Double Trouble, Triple Threat

First TUCA ride of the semester - masked

It's been an interesting week. I've gotten in about the usual amount of riding. The COVID numbers have remained stable. Tulane started classes on Wednesday, and by the way there are TWO storms heading into the Gulf of Mexico and we're in the probability cone of both. 

They always seem to know exactly where New Orleans is

This is going to make next week a potential thriller, I guess. Fortunately neither of the storms are forecast to be super-strong (yet). Laura, the one I'm most worried about, is currently looking to be Category 1 and making landfall on Wednesday. Of course, hurricanes do what they want and usually don't pay much attention to the models, so anything could happen. 

Late next week is also when I'd expect to see an uptick in COVID cases linked to incoming students and school start-ups. Adding to the general stress level, I've been getting a number of questions about the status of the Tour de Louisiane, the answer to which is basically, "I don't really know yet." I did shoot off an email to my contact in the Covington Mayor's office to see if it was even something they would consider for the planned mid-October date. I seriously doubt I'll receive an enthusiastic "No problem" response, of course, but hopefully it won't be a "No way" response. We'll see. Candy is officially retiring at the end of October, but is a little bit terrifying to me for a number of reasons, but there's no doubt she deserves to start dialing it back. She's been getting things set up with Social Security, and then there will be all of the other things like insurance, medicare, etc., etc.

I've continued to track COVID cases and trends in Louisiana and New Orleans. The university seems to be trying to control the messaging around cases specifically at the university, and hasn't yet put up an actual dashboard with daily updates. I don't know if that's a good idea or not, but of course any void in the information stream will quickly be filled with accusations of manipulation, lying, and/or conspiracy theories. From my perspective, all I can say is that if Tulane can't pull off a mostly in-person semester, nobody can. The university hasn't left any stone unturned and has done everything I can think of to improve the chances of success. Of course, as one person pointed out, bringing in all of those students and expecting them not to have parties and pass around the virus is kind of like giving a kindergarten class a box of matches and being surprised there's a fire. All we can do is keep the fire extinguishers close at hand, I guess.

The weather for riding has been pretty good this week. A few mornings have actually felt comfortable, which means the pre-dawn temperature was below 80F. My longer rides both got cut short this week for one reason or the other, but I still managed to get in a reasonable number of miles and a little bit of intensity here and there. Yesterday I got to meet the Tulane riders for their first Thursday evening ride of the semester. That was kind of refreshing after a summer of no travelling and no racing and minimal contact with anyone new. I normally can't make that 5:30 or 4:30 pm ride because of work, but since I'm still working from home it was pretty easy this time. The team decided a while back to wear face masks for all of their group rides. If nothing else, it sends a good signal and prevents videos of un-masked students showing up on the neighborhood chat groups.

I'm pretty undecided about what to do this weekend, which usually translates into doing the Giro rides.