Winter Creeps Closer

A view of the Spillway road, currently closed to traffic, from my Saturday ride.

Well, we survived the unexpectedly strong winds and rains last Friday night that caused some power outages and took down some trees and power poles during the night. I had already written off the Saturday Giro Ride, so I slept an extra hour or so, which was harder than it might seem given my regular routine. When I did finally get up and make coffee and look out the window I was a little surprised to see that the bad weather, which was another little cold front, had gone through more quickly than predicted and the roads were already starting to dry out. Granted, there was still the matter of a 15 mph wind, but the temperature wasn't supposed to start dropping until afternoon, so by 9:00 I decided to head out for a 50 mile solo ride to the Spillway and back along the levee bike path. Although the sun was starting to peek out through the breaks in the clouds when I started, most of the ride was under a fairly overcast grey sky. The wind was mostly westerly, so the whole way out was more headwind than anything else, but fortunately the trees along the batture were blocking much of the crosswind component. Along the way I saw three places where River Road was closed because of power lines that had come down. In one case a pole with a transformer had just snapped off. The others were poles that had been pushed over enough that the power lines were too low to make it safe for vehicles to pass under them. Anyway, it was a nice kind of relaxed ride despite the wind. I checked out the Spillway road since we may be taking it for the Varsity to Varsity ride in a couple of weeks. They have it barricaded with those big cement barricades, and I know it's washed out in a place or two, but otherwise it looks rideable. Hopefully nobody will have a problem with us riding/walking it so we don't have to ride on the antique bridge that was designed for Model T Ford car widths.

The Sunday Giro had a good group that seemed to be
happy with a more moderate pace than usual.

Sunday was fairly chilly, and as I rode out to the Giro Ride I was wishing I'd worn a light vest. Of course once the group got going on Hayne the temperature was no longer an issue. It turned out to be a fairly moderate Giro Ride for some reason. The work along Chef highway seems to be progressing, and for a couple of miles on the way out we had nice fresh asphalt in the right lane rather than the washboard that is left when the scrape off the old surface. Perhaps by next week the whole right lane on the way out will be smooth. Wishful thinking. Next Saturday is the annual Tour da Parish ride that attracts most of the Giro Ride group, so I guess I'll be doing that. I also guess I'll be missing a day or two of riding mid-week as yet another cold front pushes through Tuesday through Thursday. With Saturday's low temperature currently predicted to be 47 with a 13 mph wind, it's going to be tough to decide what to wear. It'll probably be 60 by the end, so shorts or knickers, arm-warmers or long sleeves, vest or no vest. Most likely I'll opt to freeze for the first half hour in order to be more comfortable later. Complicating things a bit is the fact that we are having our Halloween party the day after Halloween, aka Dia de los Muertos, which may make getting up early on Saturday a little harder than usual. Then on Sunday I'm scheduled to officiate the Swamplocross cyclocross race on the Westbank when it will at least be slightly warmer. I'll probably freeze anyway since I'll mostly be just standing there trying to keep track of lapped riders all morning.

Looking kind of sketchy until Friday, then significantly cooler

Anyway, it's looking like winter is creeping closer and closer with the cold fronts getting more frequent. This will be the first weekend with low temperatures predicted to be in the upper 40s, which may or may not actually happen in the city itself where we get a little extra warmth from the lake water. Even so, it's getting to be time to look for the base layers and arm warmers and vests and gloves that haven't seen the light of day since last March. On the plus side, we switch back to standard time on Sunday, so at least it won't be so dark on the morning rides.