Mini Tour of da Parish

Dwight snapped this great photo of the WeMoRi last Wednesday along Bayou St. John.

The weather forecast had not been providing a whole lot of confidence for Saturday's Tour da Parish ride down in St. Bernard Parish, and I was fully expecting to get rained on. Still, it was kind of Howard's event and I'd pre-registered, so I was committed. Then on Friday we got a notice that the 50-mile ride would be shortened to 25 because there was still a lot of hurricane damage down the road and we'd definitely be in the way. So I figured even if it rains, it'll be only 25 miles, and besides, I could use an easy day.

Tour da Parish lines up on Saturday morning

I drove out there Saturday morning and was glad to see it wasn't actually raining. The streets were pretty wet, but the turnout was good for what is typically an Alt-Giro ride, at least at the front. Being the pessimist that I am, I still wore an extra jersey as a base-layer, plus my sunscreen arm-warmers, just in case the sky opened up. I don't mind being wet, but being wet and cold is an entirely different matter. Lots of the usual Giro riders were on hand, albeit with some notable exceptions, and a number of them had ridden out to the ride in order to make up for the missing mileage.

The "altered" ride this year was basically a straight out-and-back with a random U-turn at around twelve and a half miles. A couple of miles from the start there's a section of road that is closed, and the group bypasses the closed section by riding through a couple of gates and across a short section of gravel. Naturally, as soon as the front few riders got through there they basically attacked. One or two riders dug deep and bridged up to them, but frankly I was more than happy to be in the second group. Somewhere down the road we passed some guy in a shiny blue crawfish costume who was gesturing frantically on the side of the road. Apparently that was the turn-around. Some of us rolled past it a bit before turning around, so our group got pretty split up. I eased up for a minute thinking it would come back together, but looking up ahead I could see the those riders weren't waiting. A few of us started chasing and I soon found myself on Jeff's wheel as he took a long hard pull, closing the gap significantly before blowing up. I put my head down and made a big effort, finally pulling into the draft of the group of six or seven. The rest of the way back was a somewhat messy paceline that eventually shed all but four of us. So it was a nice little ride, and I was surprised that I'd apparently gotten in a little bit of intensity here and there. Afterward, I got my $40-dollar beer and hamburger, hung around for a while, and was probably back home by 10:30 a.m.

Hope the parties were worth it.....

As I got ready for bed last night it was pouring down rain outside and I wondered if the Sunday Giro would be rained out. The temperature would be in the upper 60s, so at least there was hope. In the morning I looked outside at the damp street, and at the weather radar that wasn't making any promises, and figured I'd go ahead and ride out to Starbucks and see what happened. It was very windy, but we never got a drop of rain. On the way out, along that section where we're on the exit lane of the Interstate, with a pretty good tailwind, someone let a gap open and the group split. Naturally, I was in the wrong half, as usual. Once we got onto Chef highway we got organized into a circular paceline that was considerably less that smooth, but I guess adequate. That section was mostly headwind, so I knew it would get fast on the way back. It did. After turning onto Hayne Blvd., and with a pretty significant tailwind, the pace ramped up quickly. From Bullard to the base of the overpass the average speed was 30.5 mph, and we were up to 37.8 for a moment as we came down the other side. I was feeling pretty comfortable for most of the ride, probably thanks to the relatively easy day I had on Saturday.

So Tulane is having a bit of a COVID-19 surge right now, thanks no doubt to the combination of hurricane and Halloween "bad decisions" by some students. They went to 3 per week testing on Friday, so hopefully between that and the contact tracing it will be back under control soon. It would be a bad time to be in quarantine as a student since classes end on, I think, the 21st (exams will all be online this year).