A Little Taste of Fall and Another Slash

Sunday's Tulane team ride group

After slashing a practically new tire last Wednesday, I had set that one aside for booting and put on another new tire that I luckily happened to have on hand. 

Friday, post-ride.

On Friday I met up with the Friendly Friday group at City Park. That turned out to be a bit faster than usual, for some reason, but then again it's kind of a short ride so it was easy to manage anyway. Then on Saturday morning I rolled out with a nice new rear tire, again, and struggled generally northward into a 15 mph headwind ahead of an approaching cold front. As I made my way to Starbucks in the dark I wondered how many of the regulars would skip the ride. I also wondered why I hadn't myself. Surprisingly, though, there was an almost normal turnout at we streamed out of the parking lot onto Harrison Avenue. I'm not much good in the wind, and was already kind of dreading what I expected would be a crosswind on Hayne Blvd. 

Charlie D fixing a flat on Hayne

We'd barely started town Marconi when cries of "Flat!" rang out behind me and the whole group stopped and I rode back to offer assistance. The flat got fixed and we mounted up, and thirty seconds later I kind of blew a slow-speed bunny hop over one of the big bumps/potholes that's been there for years and immediately blew my rear tire. Amid my own cursing I pulled over, telling people to go ahead since it was entirely possible I'd just be limping home. As it turned out, I'd put a small pinch-flat induced slash in that brand new tire I'd just put on the day before, but it wasn't as bad as the one I'd done on Wednesday so I put maybe 60 psi in the tire and we all headed out again. So now I was focused on avoiding anything that looked like a pothole, of which there hundreds, and quietly calculating my chances of making it through the entire Giro without flatting again. We came down the Casino overpass onto Hayne Blvd. and as usual the pace picked up. I was keeping myself busy trying to survey the road surface ahead, stay in the draft, and battle the wind when suddenly there was a big piece of chain, not the bicycle kind, in the middle of the road. I had just enough time to cleanly bunny hop it. Charlie, however, hadn't been so lucky as I saw him coast off to the side with a flat. We were already too far down the long line of riders to expect anyone to stop, although a few did offer, but in the end it was just Charlie and me. Fortunately he hadn't done much damage to the tire itself. Also fortunately, I had stopped with him, because his CO2 inflator didn't work. We finally got rolling again and took the Bullard short-cut, meeting back up with the group on its way back somewhere out past Highway 11. They were already going pretty fast, and I'm not sure if Charlie even got back into the group because I never saw him again. Anyway, it was an easier than usual Giro for me which I guess was fine since I hadn't been feeling to hot from the start anyway.

For Sunday I had been planning on driving over to Pass Christian to meet up with Charlie, Pat, Steve and a few others for what was likely to be a nice low-key 65 miles or so, but by Saturday evening I was slated to drive a couple of the Tulane riders to a team ride in Independence. For me, it was six of one or a half-dozen of the other as far as the rides went. Neither would likely be very fast. By Sunday morning the cold front had come through, and up in Independence it was I guess in the upper 50s when we started around 8 am with a nice little group. I was wearing a short-sleeve thermal base layer and arm-warmers under my super thin summer jersey that served only as something with pockets. I knew it would warm up during the 67-mile ride, even though it would be mostly an easy paceline ride. Once the morning chill wore off we were treated to pretty ideal cycling weather with a clear blue sky and moderate breeze, and other than a couple of short segments on pavement that made gravel look smooth, mostly nice quiet country roads. Toward the end of the ride there were a couple of riders who were struggling a bit, but that wasn't unexpected since they hadn't been putting in many miles in training. 

Later that afternoon I sat down and booted both of those Continental 5000s. I put the one from Saturday back on the bike and expect to get at least a few thousand miles from it, barring another unexpected encounter with New Orleans streets in the dark. The other should also be serviceable thanks to the boot I sewed into the casing. I ended the week with 289 miles, albeit a bit short on the intensity end. Strava is currently showing 10,883 miles thus far for the year, which is running a bit ahead of my usual pace.