Rider Down

Up in the piney woods north of the lake

I'd been struggling with a cold ever since I was up in Olympia, and although I'd been riding I still had the occasional deep cough and lung congestion. The weekend weather was looking to be pretty nice, though, and when Mignon suggested getting a group together for a northshore ride I figured it was about time for me to jump back into the deep end. For some reason, the only southshore riders to show up, other than myself, were Mignon and Randy H. Maybe it was the 7 a.m. start time that put people off, although for an early August ride around here you'd think earlier would be better. Anyway, we headed across the lake a bit after 6 am and arrived a bit before 7 am to find a nice sized group at the Ballpark on Lee Road. We kind of rushed to get on the bike since we'd arrived a little late and everyone else was waiting on us. The planned route took us straight north through Enon to Pine, and from there up to Stateline road, which is not coincidentally near the town of Stateline, which is not coincidentally at the state line between Louisiana and Mississippi as originally defined by the northern border of West Florida, a kind of orphaned area north of the lake but east of the river that wasn't actually part of the Louisiana Purchase and was controlled by France or Spain or Great Britain, and for a while existed as its own Republic. But I digress. Suffice it to say that there's some great riding up there with quiet country roads and some nice rolling terrain. Anyway, it was just the kind of route I like - long stretches between turns, light traffic, and a few little hills.

Heading back south from Pine where there are a lot of Pine trees

As usually happens on these northshore rides, a number of riders split off at various points, leaving maybe ten of us to do the full ride, which was around 65 miles. The pace of this group was pretty steady, which was probably a good thing considering the status of my lungs. After crossing back over the Bogue Chitto river on the way back, with maybe six or seven miles to go, we came to Firetower Hill where there is no longer a fire tower, and someone started to put a little pressure on at the front. That ended up splitting the group and so the last section turned out to be the fastest of the day. I was glad to find that I still had plenty in reserve as the group got down to just four or five by the end.

Jim O'Daniel

So while we were playing in the hills of West Florida, a tragedy was going down over in Mississippi at the Bikes, Blues and Bayous ride near Greenwood, MS. This is a fairly well-organized charity type ride that's been going on for a few years. Early in the ride the front group came to an intersection with a state highway. As I understand it, there was a state trooper stationed there to control things since probably a thousand riders would be crossing that four-lane highway. For some reason the rider who I assume was leading the first group, Jim O'Daniel, entered the intersection and was hit by a truck and killed. Maybe he thought the state trooper had stopped traffic, or maybe he just didn't see the truck. I don't know. When I heard about it after the ride I thought the name sounded familiar. Jim rides a lot with Scott Kuppersmith, although he didn't actually do much, if any, road racing. Still, he was obviously a very experienced rider, having logged nearly 10,000 miles already this year.  Back in the spring he had been the third finisher of the Red Bluff century ride, finishing a good 20 minutes ahead of me and having done most of the ride with Patton and Jack who race a lot and have a combined age younger than some of my underwear. So I'm still trying to come to terms with how this sort of thing could have happened on a clear day, on a clear road, with a police car, on a fun ride. So sad.

The Giro Ride heads back toward town on Chef Menteur Highway

Sunday morning, with my legs surprisingly less sore than I'd expected, I headed out to do the Giro Ride. That ride was fairly routine and for the most part I kept myself safely in the draft toward the back. I could still feel the congestion in my lungs and I figured after the prior day's ride I should probably take it easy. On the way back a rider unexpectedly crashed all by himself on Bullard. I think he caught one of the seams or cracks in the road there. He seemed OK, though and rode back with us, but I swear we've had a ton of crashes and flats along that stretch since the City closed off the service road because they were too lazy to deal with the illegal dumping going on there.