Holiday Wrap - End of Another Decade

Thought we might lose Renzo, but he pulled through.

It was the last week of work before the holidays, at least for me. With Christmas falling on a Wednesday, I'd be taking the prior Monday off from work and wouldn't be returning until the start of 2020. Early in the morning around Wednesday I heard the dog pacing around the house and figured he deeded a quick trip out to the back yard, so I got up to let him out and when I walked into the kitchen, barefoot of course, I stepped in something wet. I flipped on the light and found a mess of urine and bloody diarrhea. Returning home early after work that day the situation had gotten worse and I called the Vet. Another day or two and we were at the local pet emergency / critical care place, MedVet, where the dog would be spending the next few days. After numerous ultrasounds, antibiotics, and eventually a feeding tube, he was finally improving as the bill crept up over three-thousand dollars. He hadn't eaten for four or five days, and the Vets had resorted to feeding him rotisserie chicken.

Back home

He's been home now for over a week, is now on his third rotisserie chicken, and thinks that his days of eating regular dog food are over. Anyway, he's back to normal more or less, and nothing more serious turned up, so I guess that's good. My bank account, however, has taken a pretty bad hit with the combination of Vet bills, my own bills from the cataract surgery, and the annual property tax bill. I'll be starting 2020 about ten grand in the hole, and that's before income taxes. And people wonder why I don't have a cyclocross bike and a gravel bike and a mountain bike, and why I appreciate it when a race offers a few places with cash prizes so I might get lucky enough once in a while to offset gas and entry fee expenses!

Three trips to the Zoo in three days. Happy kids, tired feet.

Anyway, aside from the whole dog situation, there was a lot of other stuff going on. Danielle and Shannon flew in on the 21st, so we got to check out the new airport for the first time. It was nice enough, I guess, but of course we didn't see the actual concourses since we were just meeting them on the public side of the single security checkpoint. The think that impressed me the most were the green and red lights in the parking garage indicating where there were open or occupied parking spaces. (I'm easily impressed.)

Christmas Eve Holiday Giro

On Christmas Eve we did a nice holiday Giro Ride with a good group and nice weather, and then on Christmas morning we even did the WeMoRi, although of course it was a much smaller group than usual.

Christmas Day WeMoRi

Then there was a little family Christmas dinner at Ginger's house, a trip to Audubon Zoo with nieces and nephews and their kids, then a return trip to the Zoo that night to see the holiday lights displays. Then more nieces and nephews and their kids arrived, for another trip to the Zoo, plus a trip over to City Park for their holiday lights thing. In the midst of all of this, I was still somehow managing to get in my morning rides. I'd been thinking there was no way I would be hitting my 12,000 mile goal this year, by the time the weekend arrived it was starting to look like a possibility. We were getting a lot of warmish and very wet Gulf air out of the South, and although it meant a lot of heavy fog, bordering on actual rain, it was still OK for riding. Both weekend Giro Rides were foggy and wet, and while I'd earlier been expecting them to be rained out, they both happened anyway, so surprisingly I found myself with a bit over 12,000 cumulative 2019 miles, and only about thirty miles short of the "Festive 500" 5..00 kilometer holiday goal by the end of the weekend.

Squeaked past my 12,000 mile goal.

A nice ride out to the "Big Dip" on Monday morning took care of the Strava Festive 500 thing with just one riding day left for the year ... and decade. Then this morning we had our usual Tuesday morning ride, conveniently set back to 6:30 since most are off from work and wanted to enjoy that extra half-hour of nap time. That ride was a nice steady one under a clear blue sky with temperatures starting around 49 and rising to, I guess, nearly 60. Nice way to end the riding year, I think.

Danielle and Shannon ship out early tomorrow morning - early enough that I will still be able to make what has kind of become our traditional New Year's Day levee ride out to the Spillway starting at 7 am from Jefferson Playground. That should be a nice kick-off for the new year. Our winter northshore rides will start up January 5th and continue for six or seven weeks. I'm kind of looking forward to those, hoping the weather cooperates and it's not too miserably cold and/or windy. Tomorrow more family will start arriving for a couple more days, so things will remain busy around through the weekend and into next week before getting back to the routine. It won't last too long, I guess, with 12th night kicking off the Mardi Gras season Sunday night on, of course, the 5th. I'll then need to start paying bills and figuring out when I want to have the other cataract surgery. I was recently drafted onto the Bike Easy board, so I'll be meeting with one of the board members next Monday over coffee. That should be interesting. Then I'll need to really get down to business with planning for the Tulane collegiate race weekend and the Tour de La and the Westbank race and the Time Trial.  Guess I'll just drop some photos down here for posterity---

City Park lights

Climbing the climbing tree at the Zoo

Audubon Zoo lights

 

City Park lights

Season's End

Ready to go Saturday morning at the Fly

Last weekend was the end of the 2019 racing season here, and I spent it mostly sitting under a tent at the Audubon Park Fly scoring the cyclocross races, the last day of which was the LAMBRA Cyclocross championship. As cyclocross races go, these were pretty easy to handle. From our vantage point we could see much of the 1.2 mile (yeah, we knew it was a bit short) course that made the best possible use of the levee and the e not-really-Monkey-Hill that the park built out there when the commandeered the real Monkey Hill for the Zoo many years ago. Saturday morning was cold and damp, with a fairly heavy fog and chilly breeze blowing in from the ice-cold river. Still, by Cyclocross standards, it was way better than normal, which is to say there was no mud, no sand, no rain, and well above freezing.

The officiating duties went smoothly for me and Keith. The largest field was only about 25, so scoring was pretty easy as long as we were able to keep track of the lapped riders.

Candy and Dennis made appearances on Sunday

On Sunday, Candy dropped me and the equipment off in the morning and took off with the car to shop. Right around when the last race ended Dennis Dunham showed up on his bike, so we had a nice chat as I loaded the car back up with the LAMBRA equipment. It's amazing how tired you can get just sitting around officiating. So anyway, I missed another two days of riding, but at least got out on Monday morning for 30 miles or so before work. This morning, however, was a different story. I awoke to wet streets, a temperature in the 40s, and a 15 mph north wind with a cold mist falling and more rain on the way, at least according to the radar. I was half-dressed and had gotten the rain bike ready, but eventually came to the decision that it would be a fairly pointless and miserable ride, so I bailed and made some coffee instead.

Guess I'm getting soft in my old age.

Tomorrow morning will be around 40° with a 13 mph wind, but I should be able to get out there to the WeMoRi. Looks like Saturday and Sunday will be rainy, so it will be another low-mileage week.

Welcome to winter in New Orleans.

I guess it may give me a little time to catch up on some website stuff and plan some northshore winter rides for January and February.

Three Days

A foggy December morning on the lakefront for the Tulane Coffee Ride

Having skipped the Wednesday morning WeMoRi because of the weather, I was looking forward to getting back on the bike on Thursday, even though I was supposed to avoid "strenuous" exercise. I figured that what that really meant was not to be doing 200 pound clean and jerks at the gym, which of course I could never do anyway. So I headed out to meet the 6 am group, only to be stopped in my tracks by a train that was stopped in its tracks and blocking both Oak and Willow streets. It was well over five minutes before it finally began to move, so of course by then I'd missed the group. Just as well, I figured, since that would allow me to ease into my ride and see if I could detect any negative impact on my left eye. It was cold and windy, so I was a little concerned about that, but as it turned out I never detected anything unusual at all. With the new lens in the left eye, I was wearing only my right eye contact lens, along with my regular photochromic riding glasses with the stick-on reading lenses, and all seemed fine as I cruised along at an easy 18 mph or so, pushed along here and there by a nice little tailwind. I was not quite to the little dip when I saw the group on its way back (they'd obviously turned around at the big dip), so turned around myself and merged into the 5-rider group that was now battling a significant Northeast wind. I took a few short pulls but never got my heart rate over 145 bpm or so just in case a hard effort would somehow cause my left eye to explode.

Found another old photo, this one from the
Bastille Day race in '79. Glenn Gulotta, me, and Tom Finklea.

With Tulane at the end of what we used to call dead week ahead of exams, some of which have probably already happened, the TUCA group decided to push back the Friday coffee ride to 7:30. With things at the office already rapidly descending into holiday paralysis, I decided to go out around 6:30 for a few extra make-up miles on the levee before meeting up with them at the Reily Center. There was a dense fog alert in place, which for riding basically means you will be getting wet and, eventually, cold, so I dressed as if it was 45 degrees rather than the 53 that it actually was. I did not regret that decision, and other than my feet that eventually got a bit damp, I was comfortable throughout. Tonight is the WeMoRi party over at Blue Crab that I'll probably go to for a while. My weekend will be consumed with cyclocross officiating here in New Orleans, together with the annual LAMBRA meeting Saturday night, so it will probably be one of my lowest-mileage weeks of the year.

Replacement Body Parts

Like the hazy yellowed plastic headlight covers on an old car, the lenses in my eyes have been getting worse and worse, especially over the past couple of years. Granted, they've suffered a lot of abuse, first with years of swimming during the chlorine and pre-goggles era, and then more years of riding in the pre-cycling-glasses era.  My left eye had gotten so bad that oncoming car headlights were blinding me and I was seeing things in the distance in double-vision, so it was time for some replacement parts.

On Monday morning I got up early and headed over to Baptist Hospital, which is now Ochsner Baptist Hospital or maybe Baptist Ochsner hospital, to get a lens replacement, aka cataract surgery. I'd been born at that hospital over six decades earlier while my dad was eating pasta across the street and my mom was, no doubt, unconscious, which was the way they did it back then. Things moved quickly, and after someone put a series of about ten different drops in my eye and someone hooked me up for some mild narcotics, it took about fifteen minutes, tops, to remove the old lens and stick in the new plastic one. I was out of there in time for breakfast, wearing a pair of gigantic sunglasses, and with a follow-up appointment for the next day. There was remarkably little to no discomfort, but according to instructions I spent most of the rest of the day taking it easy, lying on the couch, and generally bored out of my mind. I wasn't supposed to work on the computer, which proved to be infinitely more difficult than I would have thought.

I have a pair of prescription Oakley sunglasses with an assortment of lenses, so I put a non-prescription lens on the left and my most recent progressive lens on the right. That was a lot more comfortable than what I'd come home from the hospital with, plus I could see where I was going a lot better.

At night I have to tape a clear shield over that eye. The biggest issue with that is the tape, not the shield. Taking off the sunglasses I was rather amazed at the difference between the "new" eye and the old one. It's like the difference between old incandescent lighting and a new LED lighting. White things are now actually white again rather than some shade of antique white. I'll probably get the other eye, which isn't nearly so bad, done next year so I have a matching set.

My followup appointment this morning went fine and things are as they should be, which is to say the vision in the "new" eye is somewhere between 20:40 and 20:20. It will be a little while before the eye calms down, which is apparently normal for the day after surgery. On the plus side, I'm clear to work on the computer and drive, and in general it's already a lot better than it was before. On the down side, I'll be putting drops in that eye three times a day for another couple of weeks, wearing sunglasses when outside, and refraining from "strenuous" exercise. I asked what they meant by "strenuous" but didn't get a useful answer. I think they're thinking of sudden intense efforts, like weight-lifting. At any rate, I think I would be well-advised to take it easy on the bike, especially if it's cold and windy, until that eye is fully recovered.

Forecast for tomorrow:  47 degrees with a 16 mph north wind.  Of course.

Love/Hate

The Sunday Giro Ride heading back down Chef Highway on the new silky smooth asphalt.

Saturday's Giro Ride was well-attended, windy, and fast. I almost tagged 40 mph at one point, which wouldn't be unusual elsewhere, but on a ride where the total elevation could be best measured in inches, a non-sprint speed of 40 mph, along with a "best 20 minute speed" of 26.6 mph says something about the ride. What it doesn't say is that I had to pee the whole way out to Venetian Isles thanks to having had a big cup of coffee and then being under-dressed and cold. I did the Giro again on Sunday (there are complications right now making it ill-advised to spend all day riding my bike), and in stark contrast to Saturday's ride, this morning's was smaller and slower.

Blissfully wrong

Anyway, after each of this weekend's Giro Rides I rode back down Marconi, the latter part of which has just received a new bike lane arrangement designed by a committee of people who are apparently not the kind of cyclist I am accustomed to. While the Bike Easy folks are enthusiastically patting themselves on the back for this particular accomplishment, those of us who ride a little faster, usually in the company of others, are having a hard time wrapping our heads around this level of enthusiasm. While the Bike Easy Director, Dan Farve, recently proclaimed about the new bike lane "It was glorious! The protected bike lanes, green paint highlighting the bike lane at intersections, and smooth road surface all felt safe and comfortable," the nicest comment I've heard from the people I ride with was "somebody's going to get killed here." Dan's quote was accompanied on the Bike Easy Facebook Page by a photo of one of the organization's supporters riding the wrong way on the 2-way section of the path that's on the City Park side. Anyway, I personally have a love/hate relationship with bike lanes or paths like this.

Was this intentional?

Heading toward the lake, the path puts you literally in the gutter under the beautiful Live Oaks that line that side of the street. The lake-bound lane will probably be full of leaves, litter, water, and other debris in due time. Along the way, one finds these raised concrete pads that I guess are for people who are waiting for the bus or something. In a few places, the concrete pad pokes out into the bike lane, which just looks like an accident waiting to happen.

You can see where a car has already hit the concrete pad

Motorists are obviously confused. In fact, as we rode home today one poor soul was obviously having a hard time figuring out how to make a simple right turn across the bike lane without running us over, or plowing through the three-foot-high plastic lane divider things, and was probably at the same time wondering why in the world was one part of the road painted green, and was he allowed to drive on the green part or not. I found it all rather unsettling. While we were OK in the bike lane as we cruised easily toward home at a leisurely 15 mph or so, it goes without saying that a group of more than three, travelling at more than 15 mph, is going to be better off dealing with the auto traffic in the other lane.

This driver was very confused about where he should be.

From the motorists' perspective, it's clear that they are confused. If you look closely you can see where some unfortunate motorist drove right into the raised concrete, chipping off some of it and probably damaging his car.  From our perspective, all we want is a smooth asphalt road with two lanes going in the same direction, a reasonably low speed limit, and the ability of a group of riders to take over the right lane when appropriate. Before, we had all of that except for the smooth asphalt part. Now we have the smooth asphalt, but are left with a single traffic lane too narrow to share.

So that's my "hate" part of the equation. On the other hand, I daily ride my fifty-year old spray-painted single-speed bike to work at an average speed of perhaps 10 mph, in which case I love having a bike lane to, at least, legitimize my place on the road. Of course, I don't believe for a moment that the white stripe on the road is going to keep the distracted drivers from killing me if I'm not extremely defensive, or even if I am. Fitness and competitive cyclists are stuck in-between. For the most part, we get along much better riding with the auto traffic where the rules of the road are clear, and we don't get along so well riding in bike lanes or paths where the rules are arbitrary and confusing and the routes sometimes look like they were designed by committees of people who lump all cyclists together, along with the dog-walkers and pedestrians.  So the bottom line here is that I want the bike lane for when I'm commuting, but I also want the separate right lane for when I'm training and/or just riding faster than 15 mph.

Three Giro Week

Part of the big Thanksgiving Giro group

There was quite a large turnout for Thursday's Thanksgiving Holiday Giro Ride, and although holiday Giro rides are sometimes easier than usual, this one wasn't. To make matters worse, I'd overslept, which meant a rushed ride out to Starbucks and, even worse, no time for coffee. On the plus side, the temperature was in the mid-50s, rising into the 60s by the end. It was windy, though, and that meant a fast section along Chef Highway where we averaged over 29 mph for five miles or so.

Stole this photo from Jamie who was apparently in town

Back at home, Candy cooked a big turkey, made stuffing, and two pies. There were only the two of us. I long ago stopped arguing about this sort of thing, but really.....

I didn't ride Friday morning since I had a 9:50 a.m. appointment with an Ophthalmologist to see about the cataract in my left eye. "Nuclear sclerotic cataract of left eye. Nuclear sclerotic cataract of right eye." So now I'm scheduled for a left eye lens replacement on the 9th. Looking forward to having functional binocular vision again. It's just a matter of time before the right eye will need the same, of course. Going with the regular single-vision lenses, I'll still need reading/computer glasses, but I'd rather have the best possible distance vision. Should be interesting. I'm just hoping it doesn't keep me off the bike for more than a couple of days.

Following up on the holiday Giro, I went out again on Saturday for another dose. That particular Giro was significant because we actually got a semi-cohesive paceline going on Chef Highway that closed the gap on a small break that had been out there since Paris Road. That almost never happens. Anyway, Candy has spent the last couple of days decorating for Christmas. I have no idea what that entails, really. All I know is that there are a bunch of plastic bins all over the living and dining rooms, and every once in a while she brings something to me that needs to be either repaired or polished. I did drag the artificial Christmas tree up from the basement, so I'm expecting the usual issues about why all the lights don't work. We added a couple hundred extra lights to the ones that came with the tree a few years ago, so it doesn't really matter much.

What could possibly go wrong here?

Saturday night another little cool front came through, but there was hardly any rain and the temperature was still in the low 60s in the morning, so the Sunday Giro was basically summer kit plus thin arm-warmers, and the arm-warmers were really just for the ride out to Starbucks. It was a pretty typical Giro for this time of year - some fast segments, some slower segments. On the way back, I took the new bike lane on Marconi past Delgado. That thing was definitely designed by a committee. Bike lane in the gutter, then parking, then a single car lane, with occasional concrete islands protruding into the bike lane where there are bus stops and where the buses will hold up traffic while loading and unloading, I presume. It all seems more dangerous to me than the two wide traffic lanes that were there before. The only nice thing is that the road surface, which had been in bad shape for a long time, has finally been completely repaired. Guess every cloud has a silver lining.

So Strava says I have ridden 11,183 miles thus far this year. It's a couple hundred fewer than usual, and so I guess I'll finish up 2019 well under 12k but still around average I guess.

YearDistanceΔ Prev. YearΔ With 2019201911,183 mi- 225 mi∅201811,408 mi- 19 mi+ 225 mi201711,427 mi+ 280 mi+ 244 mi201611,147 mi+ 204 mi- 36 mi201510,943 mi- 504 mi- 240 mi201411,447 mi+ 284 mi+ 264 mi201311,163 mi∅- 20 mi