So Cold

The week isn't looking too great for riding. Must be November.

There is nothing that will chill you to the bone like spending the day officiating a cyclocross race, except perhaps sitting on a bench high up in a football stadium on a cold, windy evening. As it turned out, I got to do both last Saturday. I also didn't get to ride my bike.

Saturday morning I pulled on my winter long-sleeve base layer, then a fleece pullover on top of that, and laced up my waterproof cyclocross officiating boots. I guess the temperature was, maybe, forty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, but there was north wind blowing at about twenty miles per hour, and I knew that sitting at a table in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere down in Chalmette was going to get cold. I was not mistaken. There were times when it was hard to hit the right keys on the computer because my hand was so cold. Meanwhile, bike racers clad in summer skinsuits rode around us at the Swamp Otter Classic race down by the 40 Arpent Canal, which may lead you to ask, "WTF is an Arpent?" For that matter, you might also ask, "How on earth did you get trapped into being down in St. Bernard Parish, where a couple of my distant ancestors battled the British, two weekends in a row? Well, first things first...

Wikipedia says that "An arpent (French pronunciation: ​[aʁpɑ̃]) is a unit of length and a unit of area. It is a pre-metric French unit based on the Roman actus. It is used in Quebec, some areas of the United States that were part of French Louisiana, and in Mauritius and the Seychelles." So, apparently this little canal in the middle of nowhere must be old, French, and at some point around 7,680 feet long. Anyway, nowadays there a quite nice "wetlands observatory" there which, since it has bathrooms and as previously indicated is in the middle of nowhere, makes it a prime location for a cyclocross race.

Fortunately, the race went quite nicely and the ground wasn't very muddy or wet where we were, and the sun was out most of the time, so by cyclocross standards it was an exceptional day. Michelle and I officiated the racing that lasted until around 2:30, consumed a bag of leftover Halloween candy, and then I rushed back home, grabbed the ticket that Candy had left on the dining room table for me, and walked over to the Tulane football stadium where the Homecoming game was in it's first quarter. The game itself was fairly entertaining, as football goes, but after being chilled to the bone out at the 40 Arpent Canal, and then sitting motionless in the upper reaches of the stadium, I was just getting colder and colder as the game clock ticked down. By the end of the game, which came down to the last 10 seconds that weren't actually played thanks to that 10-second runoff rule, I was so cold I was shivering. It was definitely a long day by the time I got back home around 7 pm and sat down to post the cyclocross race results, and complete the post-event report. I hit the sack early because I was scheduled to officiate Sunday's cyclocross race up in Petal, MS, which is basically Hattiesburg, and thankfully only a couple of hours' drive away. I was glad that the race didn't start until 10 am because it was supposed to be around 39 degrees that morning. As it turned out, I never got uncomfortably cold on Sunday, probably thanks to the fact that the wind had died down considerably from the previous day. Even so, it was another long day of not riding. I left home around 6:30 am and got home around 6:30 pm.

This morning (Monday) the forecast looked bad, the streets were wet, but the radar looked OK, so I went out on the rain bike for a quick 20 miles on the levee before driving the car to work since I know it's going to be raining this evening. The rest of the week isn't looking too good and I think I'll probably be riding one of the WattBikes tomorrow. In fact, as I'm writing this, I got the following:

"Severe storms possible in NOLA this afternoon. A tornado watch is in effect until 7pm. Stay weather aware and review storm preparedness: ready.nola.gov/tornado"

And then, while at work on Monday, in the middle of a tornado watch and severe rainstorm, I got a call from Candy about this. By the time I walked over there I was completely soaked from the waist down since umbrellas don't work so well with horizontal rain. You know those fancy new granite curbs they installed downtown on Canal Street? They're razor-sharp, and yes, that's one of the tires I bought about a year ago when Danielle blew out two of them in a big pothole during a raging thunderstorm.