Up Around Natchez

Remind me to put the old guy in back next time.

Saturday was the annual Tulane Cycling training camp up at Natchez State Park where the club rents a couple of cabins. Friday morning I met Gavin for a 2-person coffee ride. As soon as I stood up on the pedals, one of the aluminum spoke nipples on my old climbing wheel that has been my training wheel for the past couple of years broke. I think that was about the seventh spoke nipple to break on that wheel. It's basically a science experiment for me now to see just how long I can keep replacing spoke nipples before the braking surface wears through. We limped over to my house so I could swap wheels before continuing the ride.

On the Trace heading out

Anyway, I ended up driving up to Natchez alone this year, arriving around 6:00 pm on Friday. A few of the riders had gone up early and already done a ride, and as I was driving into the park I saw Dustin driving out, on his way to pick up some pizzas. Although, as it ultimately turned out, I wasn't needed for transportation this year, I was looking forward to Saturday's ride. The weather would be in the 40s at the start, but by the end would probably be around 60, and there was no rain in the forecast until Sunday. While I normally stay up there for both the Saturday and Sunday rides, this year my plan was to drive back Saturday night so that I could do the NOBC Sunday northshore ride. Well, at least that was the plan until I cancelled the Sunday ride some time around noon on Friday. The forecast for Sunday was calling for rain pretty much all day both in Natchez and New Orleans, and I didn't really see much hope that anyone was going to be riding in a cold rain.

So the drive up to Natchez went really smoothly and I rolled up to the cabins just a few minutes past 6:00. Going to a ride in the Volvo wagon by myself might be a little lonely, but on the plus side, I can just roll the bike into the back all in one piece, along with my bag of cycling gear and anything else I might want to bring along. For this ride I had just thrown pretty much everything into my bag, so I was well equipped for a temperature range of 28 degrees to 70 degrees. After eating and building a little, mostly decorative, fire in the fireplace, I think everyone about hit the sack fairly early - around 10:30 I guess. I rolled out my old down sleeping bag onto the couch, filled the stuff sack with clothes to make a pillow, and slept fairly well under the circumstances. We'd already decided to push the start time back to 9:00 since the temperature was supposed to rise by about ten degrees right after sunrise.

Saturday morning I was up early making coffee as Dustin whipped up some eggs for everyone. It was still in the 30s, but once the sun came up it started to warm up quickly. Still, I opted to dress pretty warmly with bib knickers, thermal base layer, long-sleeve jersey, wind vest, skull cap, and winter gloves. I knew some of that would end up in my pockets, but I also knew we'd be stopping a few times and it was never going to get really fast.

After the obligatory group photo at the cabins, the 9-rider group headed out to the park exit a couple of miles down the road. This is always where we find out really quickly who will be pushing the pace and who will eventually be off the back. That's not unexpected, of course, since there is always a wide range of experience and general fitness for these rides. The park road actually has some of the most significant climbs of the whole ride, so it always seems to split up along here.

Hanging out at the coffee shop in Natchez

Once we re-grouped, we headed out onto the Natchez Trace, turning north and riding a few miles to 553, which comes back around to the south past the old church and ends at Emerald Mound road. By then we had a few riders off the back, so we sent them on the shorter and more direct route into Natchez on the Trace while the rest of us took the longer route down Emerald Mound Road, which would be smoother if it was just gravel, MLK, and Cemetery Road, which is gravel, or in this case nicely packed dirt. Of course since we no longer had to worry about riders getting too far off the back, the pace picked up a bit. On one of the hilly sections things split into two groups, but they were never very far apart. We turned onto Cemetery Road together, but again we quickly split into two groups on this dirt road. Fortunately, it was nicely packed dirt without very much actual gravel at all, so for the most part it was pretty fast. There were a couple of "oh shit" moments when we did hit some actual gravel in the curves, but everyone negotiated those pretty well, which is to say nobody crashed.

The start of the Natchez Trace heading out of town.

Once in Natchez we rode up and down the Bluff a couple of times - the old road was flooded at the bottom because of the high river level, so we had to make that one an out-and-back as well. Then we headed to the Natchez Coffee Company on the old Natchez Classic stage race criterium course. The ride back down the Trace was nice Park-Legal single paceline for the front group, with a smaller group following behind at an easier pace. Dustin and Gavin kind of caught me by surprise when they decided to sprint it out for the last half mile or so of the Trace. Julia went with them, but way too late to catch the draft.

Back at the cabins there was a ton of food, and as Dustin started cooking up his Red Beans and Rice we went out to the road and practiced water-bottle handups and criterium starts. A few riders really needed to work on clipping in quickly, so that was probably helpful. I hung around until the RB&R was ready while the rest of the crew played some sort of game, the name of which I didn't get, that involved spies and resistance and teams. I guess I headed back home around 7:00 p.m. in order to avoid any chance of getting caught in the rain that was supposed to come through later in the night, so I was back home around 10:00. Sunday was rained out as expected, and although I might have gone out on the wet streets late in the evening, I didn't. After all, it's still just January.

Right Off the Back

A red sky at morning today as we finished the WeMoRi

I was running late from the start. A quick check of the temperature had me reaching for the long tights and thermal base layer and I hustled to make up for those extra five minutes I'd taken before rolling out of bed. I grabbed the keys, camera, HRM, and phone on the way down to the basement, then burned more time pulling on shoe-covers and winter gloves. By the time I fired up the Garmin and checked the time it was already after 5:45 a.m. It's kind of amazing how close we cut things in the mornings once we have an established routine. Five or six extra minutes can completely upset the apple cart.

Me, Hunter, and Rich at Tour le Fleur, '03

It was cold outside, but at least the wind had finally died down to something more normal. Still, I knew I wouldn't be able to make up enough time on my way to the lakefront to meet the WeMoRi group out on Lakeshore Drive. I was just approaching City Park when I heard my 6:00 a.m. alarm. The group usually rounds the turn from Lakeshore Drive to Marconi around 6:10. When I got to Robt. E. Lee I turned left, riding down to the last street before Marconi, looking for the telltale gaggle of headlights from the group. I cut across the neutral ground, glancing back every few seconds until I saw them coming, and waited to hear them coming up from behind. I didn't look back again, and when I heard the sound of tires I sped up, merging into an opening just four or five riders from the front. It was farther up than I wanted to be, but you've got to take what you can get. We were already to the turn onto Wisner, and by then the sudden increase in effort was starting to take its toll. Up ahead I saw Jaden stand up and attack, so I eased out of the line to avoid creating a big gap for those behind me. My plan, as it usually is in these situations, was to drop to the back of the group where there would be more of a draft until my metabolism caught up with my legs. Charles came past me and latched onto the wheel I'd been on.  Then nothing.  I looked back.  WTF???  I'd dropped right off the back of the group, and I use the term loosely in this case. I was shocked to discover that this morning's group was super small, no doubt due to the temperature in the upper 30s and all those smart trainers people must have gotten for Christmas. I stood up and took a good look behind me, and could see a couple of headlights, but they weren't going anywhere near the speed of the group I'd dropped off of, so when I got to Harrison I cut across the park to Marconi and turned left to look for the group and get back into it. Once again, I turned around when I saw headlights. This time just Jaden came flying past me. I looked back again and saw what was left of the group about 15 second back, so I finally got back in with them for the last bit of the ride. Jaden was already in another zip code by then. After rounding the fountain traffic circle on Lakeshore Drive and coming over the bridge Norman went to the front and basically pulled us all the way to Canal Blvd. with me hanging onto his antique time trial wheel until Brian and a couple of others finally jumped for the Shelter #1 sprint.

After the usual cool-down on Lakeshore Drive I headed over to Starbucks for my WeMoRi cup of coffee. By the time I left there about fifteen minutes later I was already getting pretty chilled from the sweat that had accumulated under my vest, which made the ride back home feel really cold.

Blue Sky and Strong Wind

It seemed like the first day of Winter ... again.

Looking at the weather forecast for last Sunday I was a little worried that the combination of a 15 mph North wind, starting temperature in the upper 30s (passes for cold around here), and a route that started with about 30 miles straight North, might put a dent in the turnout for the NOBC Winter Ride Series #3. Fortunately there are still some riders who don't retreat to their living rooms and draft Zwift avatars around virtual courses that always look like they are mostly over water. The parking lot at the Lee Road ballpark was far from empty when I arrived, and by the time our 8:30 a.m. start rolled around we had over twenty riders bundled up with varying amounts of thermal lycra ready to go. Of course, there were a couple, who shall remain nameless, who we lost even before we started. They stepped out of their cars, got a good blast of the cold north wind, and quickly came up with a perfectly acceptable reason to go back home, but of course these winter rides are not always about reasonableness.

Heading out along Louisiana Tung Road

As bad as the wind and cold might have been, we were at least treated to a spectacular clear blue sky, and that is something that always makes a cold ride feel better. Well, at least after the first ten miles or so. Winter rides on the northshore are often kind of a compromise. On the one hand, it's always quite a bit colder than it is on the southshore where the lake tends to warm the air a bit before it pours over the seawall into the city. On the other hand, the tree-lined country roads buffer the winter wind quite a bit.

For this ride I'd mapped out a 77 mile route up through the town of State Line, La., which as you might guess is just a stone's throw from the east-west Florida Parishes line of Mississippi. What we usually refer to as "the Northshore" is the area that was called the "Parroquias de Florida,"  that were part of the British colonial territory of "West Florida" and the subject of all sorts of disputes among France, Spain, England, and eventually the United States. It got so bad at one point that they just got together and declared themselves the Republic of West Florida, which didn't last long. But I digress...

There was a fair amount of horsepower in attendance on Sunday, so I knew that the ride would be no walk in the park, but fortunately my only super-power, drafting, would no doubt save me a few watts, at least for the first 30 miles that went essentially straight north. Also, fortunately, VJ and Todd seemed happy to spend long stretches of time at the front towing the group up toward Enon, Pine, and State Line. A number of riders turned back at La 10, a few miles before we got to Pine, so I guess we were down to 15 or so after that. I never did take a good count. Anyway, up at the top of the course we turned east to start a fun and hilly section that would eventually take us back to the south where we stopped for a while at the store in Pine. From there we went back to La. 10, turned southeast, and did basically the second half of the traditional 60-something mile ride through Plainview, along S. Choctaw and Dummyline and back through Enon, most of which with a nice little tailwind.

Store stop in Pine

The stretch from La. 10 to Sie Jenkins road always gets fast, and indeed it did so on this ride as well. That effort over the three hills on Highway 439 split a few riders off the back. When we got to the turn onto Sie Jenkins Road, I knew that VJ and one other rider were a minute or two off the back, but VJ had told me earlier that he had the map loaded onto his computer, and he's done the ride before when we turned there, so instead of stopping we just rode easy along Sie Jenkins waiting for them to catch up. Unfortunately, they missed the turn (we'd gone straight there we weekend before) but eventually called someone in the group, so we waited a few minutes while they back-tracked to meet back up with us. By the time we got to S. Choctaw a few riders were starting to struggle a bit, so there were a couple more re-groupings until we got to Enon. By then it's pretty hard to get lost since you just have to remember to take the first paved road to the left after the firetower-that-ain't-there-no-more hill. The front group kept up a fairly good pace from there back to the ballpark. Naturally, we had a nice tailwind for most of the way back, so that made it a lot more fun.

I got up Monday morning with sore legs and decided it might be a good day to take off!

Shoeless on the Northshore

Early in the ride on Louisiana Tung Road

Last Sunday was the second Northshore Winter Ride Series ride, and as usual I didn't really know what to expect. The temperature would be in the upper 40s for the start, and although I was hoping for some sunshine to warm things up later in the morning, it never did materialize. Driving across the Causeway I could see a solid layer of high fog hovering about thirty feet up. Fortunately, that left driving conditions nice and clear, but unfortunately it also kept me from seeing the sky. As it turned out, it wouldn't have mattered because we never saw the sky anyway.

65 miles without riding shoes

Arriving at the Lee Road Ballpark, aka the St. Tammany Parish Recreation District 6 park, I was pleased to see a pretty big group on hand for the planned 65 mile ride. By the time we started, we had over twenty riders. I'd arrived a good twenty minutes early, so I took my time selecting my wardrobe for the day. I assumed it would warm up at least a little, and decided to under-dress slightly for the start. At the last minute Dustin rolled in and parked next to my car. I already had my helmet and gloves on, and he looked at me and said, "where are your shoes?"  That's when I remembered where my shoes were. They were sitting on the floor in the basement in front of a fan, which meant they weren't in my bag. I'd ridden in some rain on Friday and when I got home I'd put them there to dry out. Then Saturday was a wash-out, so I didn't ride at all. As a result, they weren't where they usually are and I completely forgot to put them in my bag. I guess it was fortunate that I was wearing running shoes rather than my slip-on leather Merrell shoes. Over the years I've shown up at rides missing a few things. Usually it's something like a pair of gloves, or socks, or even a helmet, but this was the first time I'd left my riding shoes at home. Oh, well - only one thing to do: ride in running shoes. First time for everything, I guess. As it turned out, it wasn't quite as bad as I'd expected. Naturally I couldn't respond very quickly to surges or hills, and at one point I forgot I didn't have cleats and tried to bunny-hop something. It was ugly, but at least I didn't crash.

So we were just a few miles into the ride, somewhere before the firetower hill, when Dustin dropped a glove before stopping to take off his vest and stuff it into his pocket. I turned around right after he did because I wasn't sure he realized he'd dropped the glove. The group, however, didn't stop. Then the didn't stop to wait at Enon, or at Dummyline Road. Dustin basically chased for miles, towing me and my running shoes behind, until we about caught them at the Tullos Road fork. At that point, fearing that I'd have trouble with the punchy little hills along that road, I told Dustin I would continue straight ahead and meet them when at 1072. I guess I rode a mile down 1072 when I got there before I saw them coming toward me, at which time I turned around and merged into the group as it went by. By then I was starting to feel a little more confident about the whole running shoe situation, and I didn't have much trouble the rest of the ride as long as I anticipated the climbs. As it turned out, though, I wouldn't be spending much time with the group anyway that day.

The front of the group turning into the ballpark at the end of the ride - still overcast

The top of the route has a long stretch heading east toward Bogalusa that has three nice little climbs on it. It always gets fast along there, and the group always splits, and this time was no exception. I was feeling pretty good by then and although a couple of riders got off the front for a while, the second group eventually caught them, but not after shedding a number of riders. So when we got to the end of that stretch we stopped to re-group. Most riders were only a minute or so back and soon appeared, but one rider was definitely missing. Charles and I started riding back to look for him and pace him back to the intersection. We probably rode a mile or so back and never saw him, so by then I figured he'd either turned around or taken a shortcut (the latter turned out to be correct), so we turned around and headed back to meet up with the group. Unfortunately, they'd started getting cold and decided to head out without us. When we turned onto La 60 we caught one brief glimpse of a tail light, but that was about it.

We'd been left for dead and they weren't waiting for us.

So we continued on in 2-man time trial mode, eventually picking up a couple of riders they had dropped. When the four of us got to S. Choctaw Road, we decided to take a slight short-cut by continuing down 60 to 16 to Enon, which I figured would cut out about ten minutes and should put us a bit ahead of the group at Enon. That turned out to be exactly what happened, except that the group went flying past us without warning somewhere between Enon and Firetower Hill, so we had another little chase on our hands to catch up with them.

It was a really good ride, actually, despite having to take two short-cuts and not having my cleats, and I probably did more work than I would have if I'd been with the group all day. Surprisingly, I ended up with almost the same mileage as if I'd done the whole ride with the group because I'd backtracked a few times to pick up stragglers.

The Winter Ride Series

Part of the group around the fire-tower hill on the way to Enon

About a million years ago, or maybe more like 48 years ago, a few NOBC riders picked me up at my house and drove me up to Donaldsonville, Louisiana. We were up there to check out a potential criterium course, and also to do a long ride along the river. I don't recall exactly when it was, but I do recall that it was a freezing cold winter day. My winter cycling wardrobe at the time consisted of cotton knee-socks, cotton cycling shorts, a short-sleeve wool jersey, and I assume some sort of highly permeable warm-up jacket. I probably had one small water bottle and no food. Mostly, I just remember it being a hard, freezing cold, windy ride and getting dropped along with Mike Schramel on the way back. As I recall, we stopped at some little store to pick up enough to get us back alive. As bad as the ride was, it served as a valuable learning experience, and although funds were limited, I embarked on a decades-long quest through which I gradually acquired enough winter gear to make most January days at least tolerable. That criterium course in Donaldsonville ended up being the course for the first Tour de Louisiane, aka Louisiana, and luckily it was published for posterity in a local New Orleans rag called the Vieux Carre' Courier.

The NOBC Winter Ride Series

Fast-forward to last Sunday morning, 2020. I check the hourly temperature forecast for Covington on weather.com and pull open a big deep drawer packed with cycling clothes. It's a bit of a tough call, with a starting temperature in the 40s but a finishing temperature closer to 60. With that 48-year-old cold trauma still haunting my winter clothing decisions, I decide to go for warmth at the start rather than comfort (or speed) at the end. I pull on the long tights, a short-sleeve thermal base layer, a thin long-sleeve base layer with Windstopper panels, and a long-sleeve jersey. I know I'll be hot by the end but I don't care. It won't be a race and I know we'll be stopping a few times along the way.

Out at the Lee Road Ballpark an hour later the sky is clear and the wind is light. There is a big Saints playoff game scheduled to start at noon, and there had been a big gravel race in Jackson the day before, so I'm not expecting a big group. Eight of us roll out at 8:30 for a nice 64-mile ride that I know by heart. There isn't enough horsepower, or willpower, in the group to make it too fast, which is perfect. This will be the first time I'll be riding on something that isn't flat as a pancake in months, and I am pretty sure that all those little hills will take their toll on my legs regardless of the speed.

It's about half-way through this particular course that you start to figure out who is going to be suffering the most. A couple of riders are already having some difficulty on the little uphills, but that's to be expected this time of year, so we wait for them to catch up at each intersection. For this ride, everyone is on the same page. The pace is fairly steady, with just an occasional, and short, surge here and there. By the time we're fifteen miles from the end I'm already wishing I'd left one of those base layers in the car. Situation normal. I'm back home around 1:30 with a solid 65 miles and empty stomach.

I think we should have a bigger group next Sunday, weather permitting. Of course there's another gravel race, this one up in Oxford, on Saturday. The forecast right now is for rain Friday and Saturday, although it's still early so things could change. Regardless, any significant chance of wet dirt roads is enough to keep me from making the trip, mainly because the widest tires I can fit onto my old Orbea are 26 mm, which would work OK for dry conditions. If it's muddy at all, the scant couple of millimeters of frame clearance would quickly clog up and bring me to a grinding halt. The only other alternative would be to use the old Pennine with cyclocross tires, I guess, but since I harbor no deeply existential reasons for doing long hard cold wet rides on unpaved roads on a 48 year-old bike, it's kind of a non-starter. I'll leave the option open if we get a spectacularly nice winter Saturday, I guess, but even then I'd have to register early enough to get in under the field limit, which will probably just cause a collision with my general lack of commitment about riding on bumpy roads when there are readily available paved ones all over the place.  But I digress....

Last night I attended the Bike Easy development group meeting. It seems that somehow I am on the Bike Easy Board. It should be interesting, I guess. Hopefully it won't conflict much with riding or racing.

Out at the turnaround at Ormond Tuesday morning

This morning I went out to the 6 am levee ride where we had most of the regulars on hand. I was surprised how strong the wind was, and indeed it was enough to cause all but three of us to turn around early. Fortunately, just before the turnaround we picked up that big guy on the Lindsky who I think lives out around there, so we had a nice group of four for most of the rest of the ride. The gusty crosswind, however, made it much harder than expected. At one point I was on the front and thinking I was going pretty good and riding strongly, only to look down and see that, in fact, my speed was an unimpressive 21.5 mph. Granted, my cadence was fast, and my heart rate was fast. It was just my speed that sucked.

You'd think I'd be used to that by now.

2020

New Year Day ride out to the Spillway

I started 2020 with a ride on the levee out to the Spillway. We'd done the same for the past couple of years, and when someone reminded me of it I figured it would be a nice change from yet another Giro Ride. I also figured it would be a nice smooth easy 50 miles to start the new year. I figured wrong.

Yeah, I was there too.

So I was up at around 4 a.m. on New Year's day to bring Danielle and Shannon to the airport for their flight back to Seattle and then their drive down to Olympia. I guess I kind of napped for an hour or so when I got back home, but it wasn't really worth going back to bed, even though the NYD ride wouldn't be starting until 7:00. Arriving at the starting point, near the Jefferson Playground, I was happy to see a nice group of a dozen or so that was basically just waiting for me to show up. Heading upriver we had to negotiate a lot of areas where the bike path was covered in fireworks debris, but pretty soon Jeff rode past us, commenting that we were going too slowly for him to warm up. We had a bit of a tailwind and a couple of riders keeping the pace fast at the front, so our average speed on the way out was nearly 24 mph. The ride back was fairly fast as well, despite a bit of a cross-headwind, so I was pretty happy with the 51 miles I logged for the first day of the new decade. The only problem was that the wind we were dealing with was pulling in a lot of moisture from the Gulf and the forecast for the next couple of days was not looking good.

On Thursday morning I looked at the radar and it looked like I might be able to get in a few miles before the inevitable rain started. Just as I arrived at the levee, where I met up with Charles, a very light drizzle started. I thought maybe it was just a really brief thing, so we headed out anyway, but within a couple of miles it because obvious that we were going to be getting pretty wet. We pulled the plug at the bridge and turned around - a decision I did not regret. The light rain continued, and just as I got a few blocks from home it got heavier. While I made it back inside before getting really soaked, I knew Charles wouldn't be so lucky. He wasn't. The extra few miles he had to ride were done in a steady rain.

Heading back home early on Oak Street trying to beat the worst of the rain

Friday was non-stop rain from morning until night. I didn't even get out of bed to look out the window when I awoke, since I could hear the rain falling already. I ended up taking the car to work. My brother's son James and family were staying at the house, but I needed to be at work, so I missed the trip to the Aquarium.

This morning I was up around 5:30 to ride and to say goodbye to the family that was driving back to Austin. I headed out to Starbucks as they hit the road to Texas. A cold front had come through and it was a little chilly with a 15 mph wind blowing, so I over-dressed as usual, which made my ride to Starbucks quite comfortable. The ride itself was marked by at least three flats and one mechanical that resulted in the group splitting up into two or three parts, but otherwise it was a decent enough ride. Tomorrow we start our NOBC winter ride series on the northshore. It will be chilly but we aren't starting until 8:30 so the sun should be out by then and I'm not expecting it to be too cold or windy. It will be nice to be out in the rolling countryside for a change. Hopefully we will have a nice group. I'm not expecting this ride to be particularly fast, and we'll be re-grouping at intersections, so that's good. It will probably get fast for a couple of short stretches if everyone's on the same page. We'll see.