Long Giro, Halloween, Cold Air

 

I'm in kind of an odd position here trying to see if the camera that I put on timer is working.

Last Saturday, Lisa and Charles decided to invite a few people to do a Long Giro out to Fort Pike. The "Long Giro" has been kind of an off-season tradition for a very long time. It sometimes ends at Fort Pike, but sometimes continues to Slidell. The shorter Ft. Pike version that we did Saturday adds about 20 miles to the regular ride. 

We had a nice group of seven or eight, and the weather was pretty great. We rode out to Venetian Isles as usual with the Giro, but instead of turning around there, we continued on highway 90 over Chef Menteur where the road goes from four lanes to two. The pace was just a nice moderate paceline with a light wind with little traffic and the occasional washed-up sailboat on the roadside, thanks to the hurricane. We stopped for a little while at the marina on the north side of the Rigolets, and headed back with a bit of a tailwind. I arrived back home none the worse for wear, which was good because it was also Halloween.

For Halloween this year I'd devised a Candy Chute out of a 10' long section of PVC pipe, so I was interested to see how well it would work. I was also wondering how many kids would actually be out trick-or-treating this year, considering the COVID-19 thing. As it turned out, there were a lot of kids out with their parents. Not as many as usual, of course, but still a good turnout. Almost all were wearing their masks, and they seemed to enjoy the whole candy chute thing. Candy had prepared about a hundred small ziplock bags of candy, so it was easy to slide them down the chute into the plastic bin I'd set up at the bottom. We had Ken and Nancy over for the evening, and basically sat around on the front porch eating, drinking wine (and some champagne to celebrate Candy's retirement), and dropping candy down the chute. Gavin and Julia stopped by for a few minutes to say hello, and a couple of neighbors stopped in for a quick drink, but otherwise it was a lot more sedate than our usual open house thing.

On Sunday I did the regular Giro Ride, which wasn't a particularly hard one. Kind of typical for this time of year. A cool front came through and it was considerably cooler on Sunday morning. Likewise, it was cool on Monday as well. Along the levee, near the stables and the Jefferson Playground, a couple of big power poles with transformers on them had come down so the wires were (still are) hanging across the bike path. Easy enough to go around on the grass, of course.

This morning, Tuesday, it felt downright cold, at least to me. I guess it was maybe 52° or so. I had arm-warmers, knicks, and a vest, and even broke out the full-finger gloves, so I was OK, but those first few chilly rides each fall are always a little uncomfortable for me. On the plus side, since we switched back to standard time last Sunday, you don't need lights at all by 6 am or so. It's so nice to be able to see the road ahead!