Flats, Fog, and an Omicron Flare-up

Tulane Independence Ride - One More Flat

Well it's been more like summer than winter around here this week. It will be changing soon, of course, but it's been nice to be riding in summer kit for most of the past week.

This scene was repeated multiple times this week!

Last Sunday I went an hour north to Independence to meet up with the Tulane group for a nice 70 miles in the country. As usual there were a couple of riders not quite up to the distance, but we kept the pace calm, except for a couple of short segments, and everyone survived. The weather was practically perfect, with a clear blue sky, even if it was pretty chilly for the first couple of hours. I think it was in the low 40s when we started. After the ride I went straight back to town to meet Anastasia, a rider in town from St. Louis for the American Geophysical Union conference to give her a hand re-assembling her bike, which we did in the parking lot of a Bar-B-Que place since her Airbnb wasn't ready yet. I got her in touch with Charles since she was a competent rider and wanted to do the group rides, and she'd be riding from downtown. Also, they both speak Russian. So on Monday I had an early meeting and decided to go out and meet the Mellow Monday ride out of City Park, which is essentially the same as the Friendly Friday ride, neither offering quite as mellow or friendly a pace as you might expect.

The obligatory spillway photo. Hard to believe it was mid-December.

The regular weekday rides were pretty normal except that we were in the middle of a flat tire epidemic. I don't think any ride I've done so far this week was without at least one flat. Wednesday's WeMoRi even included a crash caused by that wheel-eating crack on Lakeshore Drive just west of the Elysian Fields traffic circle. Anyway, we are hoping to get out there with some asphalt this weekend if the weather permits. There's a fair chance of rain starting this afternoon and continuing pretty much through the weekend, so we'll see.

Made a card for the office

On Thursday, it being close to the holidays and people apparently having a little more flexibility than usual, we decided to extend the usual 40 mile levee ride out to the Spillway, which for me makes it a 52 mile ride. It was dark and foggy for the start, but we had a light tailwind that made it feel easier and faster than normal. Of course, that meant an increasing headwind on the way back, which made the return trip seem a lot longer. Anyway, the weather was again warm and summer kit was the order of the day. The extra miles added about 40 minutes to the ride, which wasn't really much of a problem for me because I was going to have to drive up to Mandeville in the early afternoon so Candy and her sister could distribute checks to her sisters from her mother's estate now that the house was finally sold and the judge up in Baton Rouge finally approved everything. I knew it wouldn't be a problem to work from home anyway because Tulane is in the midst of a huge flare-up of COVID infections that are almost certainly related to the rapid rise of the Omicron variant. The increase in cases seems to be more rapid than anything we have seen since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, so it will doubtless hit the city in general in a day or two and I don't think I'd be out of line in predicting a huge surge starting over the weekend and extending through January as all of the unvaccinated people get infected, the number of tests increases, and most of the vaccinated people test positive. 

This morning I did the Friendly Friday ride as has become my habit. As has also become a habit, someone slammed a wheel into the hole on Lakeshore Drive just west of the Elysian Fields traffic circle, ejecting a bottle and nearly crashing. I was ahead of it, over on the right to avoid precisely that scenario, and it sounded like the wheel broke. I eased up and doubled back in the dark to make sure he was OK, which he was, and met back up with the group on its way back from Canal Blvd.

Vertical

The holidays are definitely going to be a problem because of this easily transmitted variant, so all we can hope for is that it will not cause more severe illness. I'd really been hoping for a normal holiday season, especially since Danielle and Shannon are coming in. They both got COVID booster shots yesterday and are stocking up on N95 masks for the trip.

At Tulane, the sudden dramatic increase in positives has put everyone on alert. Students are being allowed to take exams remotely, the mask mandate is back in place, the Reily Center closed down, group activities have been cancelled, and the university is scrambling to find isolation space for infected students, which at this point is basically closing the barn door after the horses are out.

A Turn for the Worse

Some of the Sunday Giro group cooling down on Lakeshore Drive

Last weekend, and for that matter most of last week, the weather was great. While folks up in Minnesota are locked in their basements on trainers or debating how slippery the roadside ice might be, we were treated with temperatures mostly in the 60s. Things weather-wise took a turn for the worse this week, but more on that later.

I had been looking forward to Saturday's Giro. Any time you can ride in summer kit, unless you consider my sunscreen armskins to be winter gear, in December, you should certainly take full advantage. There was a good crowd on hand for the ride, including some of the Tulane riders, and as we rolled out I was already thinking about doing a few extra miles afterward. We came down the overpass onto Hayne Blvd. and since the pace wasn't through the roof I stationed myself a bit off to the right so I could see the numerous wheel-eating cracks better. Someone ahead hit a bump and ejected a big water bottle that fortunately rolled to the curb just in front of me. Then Charles came up alongside and asked, "Is my rear tire going flat?" to which I responded, "It's already flat!" He rolled over to the right and, it being so early in the ride, I decided to leave him to his own devices this time since I really wanted to get a decent effort and a few miles that day. Around that time I heard a loud explosion behind me that I was pretty sure was someone putting a wheel into one of those seams where the manhole covers are. I heard later that whoever it was had not just flatted but had broken the wheel as well.

Out on Chef Highway the group formed up into a nice double paceline with practically everyone taking pulls at around 24-26 mph which felt quite comfortable given the amount of rest between pulls. Somewhere around Highway 11 Jaden attacked down the right side and naturally someone at the front of the previously sedate paceline had to go with it, which led to the double paceline devolving into a long string of single-file riders, most of whom were no longer willing to risk taking a pull for fear of being dropped at the next surge. Situation normal. After the turnaround I wondered why I hadn't seen Charles yet. I would have expected him to have fixed the flat, taken the Bullard short-cut, and met us as we were starting the return trip. As it turned out he'd turned around with the SaMoRi group ahead of us and then flatted again on that hole on the inside of the turn from Lake Forest onto Bullard. As we went by I saw him on the neutral ground with a few others and Howard in his car parked over on the right. Apparently there had been complications with CO2 and tubes and such, and Howard was in the process of lending him a wheel. Anyway, that was the last I saw of Charles who was scheduled to fly out to Norway the following day for work. 

During the cool-down a few people were suggesting extending the ride out to the Jefferson bike path along the lake to "the wall" which fit my plans perfectly, so a few of us continued west and a relatively relaxed pace. Once we got out to the floodwall at the western edge of  Greater New Orleans we decided, after a brief discussion, to go ahead and do the "shuffle" route through Kenner back down the the river levee. Chris does that route often so we pretty much just followed him through the back streets to Loyola Avenue. That put us briefly onto Veterans near the airport where we decided to try the airport road down to Airline since it wasn't really very busy with traffic now that the airport terminals and everything had moved. That turned out to be pretty nice, except that Chris, who was on the front, missed the left turn and took us all the way into the abandoned airport. Anyway, we found our way over to the levee and had a nice spin back into town which ended up making my usual 60 mile ride into an 86 mile ride. Later that day I spent a couple of hours on extension ladders finally replacing the part of the porch screen that the hurricane had blown down and that had been held up with thumbtacks since.

Chris slashed another tubeless tire Sunday

Sunday's Giro was pretty normal and not particularly fast, except for a stop on Hayne when Chris flatted a tubeless tire (his third slashed tubeless tire of the weekend), which was a bit of a mess, and then on Monday I did my usual super-easy recovery ride on the levee. 

When I went out to ride on Tuesday morning there were dense fog alerts and the streets were pretty wet. After a brief wait for a train to go by, I found only Dan. Although we got a tiny bit of rain, it was never quite enough to soak my feet, so we rode mostly side-by-side out to the Big Dip at LaRose and back. Of course when I got home I had to rinse off the bike and lube the chain and jump in the hot shower. This morning it was super-foggy again with very wet streets and the radar showing some approaching rain. But it was like 65°F so I figured I'd ride out to the WeMoRi and see who showed up. I arrived at Lakeshore Drive at the usual time and looked for the headlights of the group that usually gets to Marconi right around 6:10, but there were none, so I headed down Marconi, following the usual route, expecting at least a small group to come up on me at some point since I was only going like 18 mph. That never happened, though, so I basically did the WeMoRi all alone, arriving back home quite wet, but at least not too chilled. As it turned out MJ had actually shown up for the ride after driving across the causeway in the thick fog, but he'd started, alone, about ten minutes late so somehow we never did cross paths. This morning I worked from home until about 10:00, waiting for the rain showers to pass before riding to the office.

Progress!

As an update on the Neron Place road work, they poured concrete for the sidewalks and driveways toward the end of last week and so now people aren't parked all over the place and having to trudge through mud and sand and stuff to get to their houses. Still a fair amount of work to be done, but it's progress for sure.

Longer Levee

It seems like a very long time ago that the first section of levee was paved and turned into a bike path. Actually, it was a long time ago. Once Orleans Parish finally finished its little piece, it measured about thirteen miles one-way from Audubon Park to the upriver end of Jefferson Parish. It wasn't long before a regular ride started. Then a few years later another section was paved, taking the path all the way out to Ormond, extending the distance to about 20 miles. At that point the Tuesday/Thursday levee rides were already well-established and the little early-morning group started going all the way out to Ormond on, I think, Thursdays, but sticking to the original shorter ride on Tuesdays. Eventually the group started doing the full distance out to Ormond on both days, and that's the way it stayed even as the remainder of the levee out to the Spillway was paved. Occasionally when there was time, usually on weekends or holidays, I'd ride all the way out to the Spillway, a distance of about 25 miles from home and about the same from Audubon Park. It's a nice place to ride when you don't want to deal with traffic and especially if you want a steady or even contemplative ride. Sometimes I'd add the Spillway road over to the other side of the Spillway. Beyond that point, however, the levee top wasn't paved until you got a few more miles upriver, where, over the years, bits and pieces of paved levee were periodically added. I rarely continued upriver on River Road to get to those sections. Then a couple of years ago the extended opening of the Spillway washed out a few sections of the Spillway road, which was then closed. You could still ride most of it, but there were usually sections of hike-a-bike, especially if it had been raining. So that's kind of where it stood for a couple of years. During that time when the Spillway road was closed the work on the bike path upriver continued and that section from the upriver end of the Spillway to the older section of bike path was finally paved. It would still be a while, however, before the Spillway road was fixed.  Well, that finally happened about a month ago, and since then people have been riding the new section all the way to where it currently ends just before the Gramercy bridge. I'd been wanting to do the full levee ride myself for some time, and had figured it would be almost 90 miles out-and-back from the park.

So I decided to do the ride last Sunday. I sent out a few emails to people I thought might join me, but with the holidays and all the only one to respond positively was Mark Monistere. I suppose the fact that the forecast was for rain all morning didn't help. Anyway, and predictably, it rained for much of the morning but by 11:00 it was looking much better so I headed out around 11:30, picking up Mark around Jefferson Playground. I was set on keeping the pace easy, so we rode all the way out side-by-side at around 17 mph mostly, with a very light headwind. I was happy to find that the entire route was paved, and except for the mile or two across the Spillway it was entirely on bike path. After a quick stop at a gas station near Gramercy we headed back down the river with a light tailwind, more or less. Mark was starting to suffer the effects of lack of sleep and the prior day's strength work by then, but I was feeling pretty good other than my neck and upper back, which is pretty much normal nowadays. I dropped Mark off back at the playground and, looking at my odometer, figured I should take the long way home through Audubon Park in order to get the ride up over 90 miles. Along the way I ran into Townsend fixing a messy tubeless tire flat on the bike path just before the park. So anyway, it is now quite feasible to do a Century ride (my original intent, actually) from, say, City Park to Audubon Park and from there out and back on the bike path. I never really believed I'd live to see the day when there was a continuous 45 miles of bike path from Audubon Park. 

So hats off to Bill Keller and Caroline Helwick who were the ones who really got the ball rolling back in the late 80s and early 90s. Bill was also instrumental in getting the Tammany Trace rails-to-trails project started. If you ride the levee bike path in Jefferson Parish you may notice a few signs naming that section after him. Caroline got involved after her husband was killed in 1987 on Lakeshore Drive when he was hit from behind by a speeding car. I was out there doing one of our Tuesday/Thursday training races when that happened just west of the Elysian Fields traffic circle. A couple of riders were already on their way to the levee board police station to report a speeding car just before it happened. Candy and I attended some of the initial meetings at Caroline's house that resulted in the establishment of the New Orleans Regional Bicycle Awareness Committee that helped push through the legislation to make the bike path happen. It's been a 40-year effort -- so far.

68 Miles, 68 Years

Last Saturday I drove up to Ridgeland for the annual LAMBRA meeting. I had been planning on cobbling together something I could ride in the cyclocross race that morning, but those plans had gone out the window days before. I had somehow tweaked my neck in such a way that looking to the left caused a lot of pain in the neck muscles on the right. Clearly the worst possible thing I could have done was a cyclocross race. In fact, I was having plenty enough trouble riding in the city without being able to easily look to the left or over my shoulder for traffic. As it turned out, that new Garmin Varia had arrived at just the right time because having it alert me to traffic, or more importantly a lack of traffic, behind me was a big help. Anyway, it's Thursday today and it still hurts, so I must have really done some damage.

City Park - 6 am Friendly Friday Ride

The LAMBRA meeting was small but productive, I think. Everyone is trying to get racing back on track and not being too picky about the details. There are clearly a ton of riders, many of whom have little actual race experience. In fact, the very definition of "race" has been getting a little fuzzy lately with all the Fondo style rides that are essentially races, and the gravel races, and cyclocross races that include gravel, etc., etc. So anyway we'll be pushing a bit to get some more races on the calendar and will probably actually promote some through LAMBRA itself rather than relying on clubs. It seems that everybody and his brother has started up a new "club," most of which exist in a kind of quasi-official state, which is to say on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, and aren't official USAC clubs. I guess we'll see how that all pans out. To complicate matters a bit, there will be substantially less revenue coming to LAMBRA from USAC since they changed from providing license-based rebates to a strictly "rider-days" basis. With the relatively small number of events and participants we get at our USAC events, that 20 cents per rider per day isn't going to pay for a whole lot. The days of providing lots of championship jerseys and awards and stuff are probably over for now anyway. We'll be able to do a fair amount to help event promoters, but resources will become limited over the next year or two.

So last week the Strava annual odometer ticked over 12,000 miles, and with a bit over a month left to go in 2021 it's entirely possible I could end the year at around 13k which I think will be the highest I've ever recorded. I have no idea why, however. It could just be as simple as fewer rainy mornings or the lack of collegiate road trips where I don't get to ride. Last weekend it was just two Giro Rides, but on the whole it was a pretty solid week of riding. Today is Thanksgiving, and also my birthday. We did a holiday Giro, which for me works out to around 59 miles, so before I went home I added a few miles through Audubon Park and on the levee to make an age-appropriate 68 mile day just for fun. As if I didn't already feel old enough, I had a checkup on Monday which went well. I mentioned my history from way back with some arrhythmia and the occasional spikes I see on my HRM early in my rides and suggested perhaps it would be a good idea to get a Holter monitor for a few days to see if there's anything to see, so I'll be going in tomorrow to see what the cardiologist says about that. With my history and all it's entirely likely I have at least the classic athletic heart, and I'm certainly old enough to have AFIB or something like that, so I guess it's a good time to check that out. Otherwise though things are pretty much the same. HDL is a little high, LDL is low, blood pressure is textbook 121/80 or something, PSA is super low, so nothing to complain about.

Last week I learned of the passing of Bob Perrin from brain cancer. It came as quite a surprise. I have known Bob as long as I've been riding bikes. He personally signed my first racing license in 1973. I vividly remember standing over his shoulder as he typed the information on an old typewriter at someone's house where we were having a club meeting. Back in the day I would find him riding in Audubon Park - before it was closed to cars, and we would complain about the cars and wish the road could be just for bikes. Now of course it is closed to cars and there's a bike lane but there's also a never-enforced 10 mph speed limit for bikes, so it's not a good place for training rides any more. In more recent years I would run into him riding on the levee and would often ride with him for a bit. He had finally gotten knee surgery the last time I saw him and was back riding. Then with the whole COVID thing I wasn't surprised not to see him. Bob was a great and well-respected photographer. A few years back he dropped off a bunch of race photos from the 70s, most of which I scanned and put up on the NOBC website. Someone said this morning that there might be a memorial ride for him on Sunday so we'll see how that works out. I've been thinking about trying to do a century ride on the river levee now that they have re-paved the spillway road and also paved the levee top upriver from the spillway almost all the way to the Gramercy bridge. That should make for about 90 miles out and back from the park, so it would be a easy matter to tack on an additional ten. If there's a memorial ride on Sunday I could do that and then continue up the river. Anyway, I was sad to hear about Bob. I was always expecting to see him riding on the levee on Monday or Friday when I often do easy recovery rides. 

Somewhere I have this photo of him sliding on the ground after crashing on the u-turn at one of the annual Bastille Day races, but I haven't been able to find it. Isn't it typical that I can't find a photo of the person who spent his entire life taking photos? Bob didn't do a whole lot of racing every year, but he was always around. I'll miss him.

Hinting at Winter

Getting ready for the Swamp Otter Classic races to begin.

It was a week of sorting through the winter kit drawer and making those always-difficult pre-dawn wardrobe decisions when the temperature out the door is in the low 50s but you know it will warm up quickly once the sun rises. It's also the time of year when I want to buy more warm fuzzy stuff. Otherwise, the usual weekday rides were pretty normal with good-sized groups and no drama. Late in the week I got to try out a couple of new things. I'd gotten a couple more pairs of wool socks from DeFeet. These are 6" high, which for me is just about an inch or two below the bottom of bib knickers. The weather cooperated nicely by providing a couple of mornings for which they were fairly well-suited. I think I'm fairly well-stocked on other winter gear, and I have a team long-sleeve jersey that should be arriving in a week or so, so I'm feeling pretty well prepared for winter, at least as far as cycling clothing goes. Of course the larger challenge is mental. On the plus side, the time change back to Standard Time has been nice. At the moment it's only really dark until about 6 am, and by 6:30 you don't really need lights. Naturally that will gradually change and we'll be back in the dark in a month, but it will be nice while it lasts.

Stopping at the museum in City Park after the Friendly Friday ride.

So the other new thing this week was a new tail light. The Daughter send me the new Garmin Varia that pairs with the 520 computer and alerts me to traffic approaching from behind while at the same time changing to a brighter flash. I guess it must work because nobody has run into me yet. This new model has "peloton mode" which is a less bright mode for night group riding. I really can't tell if it's sufficiently dim or not, or what it does when a car approaches, since of course I can't actually see it. I almost feel like I should mount it backwards on my handlebar for a couple of rides so I can see exactly what it's doing! Being higher than my usual light, it just barely fits on the seatpost beneath my small saddle bag. In the city it isn't all that useful since there are almost always cars approaching from behind, but early in the morning I found it helpful for letting me know it was OK to move out of the bike lane to avoid potholes and other bike lane debris without having to look behind me. I expect it will be most helpful for rides out in the country where traffic is less frequent but travelling much more rapidly. I guess it's about time to think about the northshore winter ride series again. Anyway, I tried it out Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and found it at least quite interesting. I haven't experimented with setting the light mode from my Edge yet, but apparently that is possible and would be much easier than reaching back to push buttons on the Varia itself while trying to remember how many time to push to get to the desired mode. 

Yesterday I skipped riding so I could officiate the Swamp Otter Classic cyclocross race. Turnout was OK, if not spectacular, but the weather was great. The forecast had been calling for upper 40s at sunrise, so despite the 10:00 am start time of the first race I was expecting to be cold. I arrived about an hour and a half before the start, so had lots of time to cart equipment from my car across a little bridge to the area along the 40 Arpent Canal where the race is held. This year they had added some out-and-back gravel segments to the usual cyclocross course, extending the lap distance to something over two miles. That worked out great for me because it meant that there was only one lapped rider all day, which greatly simplified getting the results straight. Also, the sun was out, the wind was light, and it was so warm I had to take off the base layer I was wearing. 

Next weekend we'll finally have an actual LAMBRA meeting up in Ridgeland after the Saturday cyclocross races. We've been slowly trying to get the 2022 season on track and will have to figure out how to manage things without most of the revenue we had been getting from USAC in the past. Under the new scenario, LAMBRA gets something like $0.20 per rider day and nothing for racing licenses, so even with a good year of events and participation that will work out to maybe $1k per year rather than $3k. In addition, we have to make our own championship medals since USAC doesn't provide those any more - for the first time since I've been racing, actually. We recently spend about $600 for medals, although of course have a fair number still available. We also haven't collected any club dues or per-rider surcharges since 2019 so we'll need to work out what we want to do going in to 2022 and whether we want to have the LCCS points series, award LCCS and championship jerseys, etc.

No Good Deed

I don't know what I did to deserve last week, but it must have been bad. On Sunday we had a nice time with Halloween activities, sliding candy down the "candy chute" and visiting with neighbors and eating and drinking stuff that's bad for you. Next door the neighbors were projecting the Saints game onto the side of our house, and everything kind of stopped for the final three minutes of the game as everybody gathered around to see the outcome. Monday was my usual easy morning ride and then the usual ride to work.

Projecting the Saints game onto the house.

I was scheduled for Jury Duty in criminal court down at "Tulane and Broad" for Tuesday morning and that meant that I'd have to miss the morning ride. Still, I was holding out some hope that I wouldn't actually end up on a jury like I did the last time. So I rode down to the courthouse and walked into the basement where the jury duty room is. It's a dingy, crowded room packed with people who would rather not be there. After filling out the form and signing in I sat there for maybe only an hour before they called something like 57 people, including me, up to Section K. My number was something like 39 so I wasn't in the first group that was questioned, but they were going to need a full jury plus alternates and I wasn't liking the odds. As usual people came up with all sorts of excuses for not being able to serve on a jury, and one potential juror who was an ER doctor did not hide his disdain for the crowed conditions and likelihood of spreading COVID around. He got off too, along with the Jehovah's Witness and the people with childcare issues and the ones who had problems with gay people or the lack of solid evidence etc., etc. So after a break for lunch they started going through the rest of us. I was never asked any direct questions or anything, but in the end I was selected as one of the 14. I didn't get out of there until about 6:30 that evening, so basically spent 8 hours in the courtroom. I didn't have to report until 9:30 the next morning, so at least I got to do WeMoRi. 

Things just went downhill after that. The trial was basically a domestic dispute where one person claimed she was attacked with a knife by the other person who was breaking up with her despite the only injuries looking like maybe fingernail scratches and there being no knife in evidence and two completely different stories about what happened. It was actually hard to imagine how something like that got to the point of a jury trial. Both people worked for the Sheriff's office. Around 6 or so the judge ordered pizzas for us once the lawyers were finished trying to manipulate us, after which we crammed back into the tiny jury room. Everybody looked at each other and said, "Do you think there was really a knife involved here?" The resounding answer was "No way." It took about fifteen minutes to arrive at a consensus of not guilty, but by then it was maybe 7:30 or so. It was a pain but I left thinking that I'd at least done my good deed for the week.

Thursday it was six people at a table for four in the crosswind.

The next morning I went out to the 6 am levee ride where we battled a stiff crosswind the whole way. The group was eventually whittled down to six, but on the narrow bike path with a crosswind like that only three riders get a draft, so after taking a pull you essentially had to take another pull at the back just to keep from being dropped. I was already feeling a little scratchy throat that I was trying to ignore, but by the end of the day I knew I was in for a head cold, or maybe COVID. I thought to myself, "Well, no good deed goes unpunished." Sure enough, that night I could barely breathe through my nose and resorted to Sudafed and Advil, which helped a little but not really enough. The next morning I figured I'd better just work from home since my nose was running like an open faucet. That night was marginally better, which is to say I maybe got in a few hours of sleep propped up in the bed in the back room where I was watching episodes of Super Girl until around 1 am. It was no fun.

I had been registered for the annual Tour da' Parish Saturday morning, but clearly that wasn't going to happen for me. I think the average speed of the lead group was a bit over 25 mph for the 50 miles despite the wind, so it was just as well I'd skipped it. 

By Sunday morning I was feeling a lot better but it was cold and windy in the morning and I figured I may as well skip the Giro and instead try and go out later when it had warmed up, which turned out to be around 10:00. By then it was considerably warmer, but I wore a base layer and arm-warmers anyway. I ran into Steve out on the levee and we rode out to the Spillway together. Other than a bit of significant wind, the weather was great and I was glad to be back on the bike and feeling normal again. Anyway, I'm glad that week's over.

This morning it was in the low 50s and for the first time this fall I dug out a nice cozy pair of bib knickers and a long-sleeve jersey for an easy Monday ride on the levee. The wind had finally died down and it was nice to have some sunlight since we'd ditched daylight saving time on Sunday. That should make the morning rides a lot less stressful for a month of so until the shorter days put us back in the dark.

Dark and Humid October

The 6 am Levee Ride heading out in the dark

With Daylight Saving Time not ending for another couple of weeks, the morning rides seem to be getting darker and darker by the day. It's the time of year when I just automatically plug my lights into the charger after almost any ride, especially now that the batteries in both front and tail lights are old and don't hold a charge like they used to. On the plus side, we haven't had much rain at all for a while. On the minus side, we could really use some rain - just not when I'm riding. After that little cool snap last weekend we are back to warm and humid weather again with morning temperatures around 75° and highs well into the 80s. It's looking like a little cool front may make it through here around mid-week, and that should kick off some rain as it does.

Sunday Giro

The early morning rides, despite the darkness, have been well-attended. Riding on the levee path in the dark definitely requires a high level of alertness, though, and I'm really looking forward to the time change that should give us a month or so before the shorter days put us right back in the dark.

Saturday Giro stopping at a light!!

Last weekend I ended up just doing the Giro Ride both days. I was warm and humid, but I'll gladly take that instead of cold weather. Up in Minnesota Dan Casebeer has been posting photos of group rides in full winter gear, and I'm glad I won't likely have to deal with that for at least another month or two. On Saturday Julia dragged a number of the Tulane riders out to the Giro. A couple of them hadn't done it before and so of course had to really push themselves in a few places when the pace got really fast, but they all finished. For new riders the Giro can be a great learning experience, and as I always tell them, once you learn where the faster sections tend to be it gets a lot easier. On Sunday the Giro seemed a bit more tame, prompting me to actually go to the front and take a couple of pulls, at least until Mike Williams on his TT bike kind of got in the way. After he and Jaden started playing bumper cars up near the front of the group I decided to keep a safe distance until I could get ahead of Mike. After the Giro I rode straight over to Bike Easy where I was supposed to be helping out with their tent setup for the Bicycle Scavenger Hunt thing. It was nice chatting, but there were just a handful of people who came by, only a couple of whom knew anything about the ride or Bike Easy, so I wasn't really needed.

Progress.

Meanwhile, back at the house, the road work crew has started putting down asphalt on Neron Place, although not yet on the corner by Pine Street. There's still a lot of work to do even after they finish that part before people will be able to get back into their driveways. The house is in Halloween mode now and Candy has been preparing a ton of candy and making cookies and those sorts of things for a week already. I guess we will put up our "Candy Chute" again so nobody has to worry about COVID too much. Right now we're past the 4th surge and back to kind of the base level, averaging around 30 confirmed cases each day, so back around where we were last April-May. This morning I went downstairs and got a free Flu shot, which I guess is the thing to do if you're old and infirm like me. Influenza, statewide, is around one-tenth its normal level for this time of year. The ILI count for last week was 401. The last ILI surge was in February and March of 2020 when it was up above 5,000 for weeks. Yeah, social distancing and masks apparently work for influenza virus too.

A Little Taste of Fall and Another Slash

Sunday's Tulane team ride group

After slashing a practically new tire last Wednesday, I had set that one aside for booting and put on another new tire that I luckily happened to have on hand. 

Friday, post-ride.

On Friday I met up with the Friendly Friday group at City Park. That turned out to be a bit faster than usual, for some reason, but then again it's kind of a short ride so it was easy to manage anyway. Then on Saturday morning I rolled out with a nice new rear tire, again, and struggled generally northward into a 15 mph headwind ahead of an approaching cold front. As I made my way to Starbucks in the dark I wondered how many of the regulars would skip the ride. I also wondered why I hadn't myself. Surprisingly, though, there was an almost normal turnout at we streamed out of the parking lot onto Harrison Avenue. I'm not much good in the wind, and was already kind of dreading what I expected would be a crosswind on Hayne Blvd. 

Charlie D fixing a flat on Hayne

We'd barely started town Marconi when cries of "Flat!" rang out behind me and the whole group stopped and I rode back to offer assistance. The flat got fixed and we mounted up, and thirty seconds later I kind of blew a slow-speed bunny hop over one of the big bumps/potholes that's been there for years and immediately blew my rear tire. Amid my own cursing I pulled over, telling people to go ahead since it was entirely possible I'd just be limping home. As it turned out, I'd put a small pinch-flat induced slash in that brand new tire I'd just put on the day before, but it wasn't as bad as the one I'd done on Wednesday so I put maybe 60 psi in the tire and we all headed out again. So now I was focused on avoiding anything that looked like a pothole, of which there hundreds, and quietly calculating my chances of making it through the entire Giro without flatting again. We came down the Casino overpass onto Hayne Blvd. and as usual the pace picked up. I was keeping myself busy trying to survey the road surface ahead, stay in the draft, and battle the wind when suddenly there was a big piece of chain, not the bicycle kind, in the middle of the road. I had just enough time to cleanly bunny hop it. Charlie, however, hadn't been so lucky as I saw him coast off to the side with a flat. We were already too far down the long line of riders to expect anyone to stop, although a few did offer, but in the end it was just Charlie and me. Fortunately he hadn't done much damage to the tire itself. Also fortunately, I had stopped with him, because his CO2 inflator didn't work. We finally got rolling again and took the Bullard short-cut, meeting back up with the group on its way back somewhere out past Highway 11. They were already going pretty fast, and I'm not sure if Charlie even got back into the group because I never saw him again. Anyway, it was an easier than usual Giro for me which I guess was fine since I hadn't been feeling to hot from the start anyway.

For Sunday I had been planning on driving over to Pass Christian to meet up with Charlie, Pat, Steve and a few others for what was likely to be a nice low-key 65 miles or so, but by Saturday evening I was slated to drive a couple of the Tulane riders to a team ride in Independence. For me, it was six of one or a half-dozen of the other as far as the rides went. Neither would likely be very fast. By Sunday morning the cold front had come through, and up in Independence it was I guess in the upper 50s when we started around 8 am with a nice little group. I was wearing a short-sleeve thermal base layer and arm-warmers under my super thin summer jersey that served only as something with pockets. I knew it would warm up during the 67-mile ride, even though it would be mostly an easy paceline ride. Once the morning chill wore off we were treated to pretty ideal cycling weather with a clear blue sky and moderate breeze, and other than a couple of short segments on pavement that made gravel look smooth, mostly nice quiet country roads. Toward the end of the ride there were a couple of riders who were struggling a bit, but that wasn't unexpected since they hadn't been putting in many miles in training. 

Later that afternoon I sat down and booted both of those Continental 5000s. I put the one from Saturday back on the bike and expect to get at least a few thousand miles from it, barring another unexpected encounter with New Orleans streets in the dark. The other should also be serviceable thanks to the boot I sewed into the casing. I ended the week with 289 miles, albeit a bit short on the intensity end. Strava is currently showing 10,883 miles thus far for the year, which is running a bit ahead of my usual pace.

New Stuff Rides

Giro Ride heads out along Lakeshore Drive

There's nothing quite like that first ride with a brand new cassette, new chain, and new tires. Well, except for that first ride on an whole new bike - something I've actually experienced only a few times. Anyway, although the old stuff wasn't quite at the end of its lifetime by my admittedly low standards, riding out to the Giro Saturday morning felt amazingly smooth and quiet. The Giro Rides themselves, Saturday and Sunday, seemed fairly sedate by Giro standards, probably thanks to the relatively calm wind. Perhaps another factor was that I'd been off the bike for two days after my COVID booster, so my legs were pretty fresh.

Monday's usual solo ride up the levee was unremarkable except for the unavoidable realization that the days are getting shorter and hence the morning rides are getting darker for longer. On Tuesday I got held up by a train crossing Oak Street, but fortunately the rest of the group waited the extra three or four minutes. The ride was a fairly fast one, which I find pretty stressful in the dark. Despite the powerful headlights everyone has, pedestrians seem to appear suddenly even at the moderate 22-23 mph speeds we usually settle upon. At this time of year we're all the way out to the big dip around LaRose before it feels light enough to turn them off.

Well isn't that just great...

This morning I headed out to meet the WeMoRi under a starry sky and with the temperature down around the low 70s. As usually I hovered around Lakeshore Drive at Marconi until I saw the lights coming, finally merging into the group between Lakeshore Drive and RE Lee. We turned onto RE Lee and I slotted into the draft somewhere in the middle of the group behind Big Rich as I started to recover from the acceleration. A moment later - SLAM - I hit a big crack in the concrete, in the dark, probably one I've flatted on before. The rear tire went immediately flat as I eased out of the group and coasted to a stop just past the entrance to the USDA Southern Regional Research Center where four or five cars were lined up waiting for the gate to be opened. As I removed the rear wheel Geoff rolled up and helped out by providing some light and conversation. It was dark enough to keep me from having a good look at the tire, but I knew it had been a pinch flat so there wouldn't be anything stuck in the tread. I just pumped it up with CO2 and hoped for the best. Hearing no explosion, I backtracked to Marconi and hovered around there until I saw lights coming and turned toward the lake. Four or five riders came streaming past, obviously fresh from contesting the Backdraft Sprint, so I latched onto them fully expecting the rest of the group to come up to us momentarily. We turned onto Lakeshore Drive and as we approached the bridge I took a pull up to the top of the bridge. Then I pulled off and coasted a bit, planning to get back into the middle of end of the group. One problem. The group wasn't there. There was a pretty big gap and I was now stuck in the middle, so I just rolled along and waited to be sucked up by the main group where I remained.

When I got home I figured I'd better check the tire, bring it up to proper pressure, and put a fresh spare and CO2 in my bag. That's when I saw the slash in the tire with the tube trying to push its way through. I was pretty pissed since that tire had maybe 150 miles on it. Luckily I had another new tire on hand, and I'll probably boot the slashed one. I really need to get a few people together one morning and fill in some of the holes on the WeMoRi course. It's getting to be a rare occurrence to finish one of those without someone flatting.

The Third Shot

When Tulane sent out an email early in the week offering the Pfizer booster shots for COVID I figured I should take advantage of it. I'd had little reaction to the first shot back at the end of January, and only a minor reaction to the second shot a few weeks later, and since there had been reports of waning immunity from the vaccines it seemed wise to go ahead and get the third shot, especially considering my age and all. So I walked over to the vaccination space at the JBJ building on the 6th where there were a surprising number of people and got the third shot.

Later that evening after I'd fallen asleep on the couch, I awoke feeling achy and warm. Things only went downhill from there and I had a restless night of chills and sweats and a serious headache despite the Tylenol I'd taken. By morning I was feeling no better and decided to skip riding and, ultimately, also skip going in to work. I continued to be a little feverish all day. That night I slept a little better, although I woke up around 5 am pretty much soaked with sweat. Still, I felt considerably better than I had, and of course knew it was merely evidence that my immune system wasn't quite as crapped out as I'd thought. There were things to do at work, so while I skipped riding again I went in a little early. The day went OK, but it was clear I was still running a degree or two above normal operating temperature. It's now 6 pm, so close enough to 48 hours later, and although the headache is gone I'm still unnaturally warm. Hopefully homeostasis will be reestablished before tomorrow morning when I fully intend to do the Giro Ride.

I just installed a new chain and cassette, two new tires, and new brake blocks. I think my current cassette had somewhere in the neighborhood of 12,000 miles on it and was still doing pretty good, but my experience has been that Campagnolo chains like the one I just installed and a bit less tolerant of worn cassette cogs, so I went ahead and put on the new cassette without even checking to see if the chain skipped on the old one. Extravagant, to say the least!

Tired Tires Tagging Along

Tuesday on the levee

Driving back from Dahlonega on Monday enforced a much-needed rest day, but I was back out Tuesday morning for the 6 am levee ride, as was Chris. My legs were definitely still a little sore from 6-Gap but no more than expected, and the ride was pretty uneventful. Wednesday's WeMoRi seemed particularly fast for some reason, perhaps because I was still in recover mode or something, but it was manageable. Thursday, however, was when the flat tires started. On the way out Boyd flatted so we stopped while he fixed it, then as we got ready to go again I discovered my rear tire was almost flat. I quickly replaced the tube and we were on our way again without any more problems, although we did shorten the route because of the delay. 

On the way back we saw what had probably been the cause of the flats - a patch of fresh clear glass that we'd probably rolled right though in the dark. The next morning my rear tire was low, but I just aired it up and didn't think much about it during the Friendly Friday ride, which was particularly friendly that day, which is to say it didn't get too fast. The rear tire in question was a well-worn Continental 5000 that had two boots sewn into it from sidewall cuts. I had a fresh pair of new tires at home, but had been holding off on replacing the old ones because the streets around here are still covered with all manner of glass, roofing nails, and tree debris from Hurricane Ida. As I would soon learn, I'd waited a bit too long to replace that tired old tire. The tire was low again Saturday morning but somehow I made it through the Giro Ride that day without having to stop, although it was pretty low by the time I got home.

Lisa arrives at the Spillway checkpoint

On Sunday morning when I was getting ready to go out to the Giro Ride I noticed the rear tire was again low. I'd never been able to find anything stuck in the tire that might have caused the flat, but I went ahead and put in another tube, again checking the inside of the tire with my fingers for anything sharp. By the time we got onto Hayne Blvd. that morning for what would turn out to be a fairly easy Giro Ride (lots of people were doing Sunday's 150 mile ride around the lake), my rear tire was starting to bottom out. Everyone stopped and waited while I again replaced the tube and again checked the tire. By this point I was sure there was something embedded in the tire that I couldn't feel, so I wasn't too surprised to find it low again when we got to Venetian Isles. There, I stopped quickly to put a little more CO2 in the tire, hoping to at least make it off of Chef Highway and back onto city streets before it went flat. I took off down Chef ahead of the group, but shortly after they caught me the tire was bottoming out again and I had to stop. Again I checked the tire and could find nothing, but this time I just put maybe 40 psi into it, hoping that would prevent whatever was in the tire from puncturing the tube. A minute after we got rolling again, someone else had a flat. I told everyone I was going to continue riding since I was fully expecting it to go flat again. As it turned out, the lower pressure did the trick and the remnants of the group didn't catch me until I was on Lakeshore Drive. 

So I made it home without another flat, but my day wasn't done. I had been planning on riding out to the Spillway to pick up the lead group from NOMA to MOMA, so after getting home I quickly pulled off that tired old tire and put on a new rear tire and tube, grabbed some food and drink, and headed back out to the levee around 10:30. According to my calculations, the first riders would be coming through the Spillway around 11:30 or so and finishing around 1:00.

Tagged along with this group for the ride back into town

After a nice ride up the river with a light tailwind, I arrived at the Spillway to find Brett, who was supporting Lisa, and a few of the race people waiting for the first riders to arrive. There were a number of required places along the route where they had to punch in, and that was one of them. I learned there had been a big crash on the Bayou Bonfouca bridge near Slidell that had taken out most of the lead group and most of the 4D riders. A little while later I wasn't too surprised to see Lisa riding across the spillway, alone, in the lead. She punched in very quickly, replaced water bottles, and took off as I started my stopwatch. It was around seven  minutes later when a little group of seven or eight arrived. They took considerably longer to punch in and all, but when they rolled out I decided it would be a good group for me to tag along behind for the ride back home.

This group was clearly feeling the miles. A couple were nursing leg cramps already, and another had some sort of little mechanical problem, so after a while they were down to just five, two of whom were pretty well-toasted. For me, it was easy to sit on the back where I wouldn't affect their not-really-a-race race, since their speed was mostly in the 20-22 mph range. I felt a little guilty for not going to the front, but I didn't want to risk someone complaining about the outside assistance, so I just continued to tag along at the back. They stopped for the final punch under the Huey P. Long bridge where things got a little separated. Brian had a long chase to get back on, and even then I think they were down to just four as they exited the levee bike path onto Oak Street. After turning onto Carrollton for their last stretch back to City Park one more rider caught. A little while later I peeled off onto S. Claiborne to head back home with 109 fairly easy miles in my legs for the day. Somehow I never got rained on, but I think most of them did get wet right at the end of their ride. Strava says I've ridden 10,354 miles so far this year. That's a bit more than usual, but then again you never know what life will throw at you over the next three months.

6-Gap Crawling, Coasting, and Charging

Earlier in September it seemed that things had conspired to prevent my 13th appearance at 6-Gap. A month earlier the Tulane Cycling club had already gotten hotel rooms reserved near Dahlonega and the stage was set for another road trip in the motor pool minivans. For my own part, I wasn't thinking too much about the ride this year after having missed it last year entirely, but I was figuring I'd be helping with the driving and doing the ride nonetheless. Then there was Hurricane Ida. Off-campus students evacuated, the hurricane hit harder than expected, some of the generators in Tulane's co-generation plant failed, on-campus students were evacuated, campus was closed for repairs, and so the planned trip went by the wayside. At that point I was kind of resigned to missing 6-Gap again, kind of in the way you might resign yourself to missing a root canal. Then, just a week or so before the ride, Steve asked if I wanted to go. I could stay with him, Pat, and Chris at a friend's house right there in Dahlonega. I wasn't too keen on driving my car up there since it's way overdue for 100,000 mile maintenance (I have an appointment for the end of October), but then Chris offered to give me a ride with him in his Tesla, so rather suddenly things kind of fell into place. I put my special 6-Gap cassette onto the race wheels and rode them on the Thursday ride to make sure everything was shifting OK because 6-Gap is one ride where you are guaranteed to use every single gear combination on the bike and wish for more. Then on Friday night I decided to clean the bike and discovered a slash in the front tire through which I could see the inner tube, a situation that could be catastrophic on a fast twisty descent. Luckily, I had a brand new tire on hand. When I removed the bad tire I found that the rim strip had shifted, exposing parts of a couple of spoke holes. That alone could also have caused a blowout. So I re-centered the tape and put everything back together and the bike was all ready, or so I thought.

Chris picked me up early on Saturday and we were on the road by 6 am for what would turn out to be a very long but interesting road trip. I think we stopped about five times to charge the battery along the way, so we didn't arrive at Ro's house until around 8 pm thanks to that and the time zone difference. Still, it was a nice drive and I learned a lot about Teslas.

Thanks to being so close to the high school, we got to the venue nice and early on Sunday morning with plenty of time to get a good parking spot and pick up packets and get organized for the 8:00 am start. I staked out a spot near the front of the rapidly growing group at the start line and all of us were ready to go.

 This ride always starts out kind of fast and sketchy since it seems like all of the first few hundred riders somehow think they are going to be able to stay with the front group if they can just pack themselves tighter together, while at the same time the actual fast riders have good reason to create a split between themselves and the packfill like me. So by the time we were five miles out Chris and Steve were up in that front group and almost out of sight as the rest of the group started to settle down. Then, on the first little downhill, I was surprised to feel a clump, clump, clump coming from my front wheel. I looked at it carefully to see if the bead was about to blow off the rim, but it didn't look too bad. As it turned out, one section of bead was kind of stuck farther down inside the rim than it should have been. At any rate, it definitely kept me from getting too aggressive on the downhills, which was probably a good thing anyway.

This year the top half of the ride was to be done in reverse, so the steep Hogpen climb would be the second climb of the day. Although it was steeper from that direction (like 10-20%), it was considerably shorter (like 2.5 miles). I had some concerns about that, however, since my lowest gear was a 39x28, which was barely sufficient for short 10% grades and definitely insufficient for 20% grades. My legs had similar limitations. Going in I had decided to just ride my best steady tempo on the climbs, best described as crawling, and use the downhills for recovery, best described as coasting. Of course, with over a thousand riders it isn't too hard to find little groups or individuals going just the right speeds on the climbs to help pace inexperienced climbers like me, so the first Gap went by without much damage. 

As it turned out, I liked the Hogpen climb better from this direction despite the steeper grade, and despite the fact that I was badly over-geared. I spent most of that climb at a cadence of about 40 rpm, seated, which was at least smooth and steady, but was not unsurprisingly doing a number on my lower back. Still, I survived Hogpen feeling a little better than I'd feared. The rest of the ride was basically crawl up the climb, coast down the downhill, find a little group to draft on the flatter sections, and repeat. I'd been looking forward to my favorite downhill, the last one, that is long and swoopy and smooth, and was quite disappointed to have to go down it almost entirely on the brakes because of a U-haul truck and car ahead of me all the way. By then my upper back and neck were killing me despite the 12-hour Aleve I'd taken in the morning and the other 12-hour Aleve I'd taken four hours later at around 50 miles, but really no worse than usual and definitely not a surprise (hence the Aleve!).

So I finally rolled in at an official chip time of 6:25:24, having stopped at none of the rest stops and with one of my water bottles still almost half-full, and generally feeling pretty decent under the circumstances. I'd gone through the equivalent of about four Hammergels, not counting the coffee and Scratch bar I'd had before the start. Chris, on his first 6-Gap experience, turned in a 6:12 chip time, but his actual riding time was 5:56, which was pretty great. Steve had a chip time of 6:10 with a 6:07 ride time, and Pat as usual stopped at a lot of the rest stops taking pictures and stuff and came in at 7:36.

This year, for the first time, I stayed overnight on Sunday. Chris and I headed out around 5:30 am for a smooth and uneventful ride back with Chris taking a conference call and me updating the COVID data, arriving back home around 6:30. I think that all-in-all it was one of the least stressful 6-Gap rides I've ever done. Considering my lackadaisical approach, I was surprised at my time that I'd expected would be closer to 6:45. In fact, it was pretty much right in line with my times from other recent years. While we were sitting in the high school cafeteria eating the usual spaghetti and meat sauce and salad and sweet tea I got to talk with Patrick Hennessey who I hadn't seen since forever. He was a Junior when he raced here a long time ago and has recently started riding again, apparently quite strongly since he finished well under 6 hours. I also got to take with Debbie Milne, who has had a pretty good year racing-wise this year with her Supra team and was there shepherding some of her development team members.

Flexibility

Coming back over the Rigloets with Fort Pike off to the left.

This week's weather was beyond predictable. There was rain, and more rain, and torrential rain, and clear skies, but the only way to tell what was coming up was to look out the window. Tuesday's rain never really let up so I missed riding entirely that day. Then on Wednesday it was raining in the morning, but I was able to get out for a couple of hours in the evening without getting too wet. Thursday we lucked out and got in our usual levee ride before the rain started. Then on Friday I went out to the 6:00 am "Friendly Friday" ride, some of which strayed considerably outside of the friendly speed range. Just as we ended and were hanging around in front of the Museum of Art the first raindrops started to fall. I was pretty damp by the time I got home but not what you'd call soaked, so that was good. I even made it in to work and back without getting rained on, although I left work early just to be on the safe side and also because I was practically the only one on the entire floor all day. Lots of people are still working from home, although I would think things should be getting more or less back to normal next week. 

Still waiting.....

On the home front, the road work crew started putting in the forms for the new curbs all down Neron Place on Friday. That's somewhat encouraging, but it also means that nobody who lives on the three blocks can park their cars, or get into their driveways, so cars are parked all over the place. Complicating that is the fact that to date we have still had no garbage or trash pickup. 

Overflowing garbage bins are lined up on the corners next to bags of hurricane debris and large piles of tree limbs and stuff. The last time our garbage was picked up was some time in late August, well before Hurricane Ida. The cans are of course full of maggots and are pretty disgusting at this point.

So last weekend there was this century ride over in Mississippi that I was kind of thinking about doing, but the weather forecast was not promising for either Saturday or Sunday. There was an idea to do a northshore ride, but nobody really wanted to commit, considering the chance of being caught in thunderstorms out in the middle of nowhere. The best option seemed to be to stay close to home and be flexible. That meant doing the Saturday Giro Ride, which thankfully escaped the rain, and then on Sunday deciding to do a "long" Giro out to Fort Pike. That adds a few miles and for me makes for an 80 mile day. For that we ended up with just five - Charles, Rich, Bo, Pat, and me. It turned out to be a really nice morning with mostly clear skies until the clouds started developing as we made our way back, pushed along by a nice little tailwind. Somehow, thanks to being able to be flexible about when and where I rode, I managed a fairly normal weekly mileage 270.