April Showers

Saturday's northshore ride was pretty nice

Sitting here on a Wednesday looking out the window at another rainy weekday and just now remembering I hadn't logged anything from last week, so here 'tis.

The weekday rides were complicated a bit by the weather, which has been the very definition of unpredictable lately. Somehow I got through the week without missing a day of riding, although at least one of those days involved sneaking out around mid-afternoon when there was a window of mostly dry road in-between rainstorms. I somehow accidentally got out to the WeMoRi early, or technically on time, which gave me a few more miles than normal. Thursday morning was rained out but I was able to make the afternoon Tulane ride, so that was good. Then on Saturday morning the Giro Ride was entirely and unquestionably washed out. I did, however, manage to get in a good 44 miles on the levee later in the day, though, so all was not lost. 

By Thursday Chuck and Charles had hatched a northshore ride plan that would ultimately turn into a good 77 mile ride up to State Line and then back the long way to the Lee Road ballpark. It was still a little chilly when I arrived, quite early, for that one. The rest rooms were locked because they'd been having vandalism problems, so I relieved myself of my morning coffee back behind the big container amidst the flourishing poison oak, and waited to see who would show up. I think we had seven or eight for our 8:30 am start time. There was another group starting from the same place about half an hour later. That group was also going up to State Line but coming back the shorter way.

From the start, and for no particular reason, I was not feeling too great. Sometimes that happens and then half an hour later you're back to normal. This wasn't one of those times. On the plus side, I wasn't feeling worse as the ride went on. Anyway, this turned out to be a good group that was keeping a steady pace without any huge surges, so even though I clearly wasn't firing on all cylinders, it was OK. The sun was ot and the temperature rising, and it was really starting to feel like summer. I was wearing my sunscreen arm-warmers, which worked out pretty nicely for the temperature that was mostly in the mid-60s and riding to near 80. I ended up doing a couple of extra miles at the end just to get my total over 80. Somehow, by the end of the week I'd logged 290 miles, which was at least more than I'd expected considering the week's unsettled weather.

Thursday Tulane Levee Ride

The city relaxed some of the COVID restrictions last week and things seem almost normal in many respects, although I'm still working from home mostly because of convenience than necessity, and the fact that nobody else in my office is in the office. I guess we're now just watching a race between vaccines and variants play out right now - hoping for the best. Around here the COVID numbers have been slowly creeping upward for the past week, which I guess shouldn't surprise anyone given the relaxed restrictions, increased travel, and more infectious variants. Many of the people I know have now been fully or almost fully vaccinated now, and on Friday we went to an actual restaurant with a couple of the neighbors. Danielle is getting her second Moderna vaccine shot today. At Tulane, where the surveillance testing program has continued, they have had only 14 positive tests over the past 14 days, out of 21,388 tests, which means you'd need to use scientific notation to show the rate of positives. Will we see another surge?  Nobody knows. There are just too many variables now. 

We're moving ahead with plans for the Time Trial in May, and soon I will need to get the Tour de Louisiane event permit done. We are planning on our usual date in the first week of June and hoping nothing happens between now and then to derail that. This weekend is the Tour de Jefferson, and I think a lot of people are planning on doing that in lieu of the Sunday Giro. The course is pretty crazy with six U-turns, so we'll just have to see how that all plays out.