Water and Weather and Fourteen Years

Inside the Lafitte drainage canal.  Yes, that's a car down there. Probably floated in during the Katrina flood
fourteen years ago.

Today is the 14th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall, and although for the most part things have been back to normal for years, we're still picking up the pieces here and there. To nobody's surprise the underground drainage canals in New Orleans are a mess. After a big and somewhat unexpected flood event back in July where areas of the city that don't usually flood, did, the Sewerage and Water Board started looking for answers.

Pulling a Mazda out of the underground canal

What they found about a week ago, were entire cars and tons of other debris, including other car parts, shopping carts, bicycles, etc., stuck in the Lafitte canal. That was probably just the tip of the iceberg, though. A big SELA project that took years to finish and that added some huge underground drainage canals along Jefferson and Louisiana are now being looked at as contributing factors, pushing more water into the system than it can handle. Less than a week after pulling the car out of the drainage canal, there was another flood event last Monday. I was sitting in the office looking at the torrential rain and watching the iron manhole covers along Poydras Street across from the Superdome get blown up into the air as high-pressure backed-up water gushed out from underneath them. By 5 pm there was a lot of flooding downtown. I'd taken the car to work because of the rain forecast and although it was safely parked on the third floor of the Tidewater parking garage, the exit to the garage was flooded, as was LaSalle street, so Candy was afraid to try and get out of the garage to pick me up. Instead, we decided to take the Tulane shuttle home and leave the car where it was. Candy walked over through the rain as we waited for the shuttle that was itself stuck in flood-induced gridlock. When it finally arrived, it was full. By then the rain had about stopped so we thought we'd walk back to the garage and see if we could take the car. We got a couple of blocks when we saw another shuttle coming, so we ran back there and squeezed onto that one, which still had to make its way over to Tidewater and the Med School and the Hospital, etc. I don't think we got home until around 7:30, but at least the waters had receded by then and the walk from campus to the house was uneventful, which to say I arrived with dry feet.

That's a lot of bugs. Smelled like dead fish.

Last weekend was affected by the rain as well. We had planned a nice 60-something mile ride on the northshore, starting at 7 am, which actually turned out to be quite nice...and dry... even though the turnout was a little low.

A little stretch as we got going after the Pine store stop. Always a few Tri riders on these Northshore rides.

I picked up Haoting, aka "Frank" before 6, stashing his entire bike in the back of the Volvo, with my bike on the roof. Driving across the causeway we were continuously pelted with swarms of Midges requiring five of six windshield washer attempts. By the time we arrived at the Lee Road ballpark, my bike was literally slimy with thousands of dead midges plastered on all of the leading surfaces. Fortunately I found a water hose over by the rest rooms and was able to clean most of it off before the ride.  It was a nice moderately paced ride for the most part, perhaps a bit easier than I'd have liked, so on the way back when we got to the "Watchtower hill" climb, just past Enon and where there isn't a watchtower any more, I kept a little pressure on the pedals which split a few of us off the front. At that point we were only maybe five or six miles from the end of the ride, and indeed that last stretch is traditionally where anyone with anything left has carte blanche to go hard, which we kinda did.

Dark clouds brought rain ten miles later

On Sunday I went out to the Giro Ride. Looking at the radar, I wondered if I'd just be having a cup of coffee and then riding back home in the rain, but eventually a pretty good-sized group turned up and we headed out. The sky, however, was clearly threatening, and by the time we turned onto Paris Road we could see the rain in the distance. A lot of people turned off at Lake Forest to avoid the rain, but a fair number of us continued on. Naturally we got soaked on Chef Highway, both going and coming, but by the time we got back to Lakeshore Drive the street was practically dry, so basically we had strategically ridden right to the only rain in the area. Regardless, it was a nice enough ride that got me a second consecutive 250+ mile week.

Hope this turns north after crossing Florida

So right now we're looking at a hurricane, Dorian, headed for Florida. The forecast tracks are still kind of all over the map but it looks like it will have built up to Cat. 2 or even 3 by the time it makes landfall around Monday. We had a little, and by that I mean very little, cool front come through last night that dropped the humidity down a notch and treated us to the first sub-80+ degree morning we've had in quite a while, not that it lasted much past sunrise. That front is, hopefully, going to force the hurricane north after it crosses Florida, if it crosses Florida, well before it gets close to New Orleans ... or maybe not.  Nobody's making any promises just yet. Jay and Laura are staying in Orlando, which at the moment is basically right under the center of the probability track, although usually by the time hurricanes get that far inland they've weakened considerably.  Anyway, perhaps because of the relatively nice weather we had a relatively good turnout with about a dozen riders for the 6:00 a.m. levee ride. As usual a lot of them turned back early but Rich and Matt continued on with me, and we picked up Dave and Steve along the way, so it was a pretty decent workout.

Tomorrow morning will be the first 6:30 a.m. Tulane cycling coffee ride of the semester. Should be interesting to see who shows up. On Tuesday I helped pick up a bike from Bicycle World that one of the students had shipped via BikeFlights. His pedals were missing, naturally. The shop had received another bike for another Tulane student the same day, and that one was missing its front wheel. Anyway, we went over to HQ where I "borrowed" a pair of Shimano road pedals from one of the TUCA bikes until Max gets his own pedals.