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.