Incremental Progress

Social distancing at the spillway. That little dot in the sky is an eagle.

This evening I took the old Orbea off of the trainer, put the saddle pack in its correct position, replaced the correct stem, repaired the broken brake cable, and hung it up on its hook in the basement. I'd been riding on the levee since the 25th and it was time to commit to the road. Progress since last week has been incremental, but perceptible. Early in the week I figured out that taking a couple of Tylenol after riding made a big difference, so that's one thing that made it feasible. Over the course of the week I started adding a little mileage each day (OK, I skipped a couple of days). Along the way I learned a couple of things. For one, I found that I had to actually think about pushing down with my left leg. If I didn't I'd find myself shifting most of the work to the other leg, almost unconsciously, and slowing down. Also, applying more balanced force on both pedals relieved some of the uncomfortable saddle pressure. So faster and slightly less painful. On the other hand, after almost two months off the bike my neck and shoulders were starting to hurt. So naturally I decided to do a longer ride this morning. I planned to ride out to Ormond and back on the levee, which would be around 40 miles.

Social Distanced Non-Drafting

Early in the ride a 3-rider group came by going just a bit faster than I. Although I wasn't really comfortable drafting on the back of the group, I found it fairly easy to up my pace by the extra half a mph and hang five or six bike lengths behind. Then, somewhere out past LaRose, Steve came up from behind, so we ended up riding all the way out to the Spillway. They just closed the spillway, but there is still a lot of water rushing through, and there were a lot of white pelicans scooping up the fish coming through the cracks. Charlie D. had called Steve so they could meet up, so we picked him up on the way back. I was definitely starting to feel the miles by the time I was ten miles from home. My neck and upper back were hurting and for the first time in a while I felt like I'd some some kind of workout, even though I barely cracked 20 mph. So I guess I'll see how I feel in the morning and make a decision about what to do. I think a shorter ride may be in order.

Meanwhile, here in New Orleans, there is clearly a lot more activity going on out there. There's more traffic out on the roads, and tons of bikes on the bike path. The local bike shops are selling bikes as fast as they can assemble them. It's kind of a problem for some people, however, because getting a bike fixed is apparently taking a lot longer than normal because the shops are all backed-up. Of course, we're still on the same stay-home order, and everyone in the grocery stores are wearing masks and standing six feet apart and everything. Restaurants are all strictly in take-out mode, and most people who still have jobs are working from home. Tulane Medical School is planning to start phasing staff back to work on the 18, I guess on the assumption that the mayor and governor will relax some of the restrictions after the 15th when the current orders expire. No word yet on the main campus.

I'm not sure if my office would be included on the 18th. Anyway, the metrics on COVID-19 in the city itself have been trending downward for almost two weeks, although most of that has been the positive tests rather than the deaths. Tulane hospital has only a few COVID-19 patients on ventilators, and some non-emergency surgeries and clinic visits. The state is trying to hold out until the 15th before easing restrictions since cases are still not leveling out in some areas. Relatively speaking, New Orleans is doing pretty good. Of course, the pressure to get the economy going is rising exponentially. There is still a very good chance we will see increasing infections and deaths as restrictions are relaxed - basically a second wave - so making plans for anything through the end of the year, at least, is still quite a guessing game.