Long Mardi Gras Weekend

Thoth

By 3:00 p.m. the Friday before Mardi Gras I was probably the only person left on the 6th floor. Parades had started in earnest on Wednesday, but weather-related issues had caused some shuffling of the deck. As a result, parades were starting at 4:45 p.m. on Friday. Also as a result, all work ended at 3:00 p.m. on Friday. My regular Thursday ride had been rained out, and on Friday's morning Tulane ride it had been so windy we'd turned back almost as soon as we hit Lakeshore Drive. Fortunately, Saturday's weather was looking better.

Saturday (or Sunday?) Giro out on Chef Highway

610 Stompers at Thoth

With all of the parades and everything going on, I wasn't surprised that the weekend Giro Ride turnouts were a little on the light side, not that it made them any easier. Saturday's ride kind of came apart right after Hayne Blvd. when the three or four riders on TT bikes, among others, started really pushing the pace. Some riders had to turn back early anyway for the aforementioned reasons, so after a small contingent rode off the front the rest of us settled down into a more reasonable pace. Then on Sunday we basically repeated what had happened on Saturday. It was all fine, of course, as everyone's mind was on other things.

Floats lining up before Endymion on Saturday. Someone was run over and killed by one of them.

After getting home on Sunday, I rode over to Magazine Street and watched the Krewe of Thoth parade. It is by far the regular parade with the most "neighborhood" feel to it, with a charitable purpose, a special route that intentionally goes past hospitals and nursing homes, and lots of local high school bands. At some point on Sunday's Giro Ride, Noel had brought up the idea of doing another ride on Monday, since a lot of people, myself included, had "Lundi Gras" off from work. We decided to do a levee ride out to the Spillway, not in small part to avoid spending too much time on the roads on a workday with lots of tourists in town. That ride started out with a small group and little wind, but by the time we were 25 miles upriver at the Spillway the wind was picking up from the southeast, which made for a surprisingly hard ride back into town. I was still a little tired from the weekend Giro Rides, even though they had not been particularly hard, so I was more than happy to ease up for the last five miles and soft-pedal the rest of the way home. As expected, it rained during the night, but also as expected the weather had moved through by morning, leaving us with a pretty nice forecast for Mardi Gras.

Rex and Queen - 7 a.m. before breakfast and costumes

Tuesday morning I got up early and did a few miles on the levee before riding down to Audubon Park for the Royal Run. This is kind of a special and little-known event that has been going on now for quite a long time. The King and Queen of Rex show up in their limousines at 7 a.m., the Rex Captain says a few words, there is a toast or two (yes, there's champagne and king cake), and a short little unofficial run around the park ensues. They hand out free Rex T-shirts, and this year added something new - official Rex shoe-laces. I think this year's Queen actually runs. It will be interesting to see if that becomes a new tradition.

Along the way from uptown to the French Quarter

By 8:00 a.m. I was ready to head out to St. Charles Avenue to watch the Rex parade, although it wasn't until about 8:45 that Candy and I actually got on the bikes and headed out. We locked the bikes up with no fewer than five locks to the Sacred Heart iron fence and walked down St. Charles a few blocks to chat with Adam Watts at Marengo Street. They we went a few more blocks to say hello to Ginger and Bill in front of the Columns Hotel. We ended up watching all of Rex just across the street from them before starting our annual hike down to the French Quarter. With the temperature in the 60s, albeit without any sun, there were a lot of people in costume this year. As we walked, I watched a few people zoom by on the new electric-assist Jump Bikes. They were generally going a bit faster than I'd recommend under the circumstances. We stopped for lunch in the warehouse district before crossing Canal Street into the Quarter.

People having fun down in the French Quarter, around 3 p.m.

I walked around the French Quarter for an hour or so taking photos of people letting go and having fun, and before I knew it, it was after 4 p.m. The walk back home always seems twice as long as the walk there, and we got back to the bikes with tired feet just as it was getting dark. I guess I walked around ten miles.

This morning I was out the door just before 5:45 to ride out to the lake to meet the WeMoRi. It was windy as hell out of the north, and as I was coming down the Wisner overpass I saw the string of lights heading the other way. They had, not entirely surprisingly, decided to throw the regular route out the window in order to avoid the 30 mph wind on Lakeshore Drive and were instead doing two laps around City Park. I couldn't turn around to get in with them because of the neutral ground, so I cut across the park on Harrison past numerous abandoned Jump Bikes, turned onto Marconi, and finally got into the group as it turned from Marconi onto Robt. E. Lee to start the second lap. The pace escalated quickly with the tailwind, and after taking a couple of super-short pulls and having almost nobody come around, a couple of riders split off the front leaving the rest to mount a brief and largely ineffective chase as things rapidly unraveled. Situation normal, I guess. Afterward I stopped for a quick coffee at Starbucks before putting the wind at my back for an easy ride back home.