Hurricane Zeta Hurrication

Wednesday morning was warm and humid and windy, and as I rode out toward the lakefront to meet the WeMoRi I wondered how many riders there would be. Hurricane Zeta (we already ran out of the alpha-order people names this year) was scheduled to make landfall around mid-afternoon and New Orleans had been consistently and directly in the path for days. Also, it had intensified more than expected and would likely be a strong Category 2 when it hit. Most of everything in the city was shutting down by noon at the latest. I was a little worried about this one. It was moving super-fast, like 20 mph, so flooding and sustained rain and uprooted trees wouldn't be the big problem. The wind, however, was another matter. When you live in a 100 year old house with decades of old hidden termite damage and rotten wood, you never know what hurricane-force winds are going to do. Just the day before I'd been down in the bowels of the basement sistering up a couple of treated 2x4s to bolster some old termite-damaged floor joists under the front porch. There was other damage from rot that I didn't deal with since it would have basically required a complete rebuild of the front of the house. Anyway, I left satisfied that the floor would remain solid for a while at least.

Out on Lakeshore Drive in the pitch dark (time change is this coming Sunday) I saw a string of headlights coming in the distance and turned onto Marconi to wait to be swept up by the pack. I was surprised when only a handful of riders came by. I jumped onto the back and glanced behind me, but couldn't see any more lights. A mile or so later, once I could breathe normally again, I asked someone, "Is this it?" I think the reply was that something about  there being some more behind. Still, I was surprised there could be such a large gap because we weren't really going at what I would call a successful breakaway pace. As it turned out, the rest of the WeMoRi, which had been small to start with, had kind of splintered into multiples of two and three, explaining why we hadn't been chased down. As our group came down the Bayou St. John bridge with a couple of miles left to go, I shifted up a couple of cogs to accommodate the increased speed, went over a little bump, and dropped the chain off the outside of the chainring. This was not a normal dropped chain, though, because at the moment my front derailleur doesn't have an outer cage. So I had to drop out of the group before I could reach down and put the chain back onto the chainring with my hand. 

So Hurricane Zeta came in exactly as expected, and by 4:30 or so we were getting some pretty significant wind gusts. Around 5:30 the power went out. The hurricane went almost directly over New Orleans, so when the eye of the hurricane passed over us everything suddenly went calm for about half an hour, then just as suddenly we were back to hurricane winds, this time coming from the opposite direction. Fortunately, none of it was strong enough to do any significant damage to the house, and the big oak trees in front of, and behind, the house fared well. One house on our block had a very large oak tree branch break off and pierce the roof, which was the most significant damage I saw anywhere around. The hurricane moved through quickly, as expected, so around 9 pm I put the little generator under the back stairs and fired it up, plugging in the refrigerator. I brought the box fan that I normally have down in the basement up to the bedroom door and plugged that in too so it wouldn't be too hot to sleep. The predicted cold front hadn't quite arrived yet. By morning the temperature was starting to drop and soon the clouds moved out and we had a beautiful fall day. I didn't ride, though. The streets were littered with branches and I had a lot of cleanup to do. I'd removed most of the outside Halloween decorations the day before, so those would all have to be put out again. So yesterday I spend a couple of hours cleaning up storm debris. All of the neighbors were also out doing the same, so by mid-day the street was pretty clear and other than the rows of plastic bags things looked more or less back to normal.

Today is Candy's last day at work. She is meeting her replacement this morning, and I expect she will be back home early to officially begin her retirement. Tulane was basically closed yesterday and again today, although things at the medical school are a little different since the clinics and hospital are of course not closed. Candy is still waiting for her Medicare Part B to be put in place so she can start her Blue Cross supplemental plan or whatever. Hopefully all that will be worked out very soon.

This morning it was 54° F. We still don't have power, so it was kind of dark getting dressed with just the camp light. I went out with knickers and a long-sleeve jersey. The bike lane on Carrollton was still a mine field of broken branches and leaves, and it was overcast and dark. I turned northwest onto Willow street and when the cold wind hit me I decided to bail. The prospect of getting home cold and taking a shower without hot water sounded pretty unpleasant, and I rationalized that I could probably use a couple of days off anyway. So I turned around and went back home to put more gas in the generator, unplug the refrigerator, and plug in the coffee maker. If the sun comes out later today, maybe I'll go out again for a few miles, but right now I'm in my home office feeling pretty cold, so there's that. 

Socially Distanced Candy Chute

As expected, Entergy is making slow progress restoring power to our neighborhood. I expect other areas were prioritized, but I'm guessing we could see electricity again some time today or tomorrow. Practically the entire city was knocked out, of course, so no surprises there. Three days is pretty typical for this sort of thing, so I'm glad I have the generator to keep the refrigerator and router running, and as needed charge phones, make coffee, plug in a table lamp, etc. That generator is due for a carburetor cleaning after all of this. The last couple of times I used it - the Time Trial, and then the Tour - and of course now as well, it has been "loping" or "surging" or whatever, which is to say that it doesn't maintain a nice steady hum under low load. It is almost certainly because the tiny pilot jet opening is clogged up because of those long stretches when the generator isn't used, not to mention the old gas that I sometimes put in it. That's going to have to wait until Entergy does its thing, however. 

So there's a northshore ride in the works for tomorrow that I may or may not do. It kind of depends on what we're planning for Halloween. We normally have kind of an open house with the neighbors for Halloween, but COVID-19 has put a damper on that and I'm not entirely sure how much preparation is going to be needed. I did make a "Candy Slide" last weekend with a 10' piece of PVC pipe so we can slide candy down the the kids without them having to come up the stairs. It should at least cut down on some of the personal contact. Of course, Candy still has about twenty special Halloween baskets for kids she knows, and we'll probably have a few people over for a glass of wine or something. Anyway, I'll figure it out this evening. If we still don't have power, I'll probably not go. We'll see.   

Update: Power came back on shortly before noon!

Didn't Suck - Tour de La COVID Edition

Getting the 1/2/3s lined up for the start

The twice-postponed, shortened, Tour de Louisiane finally happened last Saturday. Afterward, someone posted, "Had a great time today..  Thanks Randy and the rest of NOBC and LAMBRA for working so hard on this.  Finally something in 2020 didn't suck." That comment really kind of captures what I, and likely a lot of the riders, was thinking. It was a shame that we couldn't put on the whole stage race, but with things being as they are it would have been difficult, possibly impossible, and I think participation would have been even lower than it was. As it was, this was only the second official USAC race in LAMBRA this year, and the only mass-start road event. In the months before the race I had been thinking that if we had 60 riders I'd be happy. 

Cat. 4/5s on the line

As it turned out we had 97 with a Cat. 4/5 field of 42. Even better, the weather finally cooperated with us. A little front came through Friday evening, and by Saturday morning the rain was over and the skies starting to clear. From my perspective, though, there were some things that felt quite different from my usual Tour de La weekend. I'd driven over to the northshore late Friday after packing up the car with race equipment. Mignon and Pat had stopped by earlier to pick up things that I couldn't fit into the Volvo - water coolers, boxes of trophies, traffic cones, caution and directional signs, etc. It's kind of amazing how much stuff we use nowadays to put on a "simple" road race. I can remember putting on some of the early Tour road races with just what I could carry in the GT-6. There were a couple of traffic cones, clipboards, stopwatches, and things like that, but no podium, tent, computers, cameras, tripods, generators, extension cords, signs, race clocks, or even trophies.

Despite the quiet night at the hotel in Covington/Mandeville, I didn't sleep very well Friday night and was up a little early, so I headed over to the Starbucks, picked up coffee and a scone, and headed for Stoney Point. Usually for the Tour it's around dawn when I leave, but this was October rather than June and it was dark. Really dark. A little leftover mist fell onto the windshield here and there, and although some of the back roads would still be wet, I knew the rain was gone. In order to minimize contact, especially with sharing pens and shuffling paper, we were relying on the online waivers this year. We had also required pre-registration, so Mignon handled number pick-up pretty much on her own. Usually we have three or four people handling registration as I'm frantically entering rider information into the computer. That gave me time to set up the USAC banners along the finish stretch as Ricky got the cameras and everything set up at the finish line. It was all relatively low-stress. Before I knew it, it was 8:50 and time to call the Cat. 1/2/3s to the line. I delivered my usual instructions and cautions about the cracks on the bridges and the broken-up asphalt on the back side of the course, and sent them off right on time. Since we were doing just the road race this year, we would not need to get finish times for everyone, with made judging even easier. We'd also shortened the Cat. 1/2/3 race by one 16-mile lap, so everyone would be doing 4 laps except the Women/Junior group that was doing 3. As I'd expected, the Cat. 1/2/3s lapped the Women, who had started 25 minutes after them, so while they are usually the last group to finish, this year they were they were the first.

Old guys on the podium

Judging was pretty easy this year. Most of the groups had broken up a little bit, with breakaways in all but the Cat. 4/5s, so we really only needed to go to the cameras (we had two linescan cameras and one GoPro running) for that pack sprint. Otherwise it was easy to place riders by eye. 

After the race we had a bunch of awards to give out. Each race had an overall prizelist plus a 3-deep bonus for the secondary categories (like the Cat. 3s in the Cat. 1/2/3 race and the Cat. 4s in the Cat. 4/5 race). Then on top of that, the race was doubling as the LAMBRA Road Championship, so there were 3-deep medals for the various classes and categories as well. It was a little confusing, of course.

Hurricane Zeta expected on Wednesday

I was very happy that there had not been any crashes in the large Cat. 4/5 field. In fact, the only crash all day was one of the riders in the Cat. 1/2/3 break who just caught the edge of the road and went down. I think he still finished, though. In the Master's race, Frank Moak rolled off the front and held off for I think a lap or so to finish solo. Lisa and Julia, the only Cat. 1/2/3s in the Women's race, broke away and finished well ahead of the small chase group. In all, I was really happy with how everything went, and I think the riders were also really happy to finally have an actual race where they could see each other at least once this season. I kind of wish more of them had donned their face masks after the races, but I really had no time or desire to be policing that.

So we wrapped up the awards, tore down all of the finish line stuff, loaded up the cars, and I was back on the road home by 2:20 or so. I have to admit I kind of missed the excitement of having to post and print out the Road Race results and then rush over to set up the Time Trial course for the evening TT stage, and then post those results, have a quick dinner with the other officials, and get ready for the Sunday criteriums in Covington. On the other hand, it was quite a relief to have everything wrapped up and to be back home before 4:00 p.m. 

Next year will the Tour's 50th anniversary, having never missed a year. There are not many races in the U.S. that could ever say that. You might have thought that the Katrina year would have been the biggest risk of breaking the continuity, but in fact this year easily presented the greatest threat. Will we be able to put on the full stage race in 2021? Nobody's making any promises yet, but I'm expecting we will.

Something missing.....

Meanwhile, after having to postpone our original early October date, there's another hurricane heading straight for us. This will be the 6th hurricane this year for which we have been in the "cone." Fortunately, it's late in the season so the intensity will probably be relatively low - Category 1 at the worst I think. Yesterday morning my front derailleur broke. The outer carbon-fiber plate had finally just worn through after upward of 80,000 miles. I shouldn't be surprised, I guess. I knew it was close to wearing through for the past year or so. I ended up ordering a replacement from England. It's the model after the 2011-14 version that I have and so the pull won't be quite the same, but front derailleurs aren't really indexed like rear derailleurs, so hopefully it will work fine. Finding an actual replacement for the Super Record one that I had was practically impossible without paying for it as if it was some kind of rare antique.

Winter Wind

Just a skeleton crew for the Sunday Giro today

Last week was mostly routine, riding-wise - 298 miles, mostly easy, occasionally super hard. Situation normal. The weather has been rather nice. As always happens this time of year, those of us out on our bikes in the dark at 6 a.m. are the first to notice the coming of fall. It seems like it gets noticeably darker from morning to morning. Another little cool front came through around Friday, and I was a little chilly riding out to the Giro Saturday morning despite a light base layer and thin sunscreen arm-warmers. The temperature, however, wasn't really the thing that got me thinking of winter. It was the wind. Saturday morning's ride was accompanied by a 10-12 mph ENE wind that felt kind of different. It was that dry, steady wind we get in the winter.

I have a love-hate relationship with wind. Mostly hate. The Giro route is mostly an east-west route, so I knew from experience to expect a few things. You might think that doing a group ride with a headwind would be harder than without. You'd be wrong.  Well, unless you were one of the four or five riders up at the front of the group doing all of the work. In reality, a stiff headwind makes it much easier to stay with a good-sized group. The wind keeps the pace slower, and the benefit of being in the draft, and indeed the length of that draft, is considerably greater. Riding in a group under those conditions is relatively easy. dropping back a couple of bike lengths doesn't seem to matter much, so it's easy to stay in contact. I should know. I spent approximately zero time in the wind on the way out to Venetian Isles on Saturday. I admit I was being a little bit lazy, but there was method to my laziness. The fact that every headwind implies an equal and opposite tailwind told me that it was going to get fast on the way back. It did.

I guess the average speed for much of the return trip on Chef Highway was in the 30-31 mph range. You'd think that being on a group ride with a nice tailwind like that would be easy. You'd be wrong again. I often tell new riders, "Never let a gap open in a tailwind."  Why?  Well, the draft zone is short, which means that if you find yourself two or three bike-lengths behind the rider in front, you're in trouble. So while riding in the group in a headwind gives you a lot of flexibility, riding in a group in a tailwind at 30+ mph requires careful attention. Everybody's trying to stay close to the wheel in front, so it can get kind of stressful. To make matters worse, you have to be constantly watching what's going on a few wheels ahead because it just takes one rider to open one of those un-closeable gaps at that speed. I was almost a victim of that on Saturday when someone put the hammer down after the Goodyear sprint and I had to red-line it for a bit to avoid being on the wrong side of the ensuing split. Of course it mostly came back together on Bullard, but as soon as we turned east on Hayne the speed kind of went through the roof again. I kind of threw in the towel pretty early on that stretch and rode the last couple of miles with a few other riders.

Sunday I went out to Starbucks wondering if we'd even have enough riders for a Giro Ride. The annual Tour de Jefferson was Sunday and over the past few years is has practically become the unofficial New Orleans Westbank World Championships. I've done it a number of times and it's always fast, we usually take a wrong turn somewhere, and I never even come close to drinking enough post-ride beer to justify the entry fee, which was $50-60 this year. So this year I decided to skip it. I'll ride the Tour da Parish ride in November, which is pretty similar in that it's a lot of the Giro riders setting the pace. Anyway, as it turned out we had a nice little group for the Giro, and with the lack of horsepower the pace was mostly pretty moderate. Also, the wind had died down a bit. I was feeling kind of tired, so it's probably a good thing that I didn't do the Tour de Jefferson ride.

Fred Schroeder

When I saw the post on the Northshore Cycling facebook page, I had to look twice to make sure I was reading it right. Did it really say that Fred Schroeder has passed away? 

I was shocked. 

Two days ago he emailed me that he had made the arrangements with the Washington Parish sheriff's office for the twice-postponed Tour de Louisiane road race. I could always count on Fred for this sort of thing. I've lost count of the number of northshore races that he cheerfully helped with. He was one of our small NOBC group that put on the Tour and the Time Trial, and various other races every year, and when we needed someone to help make arrangements for the Tulane collegiate races at the high school, he was the person who got it done year after year. One year we'd been late making arrangements to use the Lakeshore High venue for the collegiate race and the day before the event the school board had still not approved it. Somehow Fred convinced the assistant principal to just give him the gate key so we could have the race there.

A regular on the northshore rides, Fred was also a coach, mentoring new riders every day, teaching them the often vague and mysterious ways of road cycling. He was one of those guys who was always there, but never in the limelight. He'd show up at the each of the Tour venues early, setting up course signage, blocking off roads, hauling around hay bales, putting up banners, and dealing with the sometimes clueless police. I thought he would always be around. He will be sorely missed by all of us.

I don't know the details of what happened. I don't know if it even really matters at this point. I guess we'll hear the story eventually, although it won't change the past. 

So we'll go on riding and racing and hanging out at the Abita Brewpub, doing all of those things that Fred so loved to do, riding the roads he loved to ride, telling tales of questionable veracity, and we'll leave an extra seat or two at the bar for Fred and the other riders who we wish were with us. As one of the old guys, I've already lost my share of cycling friends and teammates, of which Fred was both. 

It doesn't get any easier.

Out of the Cone

Track keeps shifting west

Hurricane Delta's forecast track has shifted west now, putting New Orleans outside of the "cone." That's good for us, but not so good for Lake Charles and generally southwest Louisiana where they are still trying to recover from the last hurricane, Laura. In fact, New Orleans still has over a thousand people from around there who are staying in hotels until they are able to have a place to go back to. Yesterday we made the call to reschedule the Tour de La to October 24. Even if the weather here isn't too bad on Saturday, it still won't be what you'd want to have for a race. Also, since it is serving as the LAMBRA Road Championship, having it this weekend would probably exclude riders from southwest Louisiana where there are likely to be some significant impacts from the hurricane. It's still expected to make landfall west of Vermilion Bay as a Category 3 hurricane by late Friday afternoon, so somewhere between Lake Charles and Lafayette. Still hoping it will settle down to something below Category 3 by then, but for now the forecast is Cat. 3.

Although we had some light sprinkles of rain yesterday evening and early this morning, the weather here today is nice. Of course, the humidity is back in full force and it's a little breezy, but the sun is out and we're not expecting any rain until maybe tomorrow afternoon. Although we'll be on the "wet" side of the hurricane, you never know just how wet that will be, but at least the forecast for us keeps improving with each iteration.

This morning I dragged myself out to the WeMoRi, which this time of year is about half in the dark and finishes about fifteen minutes before sunrise at 6:57 am. It was kind of an odd one today. As usual, I was on Marconi between Lakeshore Drive and Robert E. Lee when, first, a 3-rider break came flying past. I decided not to try to get on with them and wait for the pack, which maybe wasn't the best move, because it seemed like forever before the pack came up to me. I slid into the front half on RE Lee just as one of the tall guys took a flyer off the front. A moment later he was on the ground, having slid out on the wet corner at Wisner. Most of us stopped to make sure he was OK, which he was. That kind of broke things up a bit and some of us had to chase for a bit down Wisner to get back into the shelter of the group. Then, as we were heading back north toward the lakefront on Marconi at Harrison we came to the stoplight, which was red for us, but also red for the cars coming from the left (they never put that light cycle back to normal after they changed it back when they were rebuilding the Wisner overpass), so the front of the group kept going. Just as they got into the intersection the light for the Harrison Avenue traffic turned green and somebody in a big pickup towing a horse trailer or something just hit the gas despite the fact that there were bike riders still crossing in front of him or her. It was clearly a punishment move. Anyway, the back half of the group had to slam on the brakes until the trailer passed, which meant another little chase to regain the group, which fortunately wasn't really going all that hard anyway. At some point after that someone (Blake on his track bike?) rolled off the front and stayed there to the end. The main group got fast for the last mile or two, but that was about it.

Delta Dawn

Perfect weather for a long ride

With the arrival of more cool, dry air from up north, it was a great weekend for riding. I wish next weekend was looking as good, but more about that later.

The 4D folks had plotted an ad hoc group ride out of Independence for Saturday, and considering the weather it was no surprise that around 25 showed up for the 75 mile "spirited" ride. In fact, it wasn't what you'd call a hard ride, but there were a few Strava Segments that had been pre-designated as sprint zones, so although a lot of the ride was nice smooth paceline, it was not without some significant time in the red zone. When we started at 8 am the temperature was in the low 50s, and in consideration of my aging tendons and joints I wore the knicks, a warm base layer, and sunscreen arm-warmers. It was really the first ride this fall that I'd call chilly, at least for the first hour or so. Naturally, I knew it would warm up and I'd be over-dressed for the last hour or two, but I always prefer starting comfortably and finishing hot than starting cold and finishing comfortably. Personal preference. It was a good group that mostly stayed together, with a few stops to re-group after the fast segments. There were five Tulane riders on hand, and for a couple of them the distance and terrain would be a bit of a challenge. Way up at the top of the route, a bit more than halfway through, a few riders tried taking a shortcut but somehow ended up meeting back up with the group at the store stop. We were surprised to see them roll in a good fifteen minutes after we'd arrived. However, Tulane rider Josh was still MIA, although someone was apparently getting occasional texts from him, so we at least knew he was OK. As it turned out, his Garmin had died, and he made at least one wrong turn and got quite well lost. After the ride I hung around for about half an hour chatting with a new transplant who is on the Geology faculty at LSU, and as I was finally getting ready to head out Gavin walked over to tell me they were still waiting for Josh whose last known location was Amite City, which was not on the route but at least in the right general vicinity. I packed up the car and headed home, and about two blocks later saw Josh crossing Highway 40 (on the wrong side of the tracks) so I swung around to make sure he knew where to go. For me, the ride was great. I was feeling pretty good and not having any significant problems with the distance or terrain or anything. Although I wasn't trying to compete for the fast segments, I was still trying to stay close, so I felt like I got a pretty good workout.

Not the first time I've ridden with spray paint instead of water

On Sunday I needed to paint/re-paint the turn arrows on the Tour de La road course up in Stoney Point, and fortunately the RRT team was planning a reconnaissance ride there, so I asked them to loop me in so I could get in some miles. I'd already asked them not to park at the Church where we start the race since it was a Sunday and I didn't want to irritate anyone before our race that is (was?) scheduled for next Saturday. We ended up starting from the Post Office in Folsom and riding the fifteen or so miles from there to the course, which wasn't bad except for the 3 miles or so on Hwy 25 (no shoulder and lots of traffic). I had a big can of road-marking paint stuffed into one of my bottle cages, and the plan was to ride to the course, and then drop off the back and stop to paint the corners, then to turn around and find the group that, by then, would be on its second lap of the course. That worked out nicely. For me, it was a pretty easy ride, which was fine considering Saturday's efforts.

So I get back home on Sunday and the "disturbance" heading toward the Gulf of Mexico is now predicted to develop into a hurricane. Even worse, the early forecast track takes it DIRECTLY to New Orleans.  Yes, that's the third one this year with an early forecast track through NOLA. Worse still, it would arrive here Friday night. That forecast couldn't be worse for the Tour de La road race scheduled for Saturday morning. Although it is entirely possible it won't be a full-blown hurricane when it gets wherever it's going, if tropical storm warnings or hurricane warnings go up it will make it pretty impossible to have the race. At this point I'm sure I won't be seeing people registering for it until we know more about the weather, but it also looks like we won't know anything reasonably solid until Wednesday. At any rate, we're already looking at the possibility of postponing it one or two weeks. We'll need to make the call preferably by Tuesday evening or Wednesday at the latest, since there are considerations to take into account with hotel rooms, police, officials, the venue/church, etc., all of which would need to be re-scheduled on fairly short notice. All I can say is, "Stay tuned." It appears that 2020 is not done with us yet. The city moved to Stage 3.1 last weekend which is pretty much guaranteed to result in the next COVID-19 surge in a week or so, so there's that to worry about too. At the moment both the City's and University's case numbers are looking quite good, but I can't imagine that will hold too much longer with restaurants and such going to something like 75% capacity and just the general level of COVID Fatigue.

A little early morning peace as the sun comes over the trees

This morning I was happy to head out for a little recovery ride on the levee, although once I got warmed up I didn't feel like I had much from which to recover. It was quite breezy, but the temperature was just in the upper 60s, so if felt pretty nice. I have a feeling it's going to be a long, and possibly wet, week. That Tropical Storm Delta above isn't the only thing in the Gulf right now. Tropical Storm Gamma is also down around the Yucatan. I have pretty much on my plate for work this week as well.