Best Made Plans

Out at the Spillway on Saturday

Random unpredictable rain showers have become the new normal around here lately. It was raining at 5:30 am last Saturday, so I turned off the alarm on the assumption that there wouldn't be a Giro Ride that day. Naturally I was wrong, kind-of. It looks like a decent group actually did the ride. By the time I got out of bed the rain had stopped and it looked like there would be a pretty nice window for riding, so around 9:30 I pulled out the old Orbea with its heavier tires and headed for the levee. My plan was to ride out to the Spillway, which would get me around 50 miles, and be back home before the rain inevitably started again. The river level was noticeably lower as I headed upriver, and soon the sun came out. I guess I had a bit more tailwind than anything else, so it was an easy ride out to the Spillway where, as usual, there were a few people taking selfies of themselves. With the river level dropping, I could see that they had already closed a number of the bays, and I wondered how much longer it would be before they closed everything back up again.

I was probably about half-way back when it started to rain. I'd taken the Orbea because I figured there was a good chance I'd get rained on and since I'd just put a new headset on the Bianchi I wanted to avoid washing all of the grease out of the "sealed" bearings just yet. Fortunately it was warm and the rain wasn't too heavy, and by the time I was getting closer to town it had stopped altogether. I thought I was in the clear at that point, but once again I was wrong. I came down off of the levee and made my way to Carrollton, just a mile from home, when it started raining again. When I turned onto Pine Street, a few blocks from the house, I could see a solid curtain of heavy rain just up the road. The last couple of blocks were in pouring rain. Perfect.

Well, at least it will roll now!

Later that day I went out to the garage and put the wheels back on the old GT-6. Phil had helped me find some relatively inexpensive tires and had mounted them up at the Porsche of Metairie shop for me a few days earlier. The old tires had been flat and rotted out since the car has been sitting there rusting away for nearly 20 years. It was time to at least get it to the point where it would roll because if I don't repair the front part of the garage where the termites and rot have eaten away a fair part of the roof and pretty much all of the corner posts, it's going to fall down on top of the car which will be even more of a mess. The car is, of course, in pretty rough shape, and it will be a minor miracle if I can get it running again. The disc rotors and rear brake drums were rusty but I did manage to get the wheels to turn, however reluctantly. I'll have to see what I can do to clean out the fuel system and carburetors, clean up the plugs and points, get a battery, and see if the starter will (a) work and (b) turn the engine over. It's going to take some time, I think, regardless, but it's a start.

The Orbea ready to go

After that I pulled out the old Cervelo and started packing it up for the flight to Seattle/Olympia. We'll be visiting Danielle for a few days and I figured I'd try and bring a bike this time since otherwise I'd be missing 5 days of riding. I then decided to go ahead and just use an unpadded bike bag and hope for the best. That bag is at least 35 years old. I put pipe insulation around the main tubes, pulled out the seatpost, removed the pedals, and removed the bars from the stem (although they're still hanging by the cables). I braced the fork ends and rear dropouts and put a little protection around the rear derailleur, so as long as it doesn't get dropped from ten feet off the ground, or smashed underneath some heavy luggage, it has a reasonable chance of survival. There's still a fair amount of room in there since it's a small bike. I have access to a rather large hard case that wouldn't even require removal of the rear wheel, but it would be a pain to deal with since we'll  have to get from long-term parking to the terminal, and then on the other end from the terminal to a shuttle to the rental car place and then get everything into the rental, and then repeat it all on the way back. It will be much easier to carry the bike in the bag, which probably weighs under 40 pounds altogether, than to roll around the old case that weighs about 35 pounds empty and would take up a lot of space in shuttles and cars.

Matt's saddle came loose on the Sunday Giro.
Pretty sure manufacturers compete to see who can
design the most complicated saddle clamp.

Anyway, the weather on Sunday was much improved and we were able to do a fairly good Giro Ride. I felt like my solo Spillway ride had taken a bit of a toll, though, and by Monday morning I was more than ready for an easy ride. There's this one sign out on the batture near LaRose that always goes under the water when the river is high. As soon as the water reaches the bottom of the sign, I know they will start talking about opening the spillway. As soon as it recedes below the bottom, I know they will start talking about closing it. Well, when I'd gone past there on Saturday I noted that the water had finally dropped below the bottom of the sign. Not coincidentally, Sunday morning was the first day since late February that my Garmin  hadn't given me a river flood warning when I went out to ride. On Monday the Corps announced that they were planning on closing the Spillway.

This morning it was raining pretty good in the early morning hours, so when the alarm went off at 5:30 I just stayed in bed for another half hour. By then the rain had stopped and the radar looked good, so I went out a bit later than usual, again on the Orbea because I knew the roads would still be pretty wet. I ran into Mignon out around the pipes, so I turned back with her a little earlier than planned. There's a cool front moving through some time this afternoon, so the forecast for this evening is calling for a 95% chance of rain between 4 and 6 p.m. so I went ahead and took the car to work. That alone may have been enough to ensure it won't actually be raining at 5:00, but frankly I am getting a little tired of riding in the rain.