Summer Pattern

I've been meeting the Friendly Friday group lately since there's no Tulane coffee ride right now.

Picking up from where I left off last week, I was up and out early to meet the WeMoRi Wednesday morning. It was hot and humid, as it has been every morning, and there was quite a large group into which I merged on Lakeshore Drive. The wind was negligible, which kept the group together despite a fast pace. 

Nigel and the EMS people with Nisha
on Wednesday

Up near the front I noticed Nisha who was doing a much better job of staying up there than I was, and I made a mental note to compliment her on her riding. I was getting quite a good enough workout somewhat farther down the line, myself, but as we came around the Elysian Fields traffic circle for the last few miles before the end, at Marconi, I allowed myself to entertain thoughts of contesting the sprint. I guess I wasn't the only one, though, because somewhere in-between the bridge and Wisner things momentarily and uncharacteristically bunched up. I was somewhere behind Eddie C as we passed Shelter #2 and was thinking he might be a good wheel, but then he decided to go around a number of riders on the right by taking advantage of the parking area. A quick calculation told me that although he might make it before the parking area ended, which he did easily, I probably wouldn't, so I instead moved to the left thinking that maybe I'd get enough of an opening to put in a little effort. I was too far back to really contest the sprint by that point, of course. Then, out of the corner of my eye I sensed some kind of bumping going on ahead and to the right of me. Next thing I knew Nisha was on the ground with her head right in front of me. I swerved hard to the left, just barely missing her, and luckily didn't take anyone else down in the process. I coasted for a moment to make sure nobody was coming past me and turned back to see if she was OK. She wasn't. She'd landed hard on her left side, smashing her helmet and shoulder on the pavement. Riders hovered around her telling her to just stay there for a minute as someone called 911. I asked her what day it was and it took her a little while to process it, so I was pretty sure she'd had a concussion. Also pretty sure she'd broken her collarbone, which turned out to be the case. She called Nigel who came out to pick up her bike and take her to the ER. When he arrived, I told him to make sure she did indeed go to the ER because I thought she needed to be checked out for concussion, at least, and likely broken bones. The had asked "What happened" a number of times. Unfortunately I couldn't provide much information there since I didn't actually see what happened. I was just super glad I hadn't hit her when she was on the ground. We were going around 29 mph at the time. The collarbone turned out to be worse than I'd hoped. The collarbone had multiple fractures so needed surgery. I think from what I heard they kept her in the hospital until the surgery was done. Anyway, I found it all quite upsetting on multiple levels. We sent her a GrupHub gift card. Hopefully it doesn't get lost in her email. Tulane seems to have moved up another level with Microsoft's spam filtering so I have to go into the quarantine folder daily now to find stuff that shouldn't have been filtered out. They are also going to multi-factor authentication (really dual-factor authentication) in a day or two, so if my phone isn't handy or is broken or dead all bets are off.

The levee rides have been pretty good this week and we had another good group on Thursday, so that's good. Of course this time of year I get back home completely soaked in sweat, which isn't so good, but definitely better than frozen fingers and toes IMHO.

This weekend Chris M had organized a little 77-mile Sunday northshore ride up on what has become the "regular" State Line route, so I tried to take it as easy as possible on Saturday's Giro. I don't think I was particularly successful at that, however. Sunday morning we had, I think, nine riders on hand for the 7:30 a.m. roll-out. It was a good group, but I knew we were starting out at a slightly faster pace than advisable, so I was taking shorter pulls for the most part. On the plus side, there wasn't much wind and it didn't get super hot until later in the ride. Way up by the state line after the nice climbs where we turn left, a couple of riders who were a bit off the front missed the turn. We yelled and turned and figured they'd look back soon enough and realize what happened, but about a mile later there was still no sign of them. A couple of phone calls ensued and we ended up riding back to the turn to meet up with them. I think that netted us a few bonus miles for the day. After the store stop in Pine a few decided to skip the Sie Jenkins look through Plainview and South Choctaw, and we'd lost Randy H on the way out, so I think we were down to just five or six by then. Coming out of Enon I thought we held a nice moderate pace up the firetower climb but by the time we turned onto Tung Road there were just four of us and we were pretty well-toasted. I was glad I'd gone. It had been a while since I'd ridden on roads that weren't flat as a pancake, and it showed. I'd felt a little tired right from the start, so some parts of the ride were a bit of a struggle. Sorry about the paucity of photos but I've been saving jersey pocket space of nutrition lately, and I hate trying to take photos with my phone while riding.

Next weekend is a race on Lakeshore Drive, kind of similar to the old Rocktoberfest  race. It should be fun. I've been helping Jason F with some of the details and will be helping with officiating, I hope, and maybe jumping into a race. I say "I hope" because Candy has her hip replacement surgery on Thursday and Danielle is coming in around midnight on Wednesday, so my ability to help with the race will depend largely on how Candy's doing. Jason is coming over on Wednesday to pick up equipment and stuff so he can get the course set up since I am a little bit questionable for Saturday.

Not good

This morning I went out for a really easy spin on the levee. My legs are still feeling Sunday's ride for sure. Then I rode to work. As I rode down Poydras from Broad I noticed that the traffic signal at S. Galvez was out. Then, as I rode past LSU medical center I could hear the big generators running and saw a lot of people hanging around outside the doors. I figured there had been a power outage. As it turned out, an "animal" had caused a transformer to blow, knocking out power for much of the CBD. As I was walking into the building, everyone was walking out. I ended up turning right back around and riding back home. Fortunately, we're all well-equipped to work from home now. Speaking of which, COVID cases are spiking faster than I've seen in a long time, basically at least doubling in the past week, as all sorts of people, including some who were vaccinated, are turning up positive. Not good.