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!