Water and Rocks

Flat number two on Saturday

It was late afternoon on Friday when the crew tearing up the street usually packs up to go home for the weekend when I heard the pump start up outside the living room window. Looking down at the street corner I could see four or five guys standing around a huge hole from which they were now pumping water into the storm drain. They did not look happy. 

I quickly surmised that they had managed to break a water line, probably the one going to the fire hydrant. So now they had to wait for the Sewerage & Water Board to come out and shut off the water to that line so they could make the repair. After waiting for about an hour, and promptly when overtime kicked in four or five S&WB guys arrived. Looking out of my home office window I could see them wandering around looking at the ground. They didn't know where the water shut-off was. I went down there and told them it was near the corner. I'd seen people shut off the valve numerous times in the past since we've had numerous water main breaks around here. The search continued, however, so I finally went down there myself, kicked away the riversand that was covering the valve cover, and called them over. Things were wrapped up about an hour later, albeit leaving the road closed and a big hole on the corner for the weekend. Two steps forward, one step backward.

Casing repair

Saturday's Giro featured two people flatting, both of whom I stopped for. One was a hopelessly slashed tubeless tire that ended up as a call for extraction. At least we had a nice little group of five or so for the ride out toward Venetian Isles where we met back up with the group. Then, on the way back down Hayne Blvd. there was a new hole in the concrete complete with a debris field of chunks of fractured roadway. Dave hit one of them and but a big slice in his sidewall. We were able to get him back on the road, though, so that was good. Then, just a block from home, I was navigating another pothole that's been there for about four years when I caught a rock just right and slashed my own tire's sidewall. I limped home on the flat and stitched in a boot made of some leftover rim strip rather than trash the tire. We'll see how long that holds out.  Sundays Giro was more normal, fortunately. Afterward I stopped at Starbucks to find the visiting rider from Florida who had contacted me the day before. By then I couldn't resist getting a coffee Frappuccino for myself. Back at home I peeled off the sweat-soaked clothes and jumped in the shower.

Old plumbing at EOL

The bath tub/shower faucets have been a problem lately and it's been practically impossible to stop them from dripping even though I'd changed the washers recently. When I went to turn off the hot water I felt something give inside the valve stem and knew it was bad. Hot water was just pouring out and the valve was obviously broken. Now in a normal house this wouldn't be a huge problem. However, in my house there are no shut-off valves for tub water lines. The cold water valve doesn't fully shut off the water either, as of last week. The shower diverter leaks enough that water from the cold water line gets to the hot water valve and vice-versa. The main house shut-off just sort of works, which is to say it doesn't quite shut off all of the water. The one valve that does work is the water heater valve, so I shut that off, which stopped the wide-open water pouring into the tub, leaving us with no hot water and a rapidly dripping cold water valve. This morning I pulled the valve stem out of the hot water valve after shutting off the whole house and rode the bike over to Ken Brown & Sons in Mid-City. If they didn't have what I needed for this old valve assembly, nobody did. The guys there were great and tried to find a valve stem that would work in this assembly that was made by a long-gone company, even calling a plumber who had come in with a similar problem a few days ago to find out if what he'd gotten had worked. The bottom line was that it didn't and we were basically out of do-it-yourself options. On the plus side they gave me a plumber recommendation. On the minus side, I probably won't see him until the end of the week. Fortunately it's summer now and the "cold" water is warm enough to shower with, so I guess I'll just shut off the house water at night to limit the waste and wait.

What Goes Up...

Removal of temporary classrooms

It is just shy of a year ago that I posted a photo of the temporary classrooms going up on Tulane's uptown campus. This morning Tulane News posted a photo of them being taken down. It seems like it's been much longer than a year, but unless one of the newer COVID-19 variants like B.1.617.2, combined with people too stupid to get what is probably the safest vaccine on the planet, makes us all have to backtrack, I think things are looking pretty good here in the States. While there are still a number of precautions in place, they're pretty much on the honor system unless you happen to be in a hospital or something, where one might imagine mask-wearing might become a permanent thing. Although I am still tracking COVID cases daily, I've recently added more detailed tracking of vaccinations, at least state-wide and within New Orleans. Here in town we are currently at 46.2% of the (2018) population having completed their vaccinations. You'd have thought it might be higher by now considering how many people died when it first hit and then when there was the summer surge. Even so, New Orleans has about the highest percentage of its population vaccinated unless you count West Feliciana Parish where most of the population is comprised of prison inmates who probably didn't have a choice. For comparison, the state as a whole is at only 33.9%, and some parishes are below 20%. 

After a pretty good WeMoRi yesterday, I went out this morning knowing I'd get wet. The radar was not looking good at all, so I stuffed my brand new father's day Assos rain jacket in my pocket before hitting the road. As I climbed up the levee I saw Rich and Scott starting to return home. They had both arrived a couple of minutes earlier and had seen the rain falling just half a mile upriver. They yelled down to me that it looked like it was pouring down rain up ahead. I just smiled since I was looking forward to trying out the rain jacket. Granted, there is practically no need for a rain jacket if you're riding in cycling kit in the summer in New Orleans since there is no chance at all that you will get cold. I ended up riding all the way out to Destrehan, mostly in a light rain and almost all on a wet bike path, and it was fine. The rain jacket worked fine. I put it on and took it off a couple of times during the ride. On the plus side, there was a rainbow in front of me for the whole outbound ride.

What a mess.

Meanwhile back at home they are tearing up even more of the street on my corner. Yesterday they told Candy they were going to have to relocate our water meter because of the Oak tree roots that had enveloped it. It looks like they started that and then stopped when yesterday's rainstorm came through. This morning it looked like they had abandoned that project and were focused on ripping up more of Pine Street. I can only hope that the Oak trees don't all die as a result of the significant damage being done. The street floods pretty badly now when it rains since they have removed all of the storm drains and it doesn't look like they will be back in operation for quite a long time at this rate. Just in time for hurricane season. Candy had a pre-op appointment yesterday for her second hip replacement that is scheduled for July 23. She was kind of depressed reading the notes from the CAT scan about all of the degeneration in her hips, knees, etc. 

Getting old is not for sissies.

Solid Summer Week

Thursday Levee Ride

With Tropical Storm Claudette (not actually named a TS until after it got here) I'd been expecting a few days of rained-out rides, but as luck would have it most of the rain skirted the city, the wind was unimpressive, I got wet only once, and didn't miss a single day of riding. Thus, all I can complain about are the heat and humidity, which is basically just normal for a New Orleans summer that, by the way, officially started yesterday.

Thursday morning featured some drier and marginally cooler air that pulled a number of riders out of the woodwork, or bed, for the 6 am ride. We had a good solid ride despite the increasing wind. I was expecting a few days of rainy weather, so while I was glad to have some more riders on the ride, I also felt like I wasn't getting enough time on the front.

Ominous sky. We didn't stay dry much longer on Wednesday.

With the yet-to-be-named tropical storm heading straight for us, I got up early Friday morning expecting to see nothing but rain on the weather radar. So I was kind of surprised when it looked like the deceptively named "Friendly Friday" ride would be fine for at least a couple of hours. I headed out to meet the group at the Museum of Art, fully expecting to be back home well before any rain started. I was wrong, of course. As the group  turned onto Lakeshore Drive at dawn I could see a big black cloud band to the east, directly ahead of us. I turned to whoever was next to me and said, "I think I'm going to have to revise my 'chance of dry' forecast for today's ride." By the time we got to Franklin Avenue it was pouring down rain and the group kind of started to shatter. I eased up and turned around just before the Seabrook loop and headed west, waiting for whatever was left of the group to come by. A little while later, in very un-friendly fashion, the front of the group came streaming by at 30 mph. I had to make a big effort just to catch a wheel near the back. Things kind of came back together for a little while and before I knew it we were at Marconi where some people turned off  onto Marconi, which is the usual route, while others went straight and others looked around at each other trying to decide where to go. It was still raining so some people were just heading straight home while others were heading back to the museum where we'd started and where the ride normally ends. I'd gone straight since the riders ahead of me had, but then a few of us decided to turn at Canal and head back toward Marconi. Anyway, I was basically on my way back home at that point. Back uptown the streets were completely dry, of course. We'd managed to find the only rain.

Predictably, it was wet Saturday morning, and although it wasn't really raining much I decided to stay inside and try again later. That turned out to have been a good decision. The bad weather from the tropical storm was all to our east, and by noon the sun was starting to come out. So I filled the water bottles and headed out for a solo ride out to the Spillway, knowing I'd be dealing with 10-15 mph winds at some point. All the way out it seemed like I was riding straight into a west wind that was making it a little difficult to maintain even 19 mph. On the other hand, the ride back was more like 21-23 mph at the same intensity level. 

Massive can be a relative term

Sunday we had a little pop-up northshore ride. It was just Randy H., Pat, Steve, and Keith Mc., which turned out to be a pretty good group for the planned 65 miles. After a relatively relaxed ride the day before I guess I had a little extra energy to burn off, so I put in a few efforts on the little climbs here and there and just generally did a little more work than usual. By the time we were on the last ten miles or so it was getting pretty hot and I was getting pretty tired, but Steve and I still kept the pressure on from the no-more-watchtower hill to the ballpark anyway. Later, I saw that Strava kind of agreed with my own more subjective assessment, tagging it as "Massive Relative Effort." I wouldn't have used the term "massive," but it was definitely a solid ride to finish off a week that I thought might be a wash-out with a 280-mile total.

Invest 92L

Thursday morning

This morning felt cooler and drier than it has in a week, so I guess it was no coincidence that we had a pretty long line of riders for the 6 am levee ride. With a gradually increasing tailwind the speed stayed a little higher than usual all the way out to Ormond, which I knew meant we'd be battling a headwind on the 20-mile ride back home. Lots of riders to share that with, though, so I was probably in the wind for less than ten minutes the whole time. It's 2 pm right now and looking out the office window past the Superdome it's just a normal breezy summer afternoon with a few scattered clouds and a few Mississippi Kites flying around catching insects. You wouldn't think that the forecast for tomorrow would be as bad as it is. A few minutes ago I got a bunch of alerts on my phone because the weather service has issued a flash flood watch for the city, along with a coastal flood advisory. It things go as currently expected, Invest 92L will become a tropical depression and drift northward toward us tomorrow bringing mainly just a whole lot of rain. Right now it's looking like the rain will start around 10:00 tomorrow morning and it won't stop until some time on Monday. That doesn't mean there won't be an occasional window here and there when it stops, but for all practical purposes it's looking like the weekend will be a complete wash-out. I'm hoping the rain will hold off long enough tomorrow for me to get in an early morning ride, but after that I'll just have to play it by ear.  At any rate, tomorrow is looking like a good "work from home" day. I've heard one prediction of 13 inches of rain. Considering that almost all of the storm drains on our street have been demolished as part of the road work going on, I can't really say what that will mean. There are four storm drains on my block of Neron Place. All four are currently gone, along with four others just around the corner on Lowerline. The one across the street on Pine is blocked off, and the two on that little piece of Neron have been non-functional for years. At least the one on Pine across from the basement door works, although it's probably half clogged up with riversand by now. At least we're on slightly higher ground than most of the surrounding neighborhood. By "slightly" I'm talking maybe a foot, though.

Summer Again

Riding back home from the Giro alongside the posts protecting the gutter/bike lane on Marconi.
No, we don't ride in the debris-strewn gutter unless absolutely necessary.

Last weekend it felt like we'd stepped out of Spring and plunged head-first into the deep end of Summer. I did the Giro Rides on Saturday and Sunday, and although they were mostly fast, by the time the group was coming back down Bullard you could tell people were feeling kind of wilted. After a nice enough solo recovery ride on Monday I arrived at the levee for the 6 am ride to find nobody there. Rich is out of town and Charles is still a little bit on the bench following his Tour de La crash, and I guess having those two out provided adequate cover for a skipped morning ride. As it turned out, once I got going I started picking up riders. At one point I think there were about six of us, but that didn't last very long as some turned back at Williams Blvd. and others at St. Rose, so I found myself alone again until Steve showed up. He rode with me back out to the Ormond turnaround and then all the way back to the country club, so that was good because by then the temperature was rising significantly. I've been doing fine with just two small water bottles so far this year, usually getting back home with one of them still full, but I can see those days rapidly fading away. Even on shorter rides I'm easily going through a full bottle or more, so I guess it's time to break out the big bottles.  Well, maybe just one of them since getting to big water bottles on my bike is a challenge. In fact, I backordered a side-entry Tacx bottle cage about a month ago that I probably won't see again for another month. I had to really search for that bottle cage, but in my experience the Tacx cages are some of the most reliable and secure ones out there. I gave up on "carbon" bottle cages years ago. They were expensive, turned my bottles black after a couple of months, and regularly ejected bottles. I'll admit, though, they look cool. I was talking with Billy of GNO Cyclery last weekend and he was telling me that getting road bikes and even components and tires is still a huge problem for the shops. He was saying that he couldn't get any good 11-speed chains. I didn't tell him I have two of those on my workbench. My current chain is a KMC because at the time I couldn't find the Campi Record ones. It's about to hit 2,500 miles so I'd already ordered a second one to have on hand. Then I found the Record one in stock over across the pond at Probikekit, so I got one of those too. You never want to be putting off changing your chain because you don't have one handy. By now I think the cassette on my training wheel has close to 10,000 miles on it, so we'll just have to see if we have much skipping when I put a new chain on. I'd just assumed that the supply chain issues had eased up by now, but apparently they haven't. 

So I started going in to the office again on Monday. Tulane is expecting everyone to be back no later than July 6 but I thought it best to go ahead and pull the plug on the working from home thing a little early. I can certainly work in either location, but what I especially want to avoid is working from both. I really prefer to segregate most of my work stuff on my office computer. Keeping files on Box is fine when necessary but it gets more and more complicated every year. We are starting to use Microsoft Teams now, so for me files could be on Box or Dropbox or Teams, or any combination, possibly in different versions. Anyway, I like being back at the office even through I will surely miss the frequent trips to the refrigerator, and the commute to work can be a bit on the hot and sweaty side even at the super-slow speed at which I commute in the summer. To celebrate returning to the office, I took a little time this morning to get an actual haircut at Supercuts where, somewhat surprisingly, they still want everyone to wear a mask. I had not had a real haircut since probably December of 2019. As usual, it feels a little too short, but I'm sure I'll appreciate the improved airflow through my helmet.

Welcome to hurricane season!

With the arrival of the hot temperatures came some early activity in the Gulf, namely "Invest 92" that probably won't be a huge problem except that it will likely mean a very rainy weekend. Speaking of rain, The Daughter sent me an Assos Equipe rain jacket for Father's Day. My old Adidas one is pretty worn out so the tops of the shoulders aren't as waterproof as they used to be. The Assos jacket is very much race-fit, so it might be a little bit of a stretch, literally, to wear over my regular clothes when commuting. We'll just have to see how that goes. In any case, it looks like a really nice jacket with tight-fitting cuffs and collar, and will be great to bring along on longer rides when the temperatures are cooler and there's a chance of rain.

Friday!

Aftermath - drying out in the basement

Well, the rain-soaked tents and other race equipment is all dried out and tucked away in the basement, ready for the next race. Results are posted, the post-event report has been submitted despite what is now the usual USAC website complications, and things are slowly returning to normal in more ways than one. I expect to be returning to the downtown office for at least a few days next week, and we're expecting pretty much everyone to be back no later than July 6. Yesterday Candy had her second cataract surgery, which is considerably easier and faster than getting you Louisiana driver's license renewed, and her vision in that eye is now better than it's ever been in her life, so that's a big plus. She has hip replacement surgery scheduled for July 22, though, so I'll be taking a few days off for that and Danielle will be flying in for a few days as well. In the meantime, Keith has been working on the new NOBC team kit design, which looks pretty good, I think. You never really know about that sort of thing until you see the actual final product out in the wild, but this design looks promising.

Friendly Friday (at 25 mph)

The weather here, after last weekend's unfortunately timed deluge, has been typically hot, extremely humid, and rain-free, so despite losing last weekend's miles I'm back to the routine, such as it is. This morning I went out to meet the 6 am "Friendly Friday" ride for the second time. The Tulane Friday Coffee Rides are in summer hiatus, so this may be my new Friday routine for a while. This ride seems to have gotten larger and faster lately, a somewhat normal evolution for group rides, but on the plus side I was back home before 7:30. 

Current draft design

There's finally some movement, or at least talk, on other possible LAMBRA races, and Townsend has scheduled an online meeting a week from tomorrow, so hopefully we can get a few races on the calendar, elect/draft new officers, and get things back on track. 

Here at home we're still dealing with a torn-up dirt street and will be for at least another six months, probably longer. I was walking the dog yesterday and he stepped off the sidewalk next to one of the new fire hydrants they just installed and the riversand just gave way underneath his rear legs. I had to pull him out of the hole. Good thing it wasn't bigger! 

Yesterday Tulane sent me a 30th anniversary gift package, which was mainly a pin and some Tulane coasters and a certificate suitable for framing, but also included a $200 gift card thing that I set up for Lowes. The store is only a mile from here but I'm not even sure if I can use it in person, but at any rate I can order online and have stuff delivered, so maybe I should break down and get a couple of sheets of plywood that is lately apparently in short supply and selling at ridiculous prices so I can see about the garage roof before the termites finish eating it and it collapses onto the GT-6 that I also should be working on. First, though, I need to fix that leaking faucet in the bathtub. And then there are the gutters that need to be replaced and all the rotting decorative wood accents up around the roof of the house, not to mention the antique plumbing that could go at any moment.

Tour de La Number Fifty

It is really hard to believe that I've been closely involved with this race for half a century. I still remember going to help out at the first one back in '72. This weekend was the 50th edition of the stage race, and although you'd think by now we deserved a weekend without any weather concerns, well, I guess you'd be wrong. By mid-week the forecast was already looking bad, and over the following days it just got worse. Flash flood warnings were posted. Registrations lagged. I had to seriously consider having to cancel the race and try again later (in the hurricane season). Last year, we postponed the race twice, once because of COVID and then again because of a tropical storm. I really didn't want to do that again, but the forecast was not offering even a glimmer of hope. I basically crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. The forecasts for this type of weather system are pretty sketchy, so there was at least a chance, but as I packed up the Volvo on Friday afternoon I threw in my waterproof boots that I normally reserve for winter cyclocross officiating, along with a couple of umbrellas and some wool socks. I admit, I was not feeling very optimistic.

Friday night I slept poorly with various disaster scenarios running through my head. While racing in the rain is uncomfortable and risky, standing on the side of the road out in the middle of nowhere in raging thunderstorms, soaking wet, hoping not get electrocuted by the generator powering the finish cameras and computers and radio is not exactly a walk in the park either. So when I awoke before dawn Saturday morning and looked out the Holiday Inn window to see a fairly dry street I was hopeful. I headed out for Stoney Point without even stopping for coffee and arrived around 6:30 or so. Registration opened at 7:30 and the racing started at 9:00. You would think that would be lots of time but in reality if flies by and you are always feeling rushed. I set up the registration area and put up the tents at the start/finish quickly since I was expecting torrential rain at any moment, but as the other volunteers started to arrive I could see that the sky was not looking all that bad. The other officials (Chief Ref and three Moto-refs) arrived, Pat went out to put up the course signage, Mignon and Christian got sign-in going, follow car drivers arrived, the police showed up, and generally things went well. We started right on time and had all five groups out on the road with nothing more than some light rain. Somehow we made it through the whole road race stage without getting drenched, although the occasional light rain probably contributed to a significant crash in the Masters race at the left turn onto Sunlight Road. Meanwhile, riders were dropping like flies from many of the races due to flat tires or just getting dropped early. By the time it was all over I guess we'd lost a third of the entire field.

We tore everything down, packed it up again, and headed back to the hotel to finish up and post the Road Race results. Then we headed for the Time Trial course at Lakeshore High, arriving around 4:30 for the 5:30 start. Amazingly, we didn't have any rain for the time trial and everything went pretty smoothly. We rushed back to the hotel, finished up and posted those results, and walked over the Copeland's for dinner. The forecast for Sunday was looking really, really bad. I was wondering if we'd end up having to cancel the whole thing. So when I awoke early Sunday morning and saw it wasn't pouring down rain I rushed over to the course to start setting up the finish line. I wanted to at least get the tents set up before it started raining. I got the big red tent up and tied one corner off to the car since I was expecting a thunderstorm at any time. As it turned out, there was no rain at all for most of the races, but mid-way through the Cat. 3-4 race we could see some heavy rain approaching from the south. We shortened that race a bit to make sure they could finish on dry streets, but for the Cat. 1/2/3s after then, there was really no hope. Sure enough, it started raining a couple of minutes before their noon start time, so they were racing on slick old city streets the whole time. Fortunately it was a small field, and also fortunately they were all experienced bike racers. Despite some very aggressive racing, they all stayed upright, even though a couple of them stopped at the Pit to let some air out of their tires because they were sliding around too much on the turns. 

So we finished the slightly shortened Cat. 1/2/3s in a light rain just minutes before it became a torrential downpour. I had the printer covered with a plastic bag as I printed out their results. We tore down everything in a heavy rain and stuffed it all into the car, stopping for a quick bite at Jimmy John's, still in the pouring rain, before making the trek back across the Causeway to New Orleans. My basement is now full of wet and soggy tents, banners, and other race equipment. I'll throw the long USA Cycling banners and our big windfeathers into the wash soon and then stuff them into the dryer before packing them away until next time. At the moment there are no more races on the LAMBRA calendar, although I think we should be able to pull off at least criterium and road championships.

In all, I'd say we really lucked out on the weather. It could have been way, way worse. As it was I wasn't really wet and cold until we were packing stuff up after the last criterium, and even then it wasn't all that bad. After I got home a couple of riders contacted me about errors in the results. It would have been nice if that had happened right after we'd posted them rather than hours later, of course. Ricky, the Chief Referee has all of the score sheets with him, so it may take a little while to correct things. This year's event was pretty expensive. Sponsorship dollars were relatively low, costs were higher, and registrations were low. We had 110 riders this year. This race has had as many as 204 in the past. Of course the weather was mainly responsible for this year's numbers being so low.