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.