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.