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.