Longer Levee

It seems like a very long time ago that the first section of levee was paved and turned into a bike path. Actually, it was a long time ago. Once Orleans Parish finally finished its little piece, it measured about thirteen miles one-way from Audubon Park to the upriver end of Jefferson Parish. It wasn't long before a regular ride started. Then a few years later another section was paved, taking the path all the way out to Ormond, extending the distance to about 20 miles. At that point the Tuesday/Thursday levee rides were already well-established and the little early-morning group started going all the way out to Ormond on, I think, Thursdays, but sticking to the original shorter ride on Tuesdays. Eventually the group started doing the full distance out to Ormond on both days, and that's the way it stayed even as the remainder of the levee out to the Spillway was paved. Occasionally when there was time, usually on weekends or holidays, I'd ride all the way out to the Spillway, a distance of about 25 miles from home and about the same from Audubon Park. It's a nice place to ride when you don't want to deal with traffic and especially if you want a steady or even contemplative ride. Sometimes I'd add the Spillway road over to the other side of the Spillway. Beyond that point, however, the levee top wasn't paved until you got a few more miles upriver, where, over the years, bits and pieces of paved levee were periodically added. I rarely continued upriver on River Road to get to those sections. Then a couple of years ago the extended opening of the Spillway washed out a few sections of the Spillway road, which was then closed. You could still ride most of it, but there were usually sections of hike-a-bike, especially if it had been raining. So that's kind of where it stood for a couple of years. During that time when the Spillway road was closed the work on the bike path upriver continued and that section from the upriver end of the Spillway to the older section of bike path was finally paved. It would still be a while, however, before the Spillway road was fixed.  Well, that finally happened about a month ago, and since then people have been riding the new section all the way to where it currently ends just before the Gramercy bridge. I'd been wanting to do the full levee ride myself for some time, and had figured it would be almost 90 miles out-and-back from the park.

So I decided to do the ride last Sunday. I sent out a few emails to people I thought might join me, but with the holidays and all the only one to respond positively was Mark Monistere. I suppose the fact that the forecast was for rain all morning didn't help. Anyway, and predictably, it rained for much of the morning but by 11:00 it was looking much better so I headed out around 11:30, picking up Mark around Jefferson Playground. I was set on keeping the pace easy, so we rode all the way out side-by-side at around 17 mph mostly, with a very light headwind. I was happy to find that the entire route was paved, and except for the mile or two across the Spillway it was entirely on bike path. After a quick stop at a gas station near Gramercy we headed back down the river with a light tailwind, more or less. Mark was starting to suffer the effects of lack of sleep and the prior day's strength work by then, but I was feeling pretty good other than my neck and upper back, which is pretty much normal nowadays. I dropped Mark off back at the playground and, looking at my odometer, figured I should take the long way home through Audubon Park in order to get the ride up over 90 miles. Along the way I ran into Townsend fixing a messy tubeless tire flat on the bike path just before the park. So anyway, it is now quite feasible to do a Century ride (my original intent, actually) from, say, City Park to Audubon Park and from there out and back on the bike path. I never really believed I'd live to see the day when there was a continuous 45 miles of bike path from Audubon Park. 

So hats off to Bill Keller and Caroline Helwick who were the ones who really got the ball rolling back in the late 80s and early 90s. Bill was also instrumental in getting the Tammany Trace rails-to-trails project started. If you ride the levee bike path in Jefferson Parish you may notice a few signs naming that section after him. Caroline got involved after her husband was killed in 1987 on Lakeshore Drive when he was hit from behind by a speeding car. I was out there doing one of our Tuesday/Thursday training races when that happened just west of the Elysian Fields traffic circle. A couple of riders were already on their way to the levee board police station to report a speeding car just before it happened. Candy and I attended some of the initial meetings at Caroline's house that resulted in the establishment of the New Orleans Regional Bicycle Awareness Committee that helped push through the legislation to make the bike path happen. It's been a 40-year effort -- so far.

68 Miles, 68 Years

Last Saturday I drove up to Ridgeland for the annual LAMBRA meeting. I had been planning on cobbling together something I could ride in the cyclocross race that morning, but those plans had gone out the window days before. I had somehow tweaked my neck in such a way that looking to the left caused a lot of pain in the neck muscles on the right. Clearly the worst possible thing I could have done was a cyclocross race. In fact, I was having plenty enough trouble riding in the city without being able to easily look to the left or over my shoulder for traffic. As it turned out, that new Garmin Varia had arrived at just the right time because having it alert me to traffic, or more importantly a lack of traffic, behind me was a big help. Anyway, it's Thursday today and it still hurts, so I must have really done some damage.

City Park - 6 am Friendly Friday Ride

The LAMBRA meeting was small but productive, I think. Everyone is trying to get racing back on track and not being too picky about the details. There are clearly a ton of riders, many of whom have little actual race experience. In fact, the very definition of "race" has been getting a little fuzzy lately with all the Fondo style rides that are essentially races, and the gravel races, and cyclocross races that include gravel, etc., etc. So anyway we'll be pushing a bit to get some more races on the calendar and will probably actually promote some through LAMBRA itself rather than relying on clubs. It seems that everybody and his brother has started up a new "club," most of which exist in a kind of quasi-official state, which is to say on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, and aren't official USAC clubs. I guess we'll see how that all pans out. To complicate matters a bit, there will be substantially less revenue coming to LAMBRA from USAC since they changed from providing license-based rebates to a strictly "rider-days" basis. With the relatively small number of events and participants we get at our USAC events, that 20 cents per rider per day isn't going to pay for a whole lot. The days of providing lots of championship jerseys and awards and stuff are probably over for now anyway. We'll be able to do a fair amount to help event promoters, but resources will become limited over the next year or two.

So last week the Strava annual odometer ticked over 12,000 miles, and with a bit over a month left to go in 2021 it's entirely possible I could end the year at around 13k which I think will be the highest I've ever recorded. I have no idea why, however. It could just be as simple as fewer rainy mornings or the lack of collegiate road trips where I don't get to ride. Last weekend it was just two Giro Rides, but on the whole it was a pretty solid week of riding. Today is Thanksgiving, and also my birthday. We did a holiday Giro, which for me works out to around 59 miles, so before I went home I added a few miles through Audubon Park and on the levee to make an age-appropriate 68 mile day just for fun. As if I didn't already feel old enough, I had a checkup on Monday which went well. I mentioned my history from way back with some arrhythmia and the occasional spikes I see on my HRM early in my rides and suggested perhaps it would be a good idea to get a Holter monitor for a few days to see if there's anything to see, so I'll be going in tomorrow to see what the cardiologist says about that. With my history and all it's entirely likely I have at least the classic athletic heart, and I'm certainly old enough to have AFIB or something like that, so I guess it's a good time to check that out. Otherwise though things are pretty much the same. HDL is a little high, LDL is low, blood pressure is textbook 121/80 or something, PSA is super low, so nothing to complain about.

Last week I learned of the passing of Bob Perrin from brain cancer. It came as quite a surprise. I have known Bob as long as I've been riding bikes. He personally signed my first racing license in 1973. I vividly remember standing over his shoulder as he typed the information on an old typewriter at someone's house where we were having a club meeting. Back in the day I would find him riding in Audubon Park - before it was closed to cars, and we would complain about the cars and wish the road could be just for bikes. Now of course it is closed to cars and there's a bike lane but there's also a never-enforced 10 mph speed limit for bikes, so it's not a good place for training rides any more. In more recent years I would run into him riding on the levee and would often ride with him for a bit. He had finally gotten knee surgery the last time I saw him and was back riding. Then with the whole COVID thing I wasn't surprised not to see him. Bob was a great and well-respected photographer. A few years back he dropped off a bunch of race photos from the 70s, most of which I scanned and put up on the NOBC website. Someone said this morning that there might be a memorial ride for him on Sunday so we'll see how that works out. I've been thinking about trying to do a century ride on the river levee now that they have re-paved the spillway road and also paved the levee top upriver from the spillway almost all the way to the Gramercy bridge. That should make for about 90 miles out and back from the park, so it would be a easy matter to tack on an additional ten. If there's a memorial ride on Sunday I could do that and then continue up the river. Anyway, I was sad to hear about Bob. I was always expecting to see him riding on the levee on Monday or Friday when I often do easy recovery rides. 

Somewhere I have this photo of him sliding on the ground after crashing on the u-turn at one of the annual Bastille Day races, but I haven't been able to find it. Isn't it typical that I can't find a photo of the person who spent his entire life taking photos? Bob didn't do a whole lot of racing every year, but he was always around. I'll miss him.

Hinting at Winter

Getting ready for the Swamp Otter Classic races to begin.

It was a week of sorting through the winter kit drawer and making those always-difficult pre-dawn wardrobe decisions when the temperature out the door is in the low 50s but you know it will warm up quickly once the sun rises. It's also the time of year when I want to buy more warm fuzzy stuff. Otherwise, the usual weekday rides were pretty normal with good-sized groups and no drama. Late in the week I got to try out a couple of new things. I'd gotten a couple more pairs of wool socks from DeFeet. These are 6" high, which for me is just about an inch or two below the bottom of bib knickers. The weather cooperated nicely by providing a couple of mornings for which they were fairly well-suited. I think I'm fairly well-stocked on other winter gear, and I have a team long-sleeve jersey that should be arriving in a week or so, so I'm feeling pretty well prepared for winter, at least as far as cycling clothing goes. Of course the larger challenge is mental. On the plus side, the time change back to Standard Time has been nice. At the moment it's only really dark until about 6 am, and by 6:30 you don't really need lights. Naturally that will gradually change and we'll be back in the dark in a month, but it will be nice while it lasts.

Stopping at the museum in City Park after the Friendly Friday ride.

So the other new thing this week was a new tail light. The Daughter send me the new Garmin Varia that pairs with the 520 computer and alerts me to traffic approaching from behind while at the same time changing to a brighter flash. I guess it must work because nobody has run into me yet. This new model has "peloton mode" which is a less bright mode for night group riding. I really can't tell if it's sufficiently dim or not, or what it does when a car approaches, since of course I can't actually see it. I almost feel like I should mount it backwards on my handlebar for a couple of rides so I can see exactly what it's doing! Being higher than my usual light, it just barely fits on the seatpost beneath my small saddle bag. In the city it isn't all that useful since there are almost always cars approaching from behind, but early in the morning I found it helpful for letting me know it was OK to move out of the bike lane to avoid potholes and other bike lane debris without having to look behind me. I expect it will be most helpful for rides out in the country where traffic is less frequent but travelling much more rapidly. I guess it's about time to think about the northshore winter ride series again. Anyway, I tried it out Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and found it at least quite interesting. I haven't experimented with setting the light mode from my Edge yet, but apparently that is possible and would be much easier than reaching back to push buttons on the Varia itself while trying to remember how many time to push to get to the desired mode. 

Yesterday I skipped riding so I could officiate the Swamp Otter Classic cyclocross race. Turnout was OK, if not spectacular, but the weather was great. The forecast had been calling for upper 40s at sunrise, so despite the 10:00 am start time of the first race I was expecting to be cold. I arrived about an hour and a half before the start, so had lots of time to cart equipment from my car across a little bridge to the area along the 40 Arpent Canal where the race is held. This year they had added some out-and-back gravel segments to the usual cyclocross course, extending the lap distance to something over two miles. That worked out great for me because it meant that there was only one lapped rider all day, which greatly simplified getting the results straight. Also, the sun was out, the wind was light, and it was so warm I had to take off the base layer I was wearing. 

Next weekend we'll finally have an actual LAMBRA meeting up in Ridgeland after the Saturday cyclocross races. We've been slowly trying to get the 2022 season on track and will have to figure out how to manage things without most of the revenue we had been getting from USAC in the past. Under the new scenario, LAMBRA gets something like $0.20 per rider day and nothing for racing licenses, so even with a good year of events and participation that will work out to maybe $1k per year rather than $3k. In addition, we have to make our own championship medals since USAC doesn't provide those any more - for the first time since I've been racing, actually. We recently spend about $600 for medals, although of course have a fair number still available. We also haven't collected any club dues or per-rider surcharges since 2019 so we'll need to work out what we want to do going in to 2022 and whether we want to have the LCCS points series, award LCCS and championship jerseys, etc.

No Good Deed

I don't know what I did to deserve last week, but it must have been bad. On Sunday we had a nice time with Halloween activities, sliding candy down the "candy chute" and visiting with neighbors and eating and drinking stuff that's bad for you. Next door the neighbors were projecting the Saints game onto the side of our house, and everything kind of stopped for the final three minutes of the game as everybody gathered around to see the outcome. Monday was my usual easy morning ride and then the usual ride to work.

Projecting the Saints game onto the house.

I was scheduled for Jury Duty in criminal court down at "Tulane and Broad" for Tuesday morning and that meant that I'd have to miss the morning ride. Still, I was holding out some hope that I wouldn't actually end up on a jury like I did the last time. So I rode down to the courthouse and walked into the basement where the jury duty room is. It's a dingy, crowded room packed with people who would rather not be there. After filling out the form and signing in I sat there for maybe only an hour before they called something like 57 people, including me, up to Section K. My number was something like 39 so I wasn't in the first group that was questioned, but they were going to need a full jury plus alternates and I wasn't liking the odds. As usual people came up with all sorts of excuses for not being able to serve on a jury, and one potential juror who was an ER doctor did not hide his disdain for the crowed conditions and likelihood of spreading COVID around. He got off too, along with the Jehovah's Witness and the people with childcare issues and the ones who had problems with gay people or the lack of solid evidence etc., etc. So after a break for lunch they started going through the rest of us. I was never asked any direct questions or anything, but in the end I was selected as one of the 14. I didn't get out of there until about 6:30 that evening, so basically spent 8 hours in the courtroom. I didn't have to report until 9:30 the next morning, so at least I got to do WeMoRi. 

Things just went downhill after that. The trial was basically a domestic dispute where one person claimed she was attacked with a knife by the other person who was breaking up with her despite the only injuries looking like maybe fingernail scratches and there being no knife in evidence and two completely different stories about what happened. It was actually hard to imagine how something like that got to the point of a jury trial. Both people worked for the Sheriff's office. Around 6 or so the judge ordered pizzas for us once the lawyers were finished trying to manipulate us, after which we crammed back into the tiny jury room. Everybody looked at each other and said, "Do you think there was really a knife involved here?" The resounding answer was "No way." It took about fifteen minutes to arrive at a consensus of not guilty, but by then it was maybe 7:30 or so. It was a pain but I left thinking that I'd at least done my good deed for the week.

Thursday it was six people at a table for four in the crosswind.

The next morning I went out to the 6 am levee ride where we battled a stiff crosswind the whole way. The group was eventually whittled down to six, but on the narrow bike path with a crosswind like that only three riders get a draft, so after taking a pull you essentially had to take another pull at the back just to keep from being dropped. I was already feeling a little scratchy throat that I was trying to ignore, but by the end of the day I knew I was in for a head cold, or maybe COVID. I thought to myself, "Well, no good deed goes unpunished." Sure enough, that night I could barely breathe through my nose and resorted to Sudafed and Advil, which helped a little but not really enough. The next morning I figured I'd better just work from home since my nose was running like an open faucet. That night was marginally better, which is to say I maybe got in a few hours of sleep propped up in the bed in the back room where I was watching episodes of Super Girl until around 1 am. It was no fun.

I had been registered for the annual Tour da' Parish Saturday morning, but clearly that wasn't going to happen for me. I think the average speed of the lead group was a bit over 25 mph for the 50 miles despite the wind, so it was just as well I'd skipped it. 

By Sunday morning I was feeling a lot better but it was cold and windy in the morning and I figured I may as well skip the Giro and instead try and go out later when it had warmed up, which turned out to be around 10:00. By then it was considerably warmer, but I wore a base layer and arm-warmers anyway. I ran into Steve out on the levee and we rode out to the Spillway together. Other than a bit of significant wind, the weather was great and I was glad to be back on the bike and feeling normal again. Anyway, I'm glad that week's over.

This morning it was in the low 50s and for the first time this fall I dug out a nice cozy pair of bib knickers and a long-sleeve jersey for an easy Monday ride on the levee. The wind had finally died down and it was nice to have some sunlight since we'd ditched daylight saving time on Sunday. That should make the morning rides a lot less stressful for a month of so until the shorter days put us back in the dark.