Mardi Gras to Red Bluff

Endymion, Saturday night

There's always so much going on this time of year that I tend to feel a little overwhelmed. Last Tuesday was Mardi Gras. For me, it wasn't really a very active Mardi Gras season. Between the weird weather for most of the week before, and I guess some general laziness, the only parades I made it out to see were Endymion on Saturday night and Thoth, the Sunday before Fat Tuesday.

For Endymion we went down to the Tidewater Building downtown as usual with a ton of food and drink for the annual get-together at Candy's office in the Psychiatry department. Although the weather was warm and there was no threat of rain, for some reason the turnout at the office was kind of weak this year. The parade, however, did not disappoint, so that was nice.

The weather forecasts leading up to that day had been calling for lots of rain, so it was kind of a last-minute decision to hop on the bike and ride down to Magazine Street next to Whole Foods. Candy needed to pick something up from Walgreen's, so she took a long hike to the Riverbend, and met me just as the parade was starting. It was kind of a strange parade, as it turned out. Because of the weather threat, they started an hour earlier than scheduled, and then pulled out all of the marching bands and dance groups and other fun walking entertainment, so it was just one float after the other. Back when I was a kid, of course, that would have been a dream come true, because all of the bands and things were nothing more than unwelcome interruptions to the far more important bead-catching activities. Anyway, the float riders were throwing tons of stuff, which is still fun to catch even at my advanced age, but I missed the other stuff a lot. So after a really quiet Monday after a cold front had come through, I was up early on Shrove Tuesday for a short little spin on the levee and a ride over to Audubon Park to watch the start of the annual Royal Run that very few people even know about. Somehow I think it's kind of cool that this tradition continues and you get a chance to see the king and queen of Rex before they get costumed and made-up, and if you want, you can get a Rex T-shirt and have some king cake and champagne.

Queen and King of Rex at the Royal Run, 7 am

After that I went back home and got cleaned up as the truck floats started to line up outside the back window along S. Claiborne Avenue. Our plan for the day was to ride bikes down to St. Charles Avenue near Napoleon, watch the Rex parade, and then walk down to the French Quarter. Although it was a bit cold in the morning, it warmed up a bit during the day and there was no chance of rain, so that was encouraging. We walked down to the "Rex House" that had recently suffered a devastating fire. Rex stops there every year to toast various folks while waiting for Zulu to clear Jackson Avenue. This year the family that has owned the house for about a century erected a big stand out in front of the gutted mansion just so that the tradition could continue unbroken.

For some reason, however, Rex was stalled there for what seemed like an hour, so we started our long walk downtown later than usual. By the time we got downtown we were hungry and decided to get something to eat at Manning's before venturing into the Quarter. Well, that was a big mistake. It took us at least an hour to get a couple of hamburgers, so by the time we made it into the French Quarter it was quite a bit later than usual. As a result, I missed all of my favorite walking groups like the Ducks and St. Ann krewe. Also, I just didn't see that many interesting photo opportunities during my brief stroll up and down Royal and Bourbon streets. It was already starting to get dark when we headed back uptown, and I guess it was 7:30 or 8:00 by the time we got home, having walked at least twelve or fourteen miles. Anyway, not one of my more exciting Mardi Gras experiences.

Rex a few hours later on St. Charles Avenue

With all of the Mardi Gras festivities behind me, the next thing on my calendar was the Red Bluff Gran Fondo. I'd been consulting with Bo for a few months on this new event, and knowing him I knew it would be well organized. The weather forecasts had been looking bad for the event for a few days, but seemed to be improving. Even so, I went there fully expecting to get rained on.

Down in the French Quarter on Royal Street

The roads between Columbia and Monticello up in Mississippi have been a favorite place for area cyclists to indulge in somewhat more brutal than usual training. There are lots of nice little climbs, mostly reasonably steep, combined with rough roads and little to no traffic. I rolled out of bed that Saturday morning around 4:45 am, pick up Gavin and Mignon around 5:30 and got up to Monticello a bit before 8 am for the 9 am group start. Mignon and I were registered for the full 102 mile route. Gavin, along with a number of other bike racers I know, were all registered for the shorter metric century, which guaranteed it would turn into a race. As it turned out, Gavin "won" the metric "not a race" with Dustin 2nd. We were probably only ten or fifteen miles into it when the group split, with mostly the more serious metric century riders in the front group and the rest of us in the second group. Along the way there were a number of flat tires thanks to the speed and road surfaces, which included a few very short segments of gravel. Knowing that I would be riding over 100 miles, and knowing the guys pushing the pace wouldn't be, I was just trying to conserve as much as possible without getting dropped. Fortunately, the group I was with was all on the same page and once the "race" group went off the front we settled down into a nice moderate pace.

Gavin and I did the Giro on Sunday. My legs were
still pretty sore.

At around 53 miles we came to the intersection where the metric century route split off from the full century route. There was a bit of confusion there, mostly because most riders hadn't really studied the course. Fortunately I'd downloaded the route onto my Garmin and was getting nice alerts and maps prior to the intersections, so I always knew which way to go. Anyway, I think most of the group I was with stopped at that intersection, which was also a rest stop with cookies and drinks and stuff, while made the right-hand turn to do the second half of the century ride. I was surprised to see only two other riders ahead of me do the same. I caught up to one (Drew from Oxford) and we started riding together at what I thought was a nice sustainable pace, fully expecting at least a few more riders to catch up to us. Well, what actually happened was that a pair of riders came flying up to us - one of them had flatted so the other had stayed with him - at race speed. The two of us latched onto what was essentially a 2-man team time trial for a few miles before it became obvious that the pace was going to be unsustainable for us, at which point we dropped off and continued our own 2-man paceline. That was essentially how we remained for the next 45 miles as our strength gradually began to fade. We were probably about 25 miles from the end when we decided to stop at a rest stop to refill on water. As we were standing there with the local volunteers filling our bottles and trying to give us all sorts of food, we saw a rider go by. He couldn't have been more than a minute or two behind us. Drew kind of rushed to get back on the bike, so I rushed with him. For the next ten or fifteen miles, which included about twenty turns and lots of neat little twisty roads with punchy little climbs, we watched him about 45 seconds ahead of us and wondered why he didn't just ease up for a second and wait for us. It was Cale Guidry from BG down in Thibodaux, who I knew was a strong rider who was never afraid to be out in the wind, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I wasn't really in race mode for this and the extra wheel would have been nice. Anyway, we were maybe ten miles from the end when we suddenly caught him. I thought he would latch onto us since, by that time, we were not going very fast and were climbing even the smallest hills in the lowest gears we had. As it turned out, his legs were cramping up and he limped in a couple of minutes behind us.

Anyway, we ended up finishing 4th and 5th, which would have been impressive if there had been more riders doing the full century (52 finished), but really most of the horsepower had done the shorter route as a race. Those two rider who had passed us at around 50 miles and the rider who had been ahead of them apparently got together eventually and they finished over 20 minutes ahead of us. My legs were pretty shattered by the time we finished and even on Monday were still achy. We waited around for Mignon, who was the 3rd woman to finish, ate pulled pork and stuff, and tried to re-hydrate before heading home, arriving back in town just after dark without ever having seen a drop of rain. The only problem with that was that I'd neglected to put on any sunscreen, so ended up with a mild and very unexpected sunburn. So in our car we had the winner of the metric century, 4th or 5th in the full century, and 3rd in the Women's full century. [Full results]