Laps and Laptops

It wasn't a great week. There was lots of scattered and not-so-scattered rain around, along with lots of wind. Tuesday morning was a shortened solo ride with 12 mph winds. Wednesday's Giro was rained out, but I snuck out around mid-day when there was a little window in the weather for another short ride with more 12 mph wind. Thursday was yet another solo ride on the levee, this time with even more exciting 14 mph wind. By Friday morning the wind had finally settled down, but there were only four of us for the Tulane coffee ride that didn't include any coffee because people had to be back early. That was around when Dustin asked if I could help out at the Velodrome for the first race of a track series that included a morning clinic for new riders. I knew that would mean a really low-mileage day for me, and the forecast at the time for Sunday wasn't looking too great, but then one of the Tulane riders needed to borrow one of my track bikes so I decided to make the trip.

The weather up in Baton Rouge was pretty nice on Saturday, and there was a really good turnout for both the clinic and the races, which in this case were limited to matched sprints. I snuck in a few laps around the track, although not really enough to call training. I watched the clinic riders from a safe distance behind as they got accustomed to riding in a track paceline. Nobody crashed, so that was good, and it was nice to see the old Viner track bike back in action. After the clinic we had over twenty riders for the matched sprints, which were done as two-lap races in single-elimination format that unfortunately meant that a number of riders got to do only one sprint. Even so, watching the other sprints was probably more instructive than actually doing them for the newer track riders. We started with a 16-rider bracket, and even with the shortened races it took a long time to get down to the finals, which is typical of matched sprints. I had brought the LAMBRA finish line camera and laptop, largely so I could re-acquaint myself with them and make sure everything was working since the only use all last year was at the Tour de La road race, and I wasn't even sure if we'd used that particular laptop and/or camera.  It was a good thing I brought them because the laptop would not boot up at all. The manufacturer's "Lenovo" screen would come up, and then nothing. I restarted it numerous times to no avail. When I got back home I got it to it's "auto-repair" thing, which never works, and didn't. So I ended up with a version of the blue screen of death. I have no idea what could have happened while it was sitting down in the basement in its case, but whatever it was it wasn't good. It looks like my only hope is to download the files to create a USB startup drive and hope I can re-install Windows 10. No time for that at the moment, though. Fortunately my personal laptop has the camera software on it. Anyway, I guess I got back home around 3 p.m. with wasn't too bad for a track day.

During the day on Saturday the weather forecast kept shifting back the arrival of rain, and so by Sunday morning it was clear that we'd be able to do the Giro Ride without any serious threat of rain. This particular day there were at least four TT bikes in the mix, along with a fair amount of horsepower and a bit more wind. That resulted in some really fast stretches and some people getting gapped off, especially on Chef toward the end. I barely closed one gap at around 34 mph myself. Otherwise, though, I felt pretty good for the ride. When one of the riders flatted on Bullard the whole group stopped, and after that the pace settled down for a while.

Double Giro Weekend

Saturday Giro heading back on Hayne Blvd.

Warmer weather last weekend made for a couple of good Giro Rides, even though Sunday's switch to DST cost me an hour of much-needed sleep and much-wanted daylight. We had just gotten to the point at which I could ride out to the Giro around 6:30 am without feeling like I needed a front headlight, and *bam* back to the dark on Sunday. 

Saturday's group was pretty big and for some odd reason I decided it was time for me to actually use it to get a workout. 

On Friday I'd ridden out to the lakefront despite all of the Tulane riders having bailed on the morning Coffee Ride, primarily to check out what Lisa had earlier described as the "Cyclists Death Trap" recently installed by the city at the Elysian Fields traffic circle. What a mess! It was bad enough when, at some time last year, they painted a little bike lane in the gutter through the circle that included a couple of turns you could never make at more than ten miles an hour - maybe less after riding through the often-wet and grimy lane up against the curb. To make matters even more confusing for everyone, they had at the same time reduced the regular traffic lanes from two to one, but just through the circle. Of course the regular riders would never ride in the gutter, and didn't, but at least they could ride in the cross-hatched space that used to be the right lane, so it wasn't much of a problem. Well, until last week when the city decided to stick about a hundred of those 3-foot high flexi-posts all over the damned place. It's like unexpectedly coming up on a downhill ski slalom course without being able to tell which posts go on the left and which go on the right and where you can cut through in order to not ride through the puddles and debris in the gutter. We've been riding through that traffic circle since the early 70s without a problem since there used to be two lanes. Now it's a problem, especially in a group because if you're behind two or three people you can't see those little posts as they are completely hidden by the riders in front of you. The bottom line is that most of us feel like the posts have made the traffic circle considerably *less* safe than it used to be. Hopefully there won't be a big crash when someone in the WeMoRi hits one of those things.

But I digress...

So I felt pretty good on Saturday and did indeed get a solid workout, after which I decided it was time to cut down some of the dead plants along the backyard fence (from the freeze) and also to take down part of a tree that had gotten so big it was starting to shade out a whole section of the backyard. A few hours later the back yard was much improved - quite the opposite for my back and arms.

Sunday morning came early, of course, and I rode out to Starbucks in the dark. The ride itself was more tame than Saturday's had been, and since I'd already decided to make it a Recovery Giro Ride, I had a pretty easy time of it at the back. On the way back home Pat and I were in the "protected (aka imprisoned) bike lane going under the interstate when Pat hit a big piece of broken cast-aluminum that was cleverly camouflaged amongst the sand and dirt and trash in the gutter - I mean bike lane - and sliced his rear tire. 

Monday and Tuesday mornings on the levee were both kind of foggy and damp as the icewater-chilled air over the river met the 70° air everywhere else. On Tuesday Rich flatted way out by Destrehan, and then flatted again before we found the tiny offending shard of rick embedded in his tire. The fog was pretty thick in places, and combined with the darkness that didn't abate until we were already heading back from Ormond, the situation was bad enough to keep me from getting too close to the wheel in front. It'll get cooler later in the week, but nothing below the low 50s, so that's good.

Meanwhile on the home front, the road work crew packed up and moved out on Monday, leaving a dirt road with water pipes sticking out of the sand and all of us wondering when they would come back to start working again. 

Springtime

Sunday's Giro Ride starting back from Venetian Isles

Some warmer weather has crept over the south the last couple of days, just one of the clues that Spring is about here. The Azaleas are loaded with flower buds, the bike lights are barely getting used, and the river is rising as we approach the end of Standard Time this coming Sunday. Of course, that also means that next Sunday morning it will be dark again at 6:30 am. Win some, lose some. It was still a little chilly for last weekend's Giro Rides, at least by my standards, which means that some riders were perfectly comfortable in summer kit. By Wednesday morning, though, it was over 60° at dawn, and although I headed out for the WeMoRi wearing two jerseys and sunscreen arm-warmers, it was more for psychological than physiological reasons. The forecast isn't showing a low temperature below 60° for another week, after which we'll have lows in the mid to low 50s for another week. Nothing there I can really complain about.

Meanwhile, activity and traffic in general seems to have picked up considerably over the past couple of weeks. Texas and Mississippi threw COVID caution out their respective windows a few days ago, and indeed the state and city have both relaxed some restrictions. Although my numbers are relatively low compared to, say, January, they haven't been dropping significantly in a few days so I won't be too surprised if we see another hopefully small surge. Tulane has had two days this week with zero positive test results out of  over 3,000, so that's certainly a good sign. With all of the testing being done at the university, I look at it as if it's the canary in the mine. I've been seeing more and more cycling events being scheduled, so event directors are definitely feeling more confident. I still have to decide when to put on the Time Trial, hopefully in early May, while avoiding Mother's Day and a couple of events that aren't really big conflicts for TT riders. At any rate, everything is running about three months behind right now.

They're back!

Here on Neron Place, the road work stopped a couple of months ago, and we've just been waiting for the other shoe to fall, which it did this morning. As I write, they're punching holes in the asphalt along the street prior to what I assume will be replacement of the water line. A notice they slipped into the mailbox says they'll be finished in a week. Of course, that means more dirt and mud and noise and dust, and will no doubt leave us with an even worse dirt road pending whatever will constitute Phase 3. Might be time to start going back to the office on a regular basis.

Full Circle - March 5

Lots of dark offices

It has now been a full year, to the day, since my last real day "in the office." Saturday, March 6, 2020 was the Red Bluff Century where I crashed and spent a couple of days in the hospital, just in time for the first COVID-19 case to arrive in New Orleans. So basically I got a little head-start on the whole "work from home" thing. Good think I already had a pretty nice home office setup.

Not unexpected!

Coincidentally, I happened to have a routine dermatology appointment down at the Tulane hospital clinic, and since I should now have some measure of immunity to SARS-CoV-2, I figured it would be a good day to go in to the office and at least get my long-abandoned computer back up to speed. I figured it would take a while for it to download and install all of the updates it missed, which it did. 

So I rode over to the office a bit early so I could drop off my stuff before walking over to the hospital, a few blocks away from my Poydras Street office. The building, and certainly my floor, is still pretty deserted. Before walking over to the hospital I had to look up the now-forgotten code for the bathroom. Over at the clinic I got my usual three of four shots of liquid nitrogen and a biopsy sample from something on my back. On the way back I stopped at the Subway to pick up a sandwich for lunch. It was almost noon and there were like two people there. So weird. Anyway, I was back in the office a few minutes later. I think there may be one or two other people on the floor since I've occasionally heard a door close, but I haven't seen anyone, which is actually kind of nice.

At least it was peaceful and quiet!

While my desktop all-in-one was updating I got some work done on my laptop that I'd brought. Fortunately I've been keeping all of my work files in folders on Box, so there were no problems in that regard. The one thing I forgot to bring was the external backup drive that normally is attached to my work computer. I'd gotten Candy to retrieve it from my office way back in March so I'd have access to all of the files that normally live just on my office computer's drive. I've had to use a lot of files that are on there over the past year, so that was definitely a good call. In the meantime, however, those original files on my office computer won't be synced to the backups until I bring the external drive back and get things back to whatever passes for normal.

This morning it was a little bit warmer than it had been for the prior couple of days. I went out and met Gavin, Julia, and later Nisha for the TUCA coffee ride. Julia and Nisha both had to head back before coffee, but anyway it was nice to sit down at one of the tables outside of CC's on Esplanade for a quick cup before heading back home myself. It's looking like rain tonight but at least the low temperatures will be staying in the low 50s for the weekend.