.

Low expected: 38°

In fact, I was probably more comfortable than all those guys dripping sweat all over themselves riding trainers and pretending to ride their bikes on pretend courses with other pretend riders on Zwift.

When I got home I was shocked to find the Sewerage & Water Board finally getting to work on that patch of mud they left in the road in front of my house when they fixed the water line leak last January. For this section of road that I would estimate at 15 feet square they had four trucks, two bulldozers, and six people.