Herding Cats

The Sunday Giro, on Chef Highway a couple of miles before the Goodyear Sign sprint.

After a rained-out Saturday and a "close but not quite" Tulane football game, I got home in time to upload the results from the cyclocross race in Jackson and then rushed out to log a few miles on the levee before sunset. By then, the wind was starting to pick up and the temperature starting to fall, and although I didn't ride particularly hard, the combination of impending darkness and northerly wind at least kept me from turning it into a sightseeing sojourn as sometimes happens with these kinds of unplanned rides.

May repaint that valve cover soon just for
appearances sake.

Earlier in the day I'd spent a bit of time on the GT-6. I'd already re-installed the cleaned-up carbs and replaced a leaking section of heater hose. This time I pulled each of the spark plugs and injected a little bit of Mystery Oil into the cylinders to perhaps loosen up any stuck piston rings that hadn't moved in twenty years or so. I think that my next move will be to pull the gas tank and clean it out, checking to see if that fiberglass patch I made a few decades ago is still good. Then maybe a fresh fuel filter before putting some gasoline in the tank, priming the fuel pump, etc. If all that goes OK, then it might be time to spring for a battery (and battery charger most likely) and see if the starter solenoid and motor work. One thing at a time.

Tulane's last home game of the season.

By Sunday the temperature was back down to the upper 40s, but the sky was clear and the wind not so bad as I rode out to Starbucks for the Giro Ride. By the time we rolled out at 7 a.m. sharp, we had a pretty big group, so I was expecting it to get fast. It didn't turn out quite like I'd expected, though. Somewhere on Hayne, Jaden attacked and one or two went with him, but the rest of the group didn't seem too interested in making the necessary effort to chase it. I'm not sure if they were still out there or not by the time we all got to Chef Highway, but it wasn't long after that that a gap started to open up a couple of riders ahead of me. Sensing the danger a few riders came flying by from behind to bridge up, but surprisingly most of the rest of the group, including me, just kind of watched, hoping I guess, that somehow the gap would close all on its own.

Eventually we got a rather flaky paceline going, but trying to get this group to ride a steady, smooth paceline turned out to be like herding cats, which is to say it was a dismal failure. We'd get three of four riders taking their pulls, then nobody would come through and the pace would drop back down from 25 to 22. Predictably, that would result in someone blasting up the side or going to the front at 26, which would just succeed in opening more gaps, and then the pace would fall again. I've no doubt that if everyone had just ridden a steady paceline at 24-25 mph we would have caught the group pretty easily. Anyway, it was kind of frustrating and since most of them didn't seem to understand the concept, here's a nice little video about how this paceline stuff is supposed to work.

Things settled down a lot for the return trip, so that was pretty uneventful and a bit slower than it really should have been. It's all pretty typical for this time of year, though. A lot of riders are taking it easy right now, which is understandable I guess. For some reason my legs were a little sore on Sunday, so I wasn't really pushing things, myself.

Pothole anniversary coming up this week!

When I got home after the Giro I had a notification from Garmin Connect that my chain had reached the 2,500 mile mark. Since I'd already secured a new chain, I went ahead and replaced it a couple hundred miles sooner than usual. I'm sure there will be some skipping on my training wheel cassette, though. I think that's at least the 4th chain that cassette's been through. I did notice an occasional skip on my Monday recovery ride, but I wouldn't expect to find out how bad it really is until I do a harder ride with some accelerations in various gears. Often, it there's just a slight amount of skipping, the new chain will wear in the old cassette a bit after a couple hundred miles and everything will be fine. We'll see. Meanwhile, the anniversary of the Neron/Pine pothole is rapidly approaching in just four days! That will actually make two full years, less the 4 days between the first water main break and the second water main break, since we've had a paved street in front of the house. And the Mayor thought I was going to vote for another 3 mills of property tax on top of the huge increases we've seen already?  Are ya' kiddin?

So I've been taking my "baby dose" of generic Lipitor for a week now with no noticeable side effects, so I guess that's a good thing. I did watch an interesting documentary type video on Netflix that Jaden mentioned - "The Game Changers" - that was mainly about the benefits of a plant-based diet. While I could see myself going a bit more Vegan than I am now, I don't see myself eliminating all animal-based foods, mainly for practical/availability reasons. Fortunately, wine is totally plant-based, so at least there's that. Anyway, there were some interesting things about the video with respect to the effects, if any, of plant-based diets on athletic performance. Granted, they were probably cherry-picked, but still somewhat convincing.