A Busy Few Weeks

We are gearing up for the 48th Tour de Louisiane stage race - June 8-9.

I was walking down the hall at work to get a cup of coffee a minute ago and thinking, "All this volunteer stuff is getting out of hand!" Actually, I'm sure it has been more of a timing issue where a lot of things seem to have been happening more or less on top of each other. Once we had put on the Westbank race, and then followed it up the following week by putting on the Time Trial Championship, we (and by that I mean about four of us) barely had time to breathe before getting back to the usual last-minute preparations for the upcoming 48th annual Tour de Louisiane stage race that is now just a couple of weeks away. To complicate things, it's been quite busy at work, and Danielle was in town to pick up her PhD at the LSUHSC graduation ceremonies.

Stretching the limits of my phone camera but not too bad a pic of Danielle after being hooded

Danielle and Shannon flew in from Olympia (well, actually Seattle) on the 14th. There were some pre-commencement things on the 15th over at LSUHSC, and then graduation ceremonies the morning of the 16th, followed by lunch over at Blue Crab and then a get-together for dinner at Catalino's Guatemalan restaurant on Maple Street. A couple of days later my niece Rachael Barnes picked up her MD degree up at Wake Forest. Early Friday morning Candy flew out to San Francisco, and Danielle and Shannon started loading up two big U-Haul moving containers with all of the stuff she's had down here since she started grad school a few years ago, plus the scooter, bikes, a dining room table and chairs, and anything else I could convince her to take. I'd been a little bit worried about the vulnerability of those things sitting out on the street, but fortunately U-Haul called and picked them up right away on Saturday.

The crit had a "misfit" class for
blue bikes, tandems, and other odd
bikes.

Shortly afterward I took Danielle and Shannon to the airport to fly back to the PNW, and went straight from there to the Federal City Criterium over in Algiers. I didn't bring the bike. I'd been so wrapped up in everything else going on that I knew I wouldn't be able to shift gears and jump into a criterium like that. As it turned out, I had more time than I'd expected and probably could have raced it but under the circumstances I rather enjoyed just hanging out at a small race and kind of winding down while helping to officiate a bit and then bringing all of the LAMBRA equipment back with me so I could then take it with me up to Tupelo this coming weekend. I was just happy that, with all of the complications, I'd only missed one day of riding.

Waiting for the start of the Beth's Friends Fondeaux

On Sunday I rode the BFF charity ride, which was connected to the Federal City criterium the day before. It started at Urban South brewery down on Tchoupitoulas Street and turned out to be kind of interesting. I decided to drive the car over there in the morning, and arrived a good hour early, which would have been nice except that I then couldn't find my wallet that I needed in order to pay the registration fee. After searching through my bag, I figured I must have left it at the house, so I got back int the car and rushed back home and still couldn't find it. I finally searched through my bag for, I think, the fourth time and found it hidden away down in the bottom of the bag. Then I had to rush back to Urban South and register.

Nice group for the BFF ride - mostly Giro/WeMoRi people

Luckily I got there with time to spare, which was good because Mignon had been planning on stashing some stuff in my car since she had ridden over from Jefferson. The whole time I was monitoring the weather because some heavy rain was heading our way and was looking to hit us around 11 am, which was just about when I figured we'd be finishing the ride. This ride goes over the Mississippi River bridge in the closed HOV lane, and then kind of wanders around the westbank on some nice out-and-back roads before crossing back over the bridge to the east bank. It's kind of loosely organized, but enjoyable and fast enough to qualify as training. A few riders took off early as we went over the bridge, but most of the front group that was composed mainly of Giro riders, stayed together. That kept the pace brisk but fairly civilized. As we approached the bridge on the way back I started getting tornado watch alerts on my Garmin via my phones Garmin Connect app. When we got back to Urban South I grabbed a cold Coke (it was beginning to feel like summer) and sat down for a few minutes.

Dennis and Reggie at Urban South post-ride

By then the weather was deteriorating rapidly and when I saw Mignon come in we went down to my car a couple of blocks away and stashed the bikes in there just as the first raindrops started falling. There was no way she was going to be able to ride back to her house with the weather like it was. A few minutes later all hell broke loose - lightning, thunder, hail, and wind. Luckily we were nice and comfortable inside drinking beer and eating jambalaya and pizza. A little later Reggie and Andrea showed up. They had been at the top of the bridge in the lightning and hail and everything. I'm sure a lot of riders had an unexpectedly exciting bridge crossing in the middle of that storm! I got to catch up with Wendy and a few other riders who I don't see that often, so it was all quite nice.

So tomorrow morning I'm heading up to Tupelo with a car full of race stuff for two criteriums, the latter of which is the LAMBRA criterium championship. It will be interesting to see who makes the long drive for that. It's almost six hours from New Orleans, so not exactly centrally located for most or our riders. I expect it will draw as many from Tennessee, Alabama and Florida as from LAMBRA. I'll be helping to officiate, but I plan to jump into one or both masters races if I can, just for the exercise. I haven't really raced all year unless you count the Auburn races earlier in the season, so I am not feeling confident about anything except my ability to get dropped in a criterium. The following weekend is the Hammerdal Classic nearby in Hammond that I'm hoping to race/officiate, and then the next weekend is the Tour.  So basically there will be no rest for the weary until the end of June. After the Tour there's a track race at the Baton Rouge Velodrome, and then the weekday Pontchartrain series starts.