Goodbye Twenty Twenty

Heading back from the Spillway on New Year's Eve

It was the best of years, it was the worst of years, it was the year of science, it was the year of foolishness, it was the time of belief, it was the time of incredulity, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. (With apologies to Charles Dickens)

It was Wednesday, the 30th of December, and I was just waiting to see if anyone would post something somewhere about a New Year's Eve ride. The weather was changing, but there was a window of warm temperatures and clear skies in the morning before the "severe weather" was supposed to move in. Finally, Mignon sent an email or text or something suggesting a ride to the Spillway to start at the relatively civilized time of 7:30 a.m. It sounded good to me. A nice smooth 50 miles on the levee with a small group to ease the return headwind stretch.

I think we had about a dozen riders when we started this morning at 7:30. The bike path was still fairly wet from the overnight rain, but there was no threat of more rain until the afternoon. I started out on the front of the group alongside Julia, trying to keep the speed down to a nice Zone 2 level, which allowed for lots of conversation in the double "paceline" behind. At one point I remarked that the problem today would probably not be the wind, but the flats. I wish I hadn't said that because clearly I jinxed the whole ride at that point. Sure enough, we someone flatted within minutes. We stopped to fix that, and then a few miles later Scott flatted again. We stopped again. Then a few miles later Charles flatted. Most of us stopped again. Then a few miles after that Charles flatted again. Julia and Mignon and Boyd and a few others had continued at that point, and as we were fixing that one I texted Julia, thinking she would be with whatever was left of the group. She texted back that she was already at the Spillway. We weren't even to Ormond. So we finally got going again after a few people turned back early, and caught up to Boyd and a few others around when we say Julia on her way back. We then saw Mignon and Erich and a couple others who had already been to the Spillway but turned around to ride there again (we were only few miles from it at that point). By then the road had dried up and we fortunately didn't have any more flats, which was good because we were running low on tubes and CO2 cartridges. 

Although I'm not obsessive about my annual mileage, I'd been watching it on Strava for the past couple of weeks, rather surprised to see it already over 11,000 miles. Considering the month and a half, or more, of down-time back in March and April due to my crash at Red Bluff, I'd long ago set what I though was an optimistic goal of 10,000 miles for 2020. Considering my more typical annual mileage of 12,000+ miles, it seemed reasonable. I ended up with 11,406 miles, and even managed to log the 500 kilometers of the Strava Festive 500 a couple of days early. So mileage-wise at least, 2020 was OK. Lower than normal, but not by as much as I'd expected. Looking around, I think it safe to say that a lot of riders logged more than their usual miles this year, thanks no doubt to "working from home" plus the fact that riding was one of the few things that was generally allowed throughout the whole continuing COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, Road Racing took a big hit in 2020. While my racing schedule isn't normally very crowded thanks to officiating duties and such, 2020 was probably the first time since around 1972 that I haven't ridden a single criterium, and indeed the only official race I did in 2020 was the Auburn collegiate race that included some non-collegiate categories. Of course, in retrospect, I now wish I'd ridden the Sunday criterium there even though it was wet and cold. 

At least we did manage to pull off the Time Trial Championship and the Tour de Louisiane Road Race this year. They were the only official road events other than cyclocross that happened in LAMBRA for 2020. 

Not good

So the COVID-19 positive test rates have been rising since Thanksgiving, and I fully expect them to continue to rise over the next couple of weeks as the effect of ill-advised holiday parties plays out. Tulane students are supposed to be coming back in nine or ten days which is definitely going to be bad timing. Vaccine availability is still being restricted to medical staff, nursing homes, etc., and regardless I doubt we will see any population based effect of the vaccines for a few months yet. 

So I'm sitting at home once again on New Year's Eve, listening to fireworks off in the distance, contemplating what I've missed the most this year. The first thing that comes to mind are the road trips to bike races, even the solo ones. I haven't been stopping for coffee at Zotz after my morning rides, and haven't eaten out more than a handful of times since March. Really, the one thing I've stuck with, once the broken bones healed in late April, have been the group rides - 6 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5:45 am on Wednesdays, and the 7 am Giro Rides, with a few northshore rides thrown in for good measure. Even so, I have avoided a lot of the normal post-ride socializing, which I have missed quite a bit. I missed our annual Halloween party, and the Christmas parties, and the family get-togethers. I've seen my co-workers in person exactly once or twice since early February. On the plus side, I did some re-wiring down in the basement, changed all of the washers in all of the leaky faucets, and attended to a number of little details that would normally be at the bottom of the to-do list.

Hopefully we will soon be able to see the light at the end of the COVID tunnel. Whether that means things will return to whatever was normal, however, remains to be seen. 

‘Twas the Ride Before Christmas

Twas the ride before Christmas, and all through the pack,
not a rider was talking, not even in back!

The leaders were surging; "we'll drop them," they laughed;
but the pack just tucked lower; and hung in their draft.

The bunch was all quiet, and gasping for air,
their buddies were dropping, thou' they gave not a care.

And my teammate and I, now pushing the pace higher,
were just getting ready, to launch a new flyer.

When somewhere in back, there arose such a clatter,
I thought I should look, to see what was the matter.

Under my arm, I glanced with a frown,
almost expecting, to see riders go down.

The glare of the sunlight, on the asphalt below,
gave to the paceline, a luminous glow.

When, what to my watering, eyes should appear,
but a guy on an S-Works, with elec-tronic gear.

With a powerhouse rider, tucked low on the bike,
I knew in a moment, we were in for a fight.

He pushed on the pedals, and lept on ahead;
"I’m taking this Hot Spot," then he did what he said.

Now Daniel, now Jaden, now Woody, and Ray!
On Howard, on Brian, on Matt and VJ!

Up the left came the paceline, and out went the call,
Now dash away, dash away, dash away all!

As dry leaves that 'fore, the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So up to the break, 'way the coursers they flew,
with a whole string of riders, and Ice Cream Man too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard a light thump,
The delicate shifting, of one soon to jump.

As I reached out to shift, and was turning around,
Right down the middle, Rob came with a bound.

He was dressed in a skinsuit, from his head to his toe,
And he opened a gap, that made us look slow.

He spun up the gear, too big for the track,
And he looked like a madman, as he glared at the pack.

His eyes how they dared us, to take up the chase.
and the riders up-shifted, to match his cruel pace!

He veered to the left, to get a clean line,
and the pack got strung-out, for the twentieth time;

The riders were closing, the gap he had done,
but many were dropping, off one after one.

The pack came together, now elbow-to-belly,
it shook and it wiggled, like a bowl full of jelly.

The riders were having, some jolly old fun,
And I laughed when I saw it, now the race had begun.

With wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
a Dream Team bike rider, was the next one to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his deed,
And pulled us all up, to a dizzying speed.

Then he turned with a jerk, his hand on his ass,
And giving a nod, he dared us to pass.

He sprang to his feet, to his team gave a sign,
And away they all flew, to the final sprint line.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he quickened his pace,
"HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD RACE."

18 Days

Dwight's photo of the WeMoRi going around the traffic circle on Lakeshore Drive.

I will be glad put 2020 in the rear-view mirror 18 days from now, although with things as they are, and will be, there won't be much of a celebration. What a bizarre year it's been.  A serious crash, a pandemic, stay-at-home, cancelled races, cancelled events, postponed races, working from home, a hurricane, another hurricane, a tropical storm, Candy's retirement, road construction, etc., etc.  I only wish I could say that things will be better soon, but actually I think they won't be significantly better until maybe late June. I hope my pessimistic outlook is unwarranted, of course.

An early model once the vaccines were approved

At least there has been one thing that has more or less persisted without major interruption. I've never looked forward to the group rides as much as I have this year, at least once my bones mended and I could sit on the bike again. I've missed, or intentionally skipped, a lot of the pre- and post-ride socializing, and reluctantly decided to skip the annual WeMoRi Christmas party and Mike's party at Gray Cat Cycleworx, but I've been consistently riding with the small 6 am levee ride group on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the WeMoRi group on Wednesdays, and the Giro Rides or Northshore rides on the weekends. I don't know of more than a few cyclists in my extended circle who have tested positive for COVID-19, so I have to think that riding a bike outside in a group isn't a great way to get it. I've avoided restaurants and skipped my usual post-ride coffee stops at Zotz, and generally tried to limit my exposures to other people as much as feasible. So far, so good, I guess. Back in March when I crashed I had $100 in cash in my wallet. I still have $20 of that.

Heading into the rising sun after the turnaround at Ormond.

So it was a pretty decent week of riding. The 6 am rides are getting darker and darker, and we had a few pretty chilly mornings, but otherwise things have been pretty routine. Yesterday, Saturday, it was raining in the morning so I decided to wait until after lunch when the streets would be more dry. It turned out to have been a good call. I left home around 1:00 and rode out to the Spillway, mostly solo. 

The river is running low.

On the way out I stopped to help a rider with a flat. I saw him sitting on the side of the bike path with his bike upside-down, the rear wheel off, and his phone a this ear. He was calling his wife to come pick him up because he couldn't get the flat tire off of the rim. So I stopped and got the tire off pretty easily, put his spare tube in, re-mounted the tire, and discovered that his spare tube had a short stem that didn't make it through the Zipp 404s he was riding. Luckily, I had a long-stem tube with me. He gave me the short-stem tube, which I ended up using later in the ride when I flatted. I was trying out the new Campagnolo Scirocco wheelset I'd just gotten on sale. My regular training wheels barely qualify as round any more, and I'm getting afraid I'm about to wear through the braking surfaces, and the bearings are pretty worn, so I got these fairly aero but fairly heavy wheels. I really only notice the extra weight when I pick up the bike, and it's nice to be able to put on the brakes without the bike lurching from one rim dent to the other.

Where we are now

Today started out at 60 degrees with a bit of wind, so we had a pretty nice Giro Ride. I'm pretty sure my solo levee ride was more of a workout for me, although of course that's because I spent most of the Giro Ride in the draft. It's looking like I'll end the year with somewhere around 11,000 miles, so considering the little six-week lull I had last March and April, that's good. 

So the new AT&T fiber has been working out pretty well. My laptop's ethernet adaptor can handle only 100 Mpbs, so I got an H/P USB gigabit ethernet adapter that works surprisingly well. I'm getting 8-900 Mbps when wired, so basically more than an order of magnitude faster than I had originally. The AT&T TV has been working fine as well. Danielle just sent us an ARLO video doorbell, so I re-configured my old range extender so it could handle the new dual-band signals, and that should be able to reach the front screen door easily despite all of the plaster & lath covered with sheetrock walls. I'm going to need to do some re-wiring in order to put it where it needs to be, so I got a roll of bell wire this afternoon and some white wood filler to plug up the hole from the old doorbell. It will be interesting to see if it all works with the ancient doorbell buzzer in the kitchen that has to be at least 60 years old. The transformer is down in the basement connected rather haphazardly (emphasis on "hazard") to some old knob-and-tube wiring, but at least it's easily accessible.

Wired ethernet at my laptop
via HP USB Gigabit adapter.

Looks like another cold front coming through tonight, but nothing colder than the upper 40s in the forecast through Christmas, which I guess will be kind of a non-event this year despite Candy's having bought presents for every kid in the neighborhood. She's been playing old christmas music non-stop for a couple of weeks already, and evenings are mostly Hallmark movies until she goes to bed and I can watch a couple of episodes of Star Trek or something on Netflix..

Winter Speed

Winter, such as it is in New Orleans, is here, I guess. That doesn't mean what it does in Minnesota, or course, where morning temperatures next week will be between 17° and a relatively balmy 30°F, but you know it's all relative. The bottom line is that my creaky old knees probably won't see the light of day for at least the next couple of weeks. I usually want my knees covered if it's in the 50s or below, and although wearing knicks or knee-warmers or full long tights cuts into your winter speed a tiny bit, it's definitely worth it, IMHO. I think I was in knickers for most of my rides last week, and even broke out the full long tights one day. 

So it should come as no surprise that when I was getting ready to head across the lake for another of the Queen Bee's invitational winter rides, where the starting temperature at 8:30 a.m. was going to be right at 40°, I threw a pretty wide range of stuff into my bag. I knew there would be sun, and that the temperature would ultimately be approaching 60°, so that really complicated the wardrobe decision. One thing I knew for sure. It wasn't going to be slow, or to be more accurate, it wasn't going to be easy. Between the terrain and the north wind, those 75 miles were going to exact a significant toll energy-wise. So rather than go for the bulkier but better-insulated stuff, I went with the thin and wind-resistant stuff. I could have been an add for Gore. I wore some nice comfy knickers with a long-sleeved Gore base layer that had wind-resistant front panels. Over that was a pair of arm-warmers that could be stuffed into a pocket later. Then there was a summer jersey, mainly for its pockets, and on top my thin Tulane vest that I planned to take off at the first opportunity once I got warmed up. I was also trying out a pair of Gore-Tex socks that Danielle had sent me for my birthday, and a pair of thin Gore-Tex gloves. So, no bulk, but lots of wind protection. It worked out pretty well.

The ride itself was good a brisk, although without any super-hard attacks or anything. I guess we had about about a dozen riders on hand as we headed out. Like other rides I've done with Lisa, there was no gradual warm-up. We got onto the Tammany Trace at Abita Springs and were immediately up above 20 mph, which is basically where the speed stayed for most of the ride. I'd say our typical speed was 23-24 mph. I'd put my carbon race wheels on the night before, since I figured they could use the exercise, having spent almost all summer hanging unused in the basement. I have to admit, they definitely make things easier when the speeds ramp up, especially if I'm out in the wind. Anyway, it was a really great ride. I felt like I got a good workout without getting totally wasted. I guess Strava agreed, tagging the ride as "Massive Relative Effort." Clearly, Strava doesn't know how much time I spent sucking wheels, but regardless, I have to agree that, relatively speaking, it was harder than my usual wheelsucking ride.

Speaking of wheels, I ordered a pair of Campi Scirocco C17 Clinchers that were on sale. I got my current training wheels so long ago I don't remember, but it must have been at least fifteen years ago. I bought them from someone in the club who had gotten them built up as climbing wheels, and they are indeed about the light pair of aluminum clinchers I've ever seen. I kept them as my backup race wheels, and used them for a number of races and also once or twice for Six Gap. Following the demise of my Mavic wheels in a crash a few years ago, they got promoted to everyday use. Now, the bearings are getting a little loose, I've replaced four or five broken aluminum spoke nipples, and I'm starting to wonder how long it will be before I wear through the brake track. The Scirocco wheels were something like $250, and will be significantly heavier and maybe a tiny bit more aerodynamic, but hopefully they will be good solid training wheels.

Well, that's better.

So this week we finally upgraded (at home) to AT&T fiber, along with AT&T TV. I kept the telephone land line, mainly because the alarm system uses it, but downgraded the service so it was a little cheaper. Installation took three or four hours, but I think went pretty well. I had already run an ethernet cable from the back of the house where the modem is to the front where the living room TV is, and although I could never get the Amazon stick to work with it, it works fine with the AT&T TV box. With my old Uverse service I was getting something like 5 Mbps over wireless. Now I get more like 40 Mbps and close to 100 via ethernet. The AT&T TV service has been fine and seems to include all of the stuff we had with Cox before, so not bad. We have a little range extender that doesn't seem to be working correctly with the new modem, but I haven't bothered to investigate that yet. 

Today we started putting up some Christmas decorations, but with the intermittent light rain I decided against going out and fooling with all of the questionable extension cords and lights and stuff. That will have to wait until a drier day. We bought a new microwave oven the other day after Candy incinerated some mac & cheese in the old one. It's display panel had pretty much stopped working, so you couldn't see the times or anything, so it was time. Besides, I couldn't get the burned food smell out of it anyway. 

Meanwhile, the city started tearing up two blocks of street to apparently replace the water, sewer, and drain lines that run underneath it. The notice they left at the house said it would be completed by the end of January, which I don't believe for a moment. By "completed" I assume they mean the pipes will be replaced and they'll dump a bunch of riversand and rocks on top of everything and leave it like that for a year or so until they get around to actually paving it. In the meantime, I'm treated to the sound of bulldozers and dump trucks all day going back and forth to the piles of sand and rocks they deposited on the corner. 

Group Rides and Rain Days and Trust

There was a huge group for the special Thanksgiving Giro Ride

This morning's Sunday Giro Ride was, I assume, rained out. I'm looking out the window now, around 8:30 a.m., and the weather's looking better, which is to say it's not actually raining right now. There's a cold front on the way, and the 66° temperature and light southeast wind we have now will turn into 49° with a 14 mph northwest wind by tomorrow morning. We haven't had to fire up the heater at home yet, but it's looking like next week will be the actual start of winter weather around here. Anyway, if the streets dry up a bit I may try to slip out for a short ride later today as minor compensation for the missed group ride.

Up on top of the Casino overpass waiting for Jeff to fix a flat down at the bottom. Fred flatted shortly after we started up again, but he slipped quietly off the back and told us to go ahead.

Yesterday's Giro also carried the threat of rain, and much of the ride was on wet streets, with predictable results. The turnout was low, the pace was slower than normal, and there were flats. Wet streets have been the order of the day since Thursday, along with some early morning fog and mist, and people have been getting flats left and right. I went out alone on Friday morning for some easy miles on the bike path, but didn't make it back home without having to stop to fix a flat rear tire. It was a tiny, but super-sharp, shard of glass deeply embedded in the too-soft rubber of the Continental 5000 that I had to pry out with my little pocket knife. I think Continental's newer 5000 tire went just one step too far past the beloved 4000 in search of lightness and grip. I think the combination of softer rubber and thinner sidewalls combined to make what had been a great training and racing tire a bit too unreliable for routine training. I'd been using the 4000s for years, having found them to be, by far, the most puncture-resistant training tire I'd ever used. Although I've stuck with the less durable but somewhat lighter and faster and stickier Michelins for my race wheels, the 4000S was my go-to tire for training. Now, though, I see people searching around for a replacement for the 4000 after suffering sidewall cuts and punctures with the 5000s. I might be joining them. Just the other day I stitched a boot into my rear 5000 because of a cut that had compromised some of the casing threads and was threatening to enlarge enough to blow out. Sometimes what looks like progress isn't.

Wet streets have been the order of the day for lately

Last Thursday, which was Thanksgiving, there was a huge turnout for the special "holiday Giro." The ride itself wasn't super-fast, although of course it had its moments, so it was really a lot of fun. Afterward I went home to a 14-pound turkey and two pies, which may have been a little much for just the two of us.

Anyway, it looks like I'll be digging down to the bottom of the drawer next week to find the cold-weather riding gear that hasn't seen the light of day since last February. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. continues to surge. Here in New Orleans our positive test ratio has been somewhat artificially suppressed by the 2,500+ surveillance tests that Tulane had been doing daily. But the students went home last week and yesterday's 2-day test count from Tulane was down to only 133 with 5.3% of those being positive. Of course, the only people being tested the past few days have probably been the ones who are actually sick, so no surprise there, but by next week when the effect of Tulane's reduced testing hits the official LDH reports I fully expect to see a significant jump in the New Orleans percentage of positive tests since there will be far fewer healthy people being tested in the denominator. I'm guessing the rate will rise 1.5 to 2% easy. Hopefully still not as high as other areas of the state, but it will probably make the news.

All of this, of course, has me again thinking about the wisdom of doing group rides. For me, there is absolutely no doubt that the group rides are the only things that get me, however briefly, up to the levels of intensity that might keep me at some reasonable fitness level. It also may be the only thing keeping me sane. But as local positivity levels rise, and people start spending more time inside with others because of the weather and holiday gatherings, the risk will definitely go up. Fortunately I've not heard of any sort of outbreak or cluster associated with group rides. I guess there are some some ways to rationalize it all, of course. For one, few people who are feeling ill are going to venture out to the Giro Ride or WeMoRi, and even if they did, they would probably not last long. For another, with all of the turbulence and moving around in a fast group ride, the duration and dose associated with any exposure would be expected to be very, very low. Unless, of course, you ride right into the cloud of aerosol from some idiot who feels compelled to blow snot out of his or her nose in the middle of the group. Amazingly, that still happens, especially to the smaller riders like me who tend to be invisible when riders glance quickly behind themselves. 

Really, all I can do it trust the riders around me. Trust has always been a big component of group rides. You need to trust the riders up ahead not to do anything stupid, to call out the big road hazards, to ride a straight line, and now, not to blow snot in your face. I could always reduce my exposure by staying at the front, of course, but that's not really a viable, or particularly attractive, option for me most of the time. Besides, I do really think that the best way to get COVID isn't from riding in a group, but from sitting across a table from someone talking loudly at a restaurant or in a bar. I think I've been to an indoor restaurant maybe twice since March, and at outdoor tables only a handful of times. If we can get the new vaccines distributed quickly and widely, and if people are actually willing to take vaccines that didn't even exist six months ago and have been rushed into production at an unprecedented speed, and if they indeed don't cause any unanticipated side-effects, there may be some hope for normal racing to resume by, maybe, next August. It all still leaves race promoters unsure about what to plan for the 2021 season. I don't guess we'll have a clue until maybe March or so when we see how initial distribution of the RNA vaccines is going and where the other vaccines are in the cycle. I have to say, I think the RNA vaccines are really cool, and I'd be surprised if any serious side-effects show up, but still there's no denying that we're all going to be test subjects next year one way or the other. Even those who refuse to be vaccinated will be test subjects since there's no way to tell if a vaccine is working if there's no significant amount of people getting sick.

Almost Ten

Heading back into the sun on the Thursday levee ride.

It was a pretty routine week on the bike. Not so much off of it. After a nice easy recovery ride on Monday, I managed to oversleep enough on Tuesday to miss the 6 am levee ride by three or four minutes. Just as well, I guess, as I must have been a little tired. The ride turned around at The Dip, so I met them on the return, logging a few fewer miles than planned. The rest of the weekday rides, however, were as usual. On Monday I did spot a bald eagle, the first one I've seen in a while. They always seem to start showing up with the cooler weather.

At some point during the WeMoRi, Nisha joined the group after taking a short-cut with a couple others. I looked over at her and thought, "I need to tell her to use a bigger gear."  Well, later in the day she posted that she hadn't realized she'd been doing the group rides in her small chainring! Problem solved. Later that day I went over to Ochsner and got the influenza vaccine.

Post-Giro cool-down on Lakeshore Drive - Rich and Jaden

So rather than do a group ride over in Mississippi I decided to just to the Saturday and Sunday Giro Rides. Candy's replacement laptop had come in during the week and I wanted to at least get her email set up. It was all a little confusing. The laptop came with a "mail" program that is essentially Outlook. It also came with Office pre-loaded. I set up the free mail program, but I'm not really sure what to do about Outlook. There's the 365 subscription version, and a stand-alone version, and maybe she can download the Tulane Exchange version since she has "legacy" status. Who knows? 

Spent a lot of time on Carl's safe
and steady wheel on Sunday.

The mornings lately have all been carbon copies with temperatures in the 58-60 degree range, some wind, clear blue sky. Not too shabby, really. The Giro Rides this weekend were surprisingly fun, at least for me. I have no idea why. Granted, I was keeping my nose mostly out of the wind as usual, but for some reason I really wasn't struggling when things got fast, or gaps needed to be closed. Funny how that works when you get older. You just never know when you'll have a good day and when you'll have a bad day - or weekend.

Classes at Tulane end on Tuesday, so we did somehow make it all the way through the fall semester without having to send all the students back home. They'll take exams online after Thanksgiving and then won't be back until January when we will do the whole Welcome Center thing again. The COVID-19 surge we had has subsided considerably with only 0.5% positive test over the past couple of days, which included 3,844 tests.  Thus far the City has reported a total of 401,209 tests, of which Tulane's comprise over 142,815, so Tulane has conducted over 35% of all of the tests in Orleans Parish. Impressive. 

So back in March and April when I was hobbling around on crutches and unable to sit on a bike for more than fifteen minutes I was thinking it would probably be the first year in a long time that I wouldn't log at least 10,000 miles. I figured I lost around 2,000 miles during recovery from the crash. Yet, as of today I'm showing 9,886 miles, so I will easily make 10,000 by the end of next week, and the question is whether I'll make it to 11,000. My first full year using Strava was 2013. Since then, my lowest annual mileage was 11,725 back in 2015 when I missed a number of early season weekends travelling to collegiate races. I'll be pretty happy if I'm anywhere close to 11k this year, considering.

Weekday Frustrations, Warm Weekend Rides

Really no excuse for this

There's been such a long list of things to get done that I haven't really known where to start. One thing I thought I'd be able to check off the list last week was setting up Candy's new laptop. It arrived as scheduled on Wednesday - in a torn-open, wet, box, compliments of UPS. I slid the computer out of the box and was pleased to see that it looked undamaged, at least externally, and was in a nice heavy plastic sleeve. Well, looks can be deceiving. I powered it up and was greeted by an unstable screen image that would disintegrate into random lines and colors and such with every touch. I assume there was something wrong with the cable going through the hinge to the screen. At any rate, I immediately shut it off and called Lenovo. After explaining the situation to two people I was told to wait for a phone call within 24 hours. 28 hours later I called back and finally got a nice woman with a heavy Indian accent who, after about half an hour on the phone, moved things one step farther. I was told I'd then receive an email within 24-48 hours about returning the defective laptop and getting a replacement. Still waiting for that email Sunday night. So, following that debacle, I figured I may as well bite the bullet and call AT&T to upgrade to fiber since the sent me a letter at the end of October that they were retiring my current network equipment in January and I have to upgrade (or leave) by then. I'd been planning on making the upgrade anyway, but also wanted to find out about AT&T TV as a replacement for our current Cox Cable, on the assumption that I could save a little bit that way. Well, that process resulted in an hour-long phone call with a nice woman who was presumably Chinese by her heavy accent. It would have take a lot less time if I hadn't needed to have her repeat practically everything at least once. So I ended up with the Internet 1000 plan ( 940Mbps) which should be a major improvement over what I've had for the past few years. I also signed up for the basic TV plan for Candy since I doubt she would ever adapt to jumping around from Netflix to Amazon to Hulu to Disney etc., etc. Anyway, the whole thing should be about what I'm paying now, and considerably less for the first year. The downside is that they scheduled installation for December 3 or something. 

Did I mention the car crash? Happened early in the week. I hear this loud crash outside the window, jump up to have a look, and see a Cadillac SUV sliding down S. Claiborne on its side. Guessing it was going more the 35 mph when it clipped another car. Amazingly, everyone seemed OK. I called 911 immediately but only had time to give them the location before a police car pulled up behind the wreck. Coincidence? They broke the sunroof and one of the neighbors pulled a skinny woman driver without shoes out. I suspect there's more to that whole story.

So last week was mostly warm and occasionally damp but nothing that resulted in any shortened rides. By the weekend the weather was looking really nice and when Lisa lined up a little group for a 65 mile northshore ride on Saturday, I jumped at the opportunity. We rolled out from the Lee Road ballpark right a 8 am with eight riders, and immediately Lisa went to the front and kind of hit the gas, setting the tone for the rest of the ride. In other words, it was a pretty fast ride. We rode up to State Line by way of Pine. I was feeling pretty good but my limited miles in the hills of late certainly took a toll toward the end of the ride. The average speed of around 22 mph doesn't seem so fast, but Strava called it a "massive relative effort" and my 174 max BPM heartrate told a slightly different story. Anyway, I really enjoyed the ride. 

There wasn't enough room for the "ulation" part.

Afterward I kind of rushed home because a couple of the neighbors were staging a little retirement party at the house for Candy Saturday evening. They had lured her out of the house to go to the neighborhood park with the next-door neighbors' toddler while the others came over and put up some decorations and heated up enough food for a small army. It was all quite nice and I ate and drank far too much.

Thursday on the levee

So this morning I went out to the Giro Ride planning on staying in the economy section at the back of the pack. I was still feeling some effects from Saturday's ride, and together with the previous night's festivities I figured a hard ride would be a bad idea. Unfortunately, today was apparently "bring your TT bike to the Giro" day, and looking around as we rolled out I knew it was going to be trouble for my plan. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the group split and I ended up with the second group of about a dozen riders, among which there were about three who knew what a paceline was, or which way the wind was blowing. Anyway, it did at least allow me to keep the effort level down a bit, which was good. On the way back, when someone at the front of the group basically attacked the turn onto Hayne Blvd., I just let that go and rode in with a few others. Not surprisingly, two of them had been on the Saturday ride.

Mini Tour of da Parish

Dwight snapped this great photo of the WeMoRi last Wednesday along Bayou St. John.

The weather forecast had not been providing a whole lot of confidence for Saturday's Tour da Parish ride down in St. Bernard Parish, and I was fully expecting to get rained on. Still, it was kind of Howard's event and I'd pre-registered, so I was committed. Then on Friday we got a notice that the 50-mile ride would be shortened to 25 because there was still a lot of hurricane damage down the road and we'd definitely be in the way. So I figured even if it rains, it'll be only 25 miles, and besides, I could use an easy day.

Tour da Parish lines up on Saturday morning

I drove out there Saturday morning and was glad to see it wasn't actually raining. The streets were pretty wet, but the turnout was good for what is typically an Alt-Giro ride, at least at the front. Being the pessimist that I am, I still wore an extra jersey as a base-layer, plus my sunscreen arm-warmers, just in case the sky opened up. I don't mind being wet, but being wet and cold is an entirely different matter. Lots of the usual Giro riders were on hand, albeit with some notable exceptions, and a number of them had ridden out to the ride in order to make up for the missing mileage.

The "altered" ride this year was basically a straight out-and-back with a random U-turn at around twelve and a half miles. A couple of miles from the start there's a section of road that is closed, and the group bypasses the closed section by riding through a couple of gates and across a short section of gravel. Naturally, as soon as the front few riders got through there they basically attacked. One or two riders dug deep and bridged up to them, but frankly I was more than happy to be in the second group. Somewhere down the road we passed some guy in a shiny blue crawfish costume who was gesturing frantically on the side of the road. Apparently that was the turn-around. Some of us rolled past it a bit before turning around, so our group got pretty split up. I eased up for a minute thinking it would come back together, but looking up ahead I could see the those riders weren't waiting. A few of us started chasing and I soon found myself on Jeff's wheel as he took a long hard pull, closing the gap significantly before blowing up. I put my head down and made a big effort, finally pulling into the draft of the group of six or seven. The rest of the way back was a somewhat messy paceline that eventually shed all but four of us. So it was a nice little ride, and I was surprised that I'd apparently gotten in a little bit of intensity here and there. Afterward, I got my $40-dollar beer and hamburger, hung around for a while, and was probably back home by 10:30 a.m.

Hope the parties were worth it.....

As I got ready for bed last night it was pouring down rain outside and I wondered if the Sunday Giro would be rained out. The temperature would be in the upper 60s, so at least there was hope. In the morning I looked outside at the damp street, and at the weather radar that wasn't making any promises, and figured I'd go ahead and ride out to Starbucks and see what happened. It was very windy, but we never got a drop of rain. On the way out, along that section where we're on the exit lane of the Interstate, with a pretty good tailwind, someone let a gap open and the group split. Naturally, I was in the wrong half, as usual. Once we got onto Chef highway we got organized into a circular paceline that was considerably less that smooth, but I guess adequate. That section was mostly headwind, so I knew it would get fast on the way back. It did. After turning onto Hayne Blvd., and with a pretty significant tailwind, the pace ramped up quickly. From Bullard to the base of the overpass the average speed was 30.5 mph, and we were up to 37.8 for a moment as we came down the other side. I was feeling pretty comfortable for most of the ride, probably thanks to the relatively easy day I had on Saturday.

So Tulane is having a bit of a COVID-19 surge right now, thanks no doubt to the combination of hurricane and Halloween "bad decisions" by some students. They went to 3 per week testing on Friday, so hopefully between that and the contact tracing it will be back under control soon. It would be a bad time to be in quarantine as a student since classes end on, I think, the 21st (exams will all be online this year).  

Long Giro, Halloween, Cold Air

 

I'm in kind of an odd position here trying to see if the camera that I put on timer is working.

Last Saturday, Lisa and Charles decided to invite a few people to do a Long Giro out to Fort Pike. The "Long Giro" has been kind of an off-season tradition for a very long time. It sometimes ends at Fort Pike, but sometimes continues to Slidell. The shorter Ft. Pike version that we did Saturday adds about 20 miles to the regular ride. 

We had a nice group of seven or eight, and the weather was pretty great. We rode out to Venetian Isles as usual with the Giro, but instead of turning around there, we continued on highway 90 over Chef Menteur where the road goes from four lanes to two. The pace was just a nice moderate paceline with a light wind with little traffic and the occasional washed-up sailboat on the roadside, thanks to the hurricane. We stopped for a little while at the marina on the north side of the Rigolets, and headed back with a bit of a tailwind. I arrived back home none the worse for wear, which was good because it was also Halloween.

For Halloween this year I'd devised a Candy Chute out of a 10' long section of PVC pipe, so I was interested to see how well it would work. I was also wondering how many kids would actually be out trick-or-treating this year, considering the COVID-19 thing. As it turned out, there were a lot of kids out with their parents. Not as many as usual, of course, but still a good turnout. Almost all were wearing their masks, and they seemed to enjoy the whole candy chute thing. Candy had prepared about a hundred small ziplock bags of candy, so it was easy to slide them down the chute into the plastic bin I'd set up at the bottom. We had Ken and Nancy over for the evening, and basically sat around on the front porch eating, drinking wine (and some champagne to celebrate Candy's retirement), and dropping candy down the chute. Gavin and Julia stopped by for a few minutes to say hello, and a couple of neighbors stopped in for a quick drink, but otherwise it was a lot more sedate than our usual open house thing.

On Sunday I did the regular Giro Ride, which wasn't a particularly hard one. Kind of typical for this time of year. A cool front came through and it was considerably cooler on Sunday morning. Likewise, it was cool on Monday as well. Along the levee, near the stables and the Jefferson Playground, a couple of big power poles with transformers on them had come down so the wires were (still are) hanging across the bike path. Easy enough to go around on the grass, of course.

This morning, Tuesday, it felt downright cold, at least to me. I guess it was maybe 52° or so. I had arm-warmers, knicks, and a vest, and even broke out the full-finger gloves, so I was OK, but those first few chilly rides each fall are always a little uncomfortable for me. On the plus side, since we switched back to standard time last Sunday, you don't need lights at all by 6 am or so. It's so nice to be able to see the road ahead! 

Hurricane Zeta Hurrication

Wednesday morning was warm and humid and windy, and as I rode out toward the lakefront to meet the WeMoRi I wondered how many riders there would be. Hurricane Zeta (we already ran out of the alpha-order people names this year) was scheduled to make landfall around mid-afternoon and New Orleans had been consistently and directly in the path for days. Also, it had intensified more than expected and would likely be a strong Category 2 when it hit. Most of everything in the city was shutting down by noon at the latest. I was a little worried about this one. It was moving super-fast, like 20 mph, so flooding and sustained rain and uprooted trees wouldn't be the big problem. The wind, however, was another matter. When you live in a 100 year old house with decades of old hidden termite damage and rotten wood, you never know what hurricane-force winds are going to do. Just the day before I'd been down in the bowels of the basement sistering up a couple of treated 2x4s to bolster some old termite-damaged floor joists under the front porch. There was other damage from rot that I didn't deal with since it would have basically required a complete rebuild of the front of the house. Anyway, I left satisfied that the floor would remain solid for a while at least.

Out on Lakeshore Drive in the pitch dark (time change is this coming Sunday) I saw a string of headlights coming in the distance and turned onto Marconi to wait to be swept up by the pack. I was surprised when only a handful of riders came by. I jumped onto the back and glanced behind me, but couldn't see any more lights. A mile or so later, once I could breathe normally again, I asked someone, "Is this it?" I think the reply was that something about  there being some more behind. Still, I was surprised there could be such a large gap because we weren't really going at what I would call a successful breakaway pace. As it turned out, the rest of the WeMoRi, which had been small to start with, had kind of splintered into multiples of two and three, explaining why we hadn't been chased down. As our group came down the Bayou St. John bridge with a couple of miles left to go, I shifted up a couple of cogs to accommodate the increased speed, went over a little bump, and dropped the chain off the outside of the chainring. This was not a normal dropped chain, though, because at the moment my front derailleur doesn't have an outer cage. So I had to drop out of the group before I could reach down and put the chain back onto the chainring with my hand. 

So Hurricane Zeta came in exactly as expected, and by 4:30 or so we were getting some pretty significant wind gusts. Around 5:30 the power went out. The hurricane went almost directly over New Orleans, so when the eye of the hurricane passed over us everything suddenly went calm for about half an hour, then just as suddenly we were back to hurricane winds, this time coming from the opposite direction. Fortunately, none of it was strong enough to do any significant damage to the house, and the big oak trees in front of, and behind, the house fared well. One house on our block had a very large oak tree branch break off and pierce the roof, which was the most significant damage I saw anywhere around. The hurricane moved through quickly, as expected, so around 9 pm I put the little generator under the back stairs and fired it up, plugging in the refrigerator. I brought the box fan that I normally have down in the basement up to the bedroom door and plugged that in too so it wouldn't be too hot to sleep. The predicted cold front hadn't quite arrived yet. By morning the temperature was starting to drop and soon the clouds moved out and we had a beautiful fall day. I didn't ride, though. The streets were littered with branches and I had a lot of cleanup to do. I'd removed most of the outside Halloween decorations the day before, so those would all have to be put out again. So yesterday I spend a couple of hours cleaning up storm debris. All of the neighbors were also out doing the same, so by mid-day the street was pretty clear and other than the rows of plastic bags things looked more or less back to normal.

Today is Candy's last day at work. She is meeting her replacement this morning, and I expect she will be back home early to officially begin her retirement. Tulane was basically closed yesterday and again today, although things at the medical school are a little different since the clinics and hospital are of course not closed. Candy is still waiting for her Medicare Part B to be put in place so she can start her Blue Cross supplemental plan or whatever. Hopefully all that will be worked out very soon.

This morning it was 54° F. We still don't have power, so it was kind of dark getting dressed with just the camp light. I went out with knickers and a long-sleeve jersey. The bike lane on Carrollton was still a mine field of broken branches and leaves, and it was overcast and dark. I turned northwest onto Willow street and when the cold wind hit me I decided to bail. The prospect of getting home cold and taking a shower without hot water sounded pretty unpleasant, and I rationalized that I could probably use a couple of days off anyway. So I turned around and went back home to put more gas in the generator, unplug the refrigerator, and plug in the coffee maker. If the sun comes out later today, maybe I'll go out again for a few miles, but right now I'm in my home office feeling pretty cold, so there's that. 

Socially Distanced Candy Chute

As expected, Entergy is making slow progress restoring power to our neighborhood. I expect other areas were prioritized, but I'm guessing we could see electricity again some time today or tomorrow. Practically the entire city was knocked out, of course, so no surprises there. Three days is pretty typical for this sort of thing, so I'm glad I have the generator to keep the refrigerator and router running, and as needed charge phones, make coffee, plug in a table lamp, etc. That generator is due for a carburetor cleaning after all of this. The last couple of times I used it - the Time Trial, and then the Tour - and of course now as well, it has been "loping" or "surging" or whatever, which is to say that it doesn't maintain a nice steady hum under low load. It is almost certainly because the tiny pilot jet opening is clogged up because of those long stretches when the generator isn't used, not to mention the old gas that I sometimes put in it. That's going to have to wait until Entergy does its thing, however. 

So there's a northshore ride in the works for tomorrow that I may or may not do. It kind of depends on what we're planning for Halloween. We normally have kind of an open house with the neighbors for Halloween, but COVID-19 has put a damper on that and I'm not entirely sure how much preparation is going to be needed. I did make a "Candy Slide" last weekend with a 10' piece of PVC pipe so we can slide candy down the the kids without them having to come up the stairs. It should at least cut down on some of the personal contact. Of course, Candy still has about twenty special Halloween baskets for kids she knows, and we'll probably have a few people over for a glass of wine or something. Anyway, I'll figure it out this evening. If we still don't have power, I'll probably not go. We'll see.   

Update: Power came back on shortly before noon!

Didn't Suck - Tour de La COVID Edition

Getting the 1/2/3s lined up for the start

The twice-postponed, shortened, Tour de Louisiane finally happened last Saturday. Afterward, someone posted, "Had a great time today..  Thanks Randy and the rest of NOBC and LAMBRA for working so hard on this.  Finally something in 2020 didn't suck." That comment really kind of captures what I, and likely a lot of the riders, was thinking. It was a shame that we couldn't put on the whole stage race, but with things being as they are it would have been difficult, possibly impossible, and I think participation would have been even lower than it was. As it was, this was only the second official USAC race in LAMBRA this year, and the only mass-start road event. In the months before the race I had been thinking that if we had 60 riders I'd be happy. 

Cat. 4/5s on the line

As it turned out we had 97 with a Cat. 4/5 field of 42. Even better, the weather finally cooperated with us. A little front came through Friday evening, and by Saturday morning the rain was over and the skies starting to clear. From my perspective, though, there were some things that felt quite different from my usual Tour de La weekend. I'd driven over to the northshore late Friday after packing up the car with race equipment. Mignon and Pat had stopped by earlier to pick up things that I couldn't fit into the Volvo - water coolers, boxes of trophies, traffic cones, caution and directional signs, etc. It's kind of amazing how much stuff we use nowadays to put on a "simple" road race. I can remember putting on some of the early Tour road races with just what I could carry in the GT-6. There were a couple of traffic cones, clipboards, stopwatches, and things like that, but no podium, tent, computers, cameras, tripods, generators, extension cords, signs, race clocks, or even trophies.

Despite the quiet night at the hotel in Covington/Mandeville, I didn't sleep very well Friday night and was up a little early, so I headed over to the Starbucks, picked up coffee and a scone, and headed for Stoney Point. Usually for the Tour it's around dawn when I leave, but this was October rather than June and it was dark. Really dark. A little leftover mist fell onto the windshield here and there, and although some of the back roads would still be wet, I knew the rain was gone. In order to minimize contact, especially with sharing pens and shuffling paper, we were relying on the online waivers this year. We had also required pre-registration, so Mignon handled number pick-up pretty much on her own. Usually we have three or four people handling registration as I'm frantically entering rider information into the computer. That gave me time to set up the USAC banners along the finish stretch as Ricky got the cameras and everything set up at the finish line. It was all relatively low-stress. Before I knew it, it was 8:50 and time to call the Cat. 1/2/3s to the line. I delivered my usual instructions and cautions about the cracks on the bridges and the broken-up asphalt on the back side of the course, and sent them off right on time. Since we were doing just the road race this year, we would not need to get finish times for everyone, with made judging even easier. We'd also shortened the Cat. 1/2/3 race by one 16-mile lap, so everyone would be doing 4 laps except the Women/Junior group that was doing 3. As I'd expected, the Cat. 1/2/3s lapped the Women, who had started 25 minutes after them, so while they are usually the last group to finish, this year they were they were the first.

Old guys on the podium

Judging was pretty easy this year. Most of the groups had broken up a little bit, with breakaways in all but the Cat. 4/5s, so we really only needed to go to the cameras (we had two linescan cameras and one GoPro running) for that pack sprint. Otherwise it was easy to place riders by eye. 

After the race we had a bunch of awards to give out. Each race had an overall prizelist plus a 3-deep bonus for the secondary categories (like the Cat. 3s in the Cat. 1/2/3 race and the Cat. 4s in the Cat. 4/5 race). Then on top of that, the race was doubling as the LAMBRA Road Championship, so there were 3-deep medals for the various classes and categories as well. It was a little confusing, of course.

Hurricane Zeta expected on Wednesday

I was very happy that there had not been any crashes in the large Cat. 4/5 field. In fact, the only crash all day was one of the riders in the Cat. 1/2/3 break who just caught the edge of the road and went down. I think he still finished, though. In the Master's race, Frank Moak rolled off the front and held off for I think a lap or so to finish solo. Lisa and Julia, the only Cat. 1/2/3s in the Women's race, broke away and finished well ahead of the small chase group. In all, I was really happy with how everything went, and I think the riders were also really happy to finally have an actual race where they could see each other at least once this season. I kind of wish more of them had donned their face masks after the races, but I really had no time or desire to be policing that.

So we wrapped up the awards, tore down all of the finish line stuff, loaded up the cars, and I was back on the road home by 2:20 or so. I have to admit I kind of missed the excitement of having to post and print out the Road Race results and then rush over to set up the Time Trial course for the evening TT stage, and then post those results, have a quick dinner with the other officials, and get ready for the Sunday criteriums in Covington. On the other hand, it was quite a relief to have everything wrapped up and to be back home before 4:00 p.m. 

Next year will the Tour's 50th anniversary, having never missed a year. There are not many races in the U.S. that could ever say that. You might have thought that the Katrina year would have been the biggest risk of breaking the continuity, but in fact this year easily presented the greatest threat. Will we be able to put on the full stage race in 2021? Nobody's making any promises yet, but I'm expecting we will.

Something missing.....

Meanwhile, after having to postpone our original early October date, there's another hurricane heading straight for us. This will be the 6th hurricane this year for which we have been in the "cone." Fortunately, it's late in the season so the intensity will probably be relatively low - Category 1 at the worst I think. Yesterday morning my front derailleur broke. The outer carbon-fiber plate had finally just worn through after upward of 80,000 miles. I shouldn't be surprised, I guess. I knew it was close to wearing through for the past year or so. I ended up ordering a replacement from England. It's the model after the 2011-14 version that I have and so the pull won't be quite the same, but front derailleurs aren't really indexed like rear derailleurs, so hopefully it will work fine. Finding an actual replacement for the Super Record one that I had was practically impossible without paying for it as if it was some kind of rare antique.

Winter Wind

Just a skeleton crew for the Sunday Giro today

Last week was mostly routine, riding-wise - 298 miles, mostly easy, occasionally super hard. Situation normal. The weather has been rather nice. As always happens this time of year, those of us out on our bikes in the dark at 6 a.m. are the first to notice the coming of fall. It seems like it gets noticeably darker from morning to morning. Another little cool front came through around Friday, and I was a little chilly riding out to the Giro Saturday morning despite a light base layer and thin sunscreen arm-warmers. The temperature, however, wasn't really the thing that got me thinking of winter. It was the wind. Saturday morning's ride was accompanied by a 10-12 mph ENE wind that felt kind of different. It was that dry, steady wind we get in the winter.

I have a love-hate relationship with wind. Mostly hate. The Giro route is mostly an east-west route, so I knew from experience to expect a few things. You might think that doing a group ride with a headwind would be harder than without. You'd be wrong.  Well, unless you were one of the four or five riders up at the front of the group doing all of the work. In reality, a stiff headwind makes it much easier to stay with a good-sized group. The wind keeps the pace slower, and the benefit of being in the draft, and indeed the length of that draft, is considerably greater. Riding in a group under those conditions is relatively easy. dropping back a couple of bike lengths doesn't seem to matter much, so it's easy to stay in contact. I should know. I spent approximately zero time in the wind on the way out to Venetian Isles on Saturday. I admit I was being a little bit lazy, but there was method to my laziness. The fact that every headwind implies an equal and opposite tailwind told me that it was going to get fast on the way back. It did.

I guess the average speed for much of the return trip on Chef Highway was in the 30-31 mph range. You'd think that being on a group ride with a nice tailwind like that would be easy. You'd be wrong again. I often tell new riders, "Never let a gap open in a tailwind."  Why?  Well, the draft zone is short, which means that if you find yourself two or three bike-lengths behind the rider in front, you're in trouble. So while riding in the group in a headwind gives you a lot of flexibility, riding in a group in a tailwind at 30+ mph requires careful attention. Everybody's trying to stay close to the wheel in front, so it can get kind of stressful. To make matters worse, you have to be constantly watching what's going on a few wheels ahead because it just takes one rider to open one of those un-closeable gaps at that speed. I was almost a victim of that on Saturday when someone put the hammer down after the Goodyear sprint and I had to red-line it for a bit to avoid being on the wrong side of the ensuing split. Of course it mostly came back together on Bullard, but as soon as we turned east on Hayne the speed kind of went through the roof again. I kind of threw in the towel pretty early on that stretch and rode the last couple of miles with a few other riders.

Sunday I went out to Starbucks wondering if we'd even have enough riders for a Giro Ride. The annual Tour de Jefferson was Sunday and over the past few years is has practically become the unofficial New Orleans Westbank World Championships. I've done it a number of times and it's always fast, we usually take a wrong turn somewhere, and I never even come close to drinking enough post-ride beer to justify the entry fee, which was $50-60 this year. So this year I decided to skip it. I'll ride the Tour da Parish ride in November, which is pretty similar in that it's a lot of the Giro riders setting the pace. Anyway, as it turned out we had a nice little group for the Giro, and with the lack of horsepower the pace was mostly pretty moderate. Also, the wind had died down a bit. I was feeling kind of tired, so it's probably a good thing that I didn't do the Tour de Jefferson ride.