Flats, Fog, and an Omicron Flare-up

Tulane Independence Ride - One More Flat

Well it's been more like summer than winter around here this week. It will be changing soon, of course, but it's been nice to be riding in summer kit for most of the past week.

This scene was repeated multiple times this week!

Last Sunday I went an hour north to Independence to meet up with the Tulane group for a nice 70 miles in the country. As usual there were a couple of riders not quite up to the distance, but we kept the pace calm, except for a couple of short segments, and everyone survived. The weather was practically perfect, with a clear blue sky, even if it was pretty chilly for the first couple of hours. I think it was in the low 40s when we started. After the ride I went straight back to town to meet Anastasia, a rider in town from St. Louis for the American Geophysical Union conference to give her a hand re-assembling her bike, which we did in the parking lot of a Bar-B-Que place since her Airbnb wasn't ready yet. I got her in touch with Charles since she was a competent rider and wanted to do the group rides, and she'd be riding from downtown. Also, they both speak Russian. So on Monday I had an early meeting and decided to go out and meet the Mellow Monday ride out of City Park, which is essentially the same as the Friendly Friday ride, neither offering quite as mellow or friendly a pace as you might expect.

The obligatory spillway photo. Hard to believe it was mid-December.

The regular weekday rides were pretty normal except that we were in the middle of a flat tire epidemic. I don't think any ride I've done so far this week was without at least one flat. Wednesday's WeMoRi even included a crash caused by that wheel-eating crack on Lakeshore Drive just west of the Elysian Fields traffic circle. Anyway, we are hoping to get out there with some asphalt this weekend if the weather permits. There's a fair chance of rain starting this afternoon and continuing pretty much through the weekend, so we'll see.

Made a card for the office

On Thursday, it being close to the holidays and people apparently having a little more flexibility than usual, we decided to extend the usual 40 mile levee ride out to the Spillway, which for me makes it a 52 mile ride. It was dark and foggy for the start, but we had a light tailwind that made it feel easier and faster than normal. Of course, that meant an increasing headwind on the way back, which made the return trip seem a lot longer. Anyway, the weather was again warm and summer kit was the order of the day. The extra miles added about 40 minutes to the ride, which wasn't really much of a problem for me because I was going to have to drive up to Mandeville in the early afternoon so Candy and her sister could distribute checks to her sisters from her mother's estate now that the house was finally sold and the judge up in Baton Rouge finally approved everything. I knew it wouldn't be a problem to work from home anyway because Tulane is in the midst of a huge flare-up of COVID infections that are almost certainly related to the rapid rise of the Omicron variant. The increase in cases seems to be more rapid than anything we have seen since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, so it will doubtless hit the city in general in a day or two and I don't think I'd be out of line in predicting a huge surge starting over the weekend and extending through January as all of the unvaccinated people get infected, the number of tests increases, and most of the vaccinated people test positive. 

This morning I did the Friendly Friday ride as has become my habit. As has also become a habit, someone slammed a wheel into the hole on Lakeshore Drive just west of the Elysian Fields traffic circle, ejecting a bottle and nearly crashing. I was ahead of it, over on the right to avoid precisely that scenario, and it sounded like the wheel broke. I eased up and doubled back in the dark to make sure he was OK, which he was, and met back up with the group on its way back from Canal Blvd.

Vertical

The holidays are definitely going to be a problem because of this easily transmitted variant, so all we can hope for is that it will not cause more severe illness. I'd really been hoping for a normal holiday season, especially since Danielle and Shannon are coming in. They both got COVID booster shots yesterday and are stocking up on N95 masks for the trip.

At Tulane, the sudden dramatic increase in positives has put everyone on alert. Students are being allowed to take exams remotely, the mask mandate is back in place, the Reily Center closed down, group activities have been cancelled, and the university is scrambling to find isolation space for infected students, which at this point is basically closing the barn door after the horses are out.

A Turn for the Worse

Some of the Sunday Giro group cooling down on Lakeshore Drive

Last weekend, and for that matter most of last week, the weather was great. While folks up in Minnesota are locked in their basements on trainers or debating how slippery the roadside ice might be, we were treated with temperatures mostly in the 60s. Things weather-wise took a turn for the worse this week, but more on that later.

I had been looking forward to Saturday's Giro. Any time you can ride in summer kit, unless you consider my sunscreen armskins to be winter gear, in December, you should certainly take full advantage. There was a good crowd on hand for the ride, including some of the Tulane riders, and as we rolled out I was already thinking about doing a few extra miles afterward. We came down the overpass onto Hayne Blvd. and since the pace wasn't through the roof I stationed myself a bit off to the right so I could see the numerous wheel-eating cracks better. Someone ahead hit a bump and ejected a big water bottle that fortunately rolled to the curb just in front of me. Then Charles came up alongside and asked, "Is my rear tire going flat?" to which I responded, "It's already flat!" He rolled over to the right and, it being so early in the ride, I decided to leave him to his own devices this time since I really wanted to get a decent effort and a few miles that day. Around that time I heard a loud explosion behind me that I was pretty sure was someone putting a wheel into one of those seams where the manhole covers are. I heard later that whoever it was had not just flatted but had broken the wheel as well.

Out on Chef Highway the group formed up into a nice double paceline with practically everyone taking pulls at around 24-26 mph which felt quite comfortable given the amount of rest between pulls. Somewhere around Highway 11 Jaden attacked down the right side and naturally someone at the front of the previously sedate paceline had to go with it, which led to the double paceline devolving into a long string of single-file riders, most of whom were no longer willing to risk taking a pull for fear of being dropped at the next surge. Situation normal. After the turnaround I wondered why I hadn't seen Charles yet. I would have expected him to have fixed the flat, taken the Bullard short-cut, and met us as we were starting the return trip. As it turned out he'd turned around with the SaMoRi group ahead of us and then flatted again on that hole on the inside of the turn from Lake Forest onto Bullard. As we went by I saw him on the neutral ground with a few others and Howard in his car parked over on the right. Apparently there had been complications with CO2 and tubes and such, and Howard was in the process of lending him a wheel. Anyway, that was the last I saw of Charles who was scheduled to fly out to Norway the following day for work. 

During the cool-down a few people were suggesting extending the ride out to the Jefferson bike path along the lake to "the wall" which fit my plans perfectly, so a few of us continued west and a relatively relaxed pace. Once we got out to the floodwall at the western edge of  Greater New Orleans we decided, after a brief discussion, to go ahead and do the "shuffle" route through Kenner back down the the river levee. Chris does that route often so we pretty much just followed him through the back streets to Loyola Avenue. That put us briefly onto Veterans near the airport where we decided to try the airport road down to Airline since it wasn't really very busy with traffic now that the airport terminals and everything had moved. That turned out to be pretty nice, except that Chris, who was on the front, missed the left turn and took us all the way into the abandoned airport. Anyway, we found our way over to the levee and had a nice spin back into town which ended up making my usual 60 mile ride into an 86 mile ride. Later that day I spent a couple of hours on extension ladders finally replacing the part of the porch screen that the hurricane had blown down and that had been held up with thumbtacks since.

Chris slashed another tubeless tire Sunday

Sunday's Giro was pretty normal and not particularly fast, except for a stop on Hayne when Chris flatted a tubeless tire (his third slashed tubeless tire of the weekend), which was a bit of a mess, and then on Monday I did my usual super-easy recovery ride on the levee. 

When I went out to ride on Tuesday morning there were dense fog alerts and the streets were pretty wet. After a brief wait for a train to go by, I found only Dan. Although we got a tiny bit of rain, it was never quite enough to soak my feet, so we rode mostly side-by-side out to the Big Dip at LaRose and back. Of course when I got home I had to rinse off the bike and lube the chain and jump in the hot shower. This morning it was super-foggy again with very wet streets and the radar showing some approaching rain. But it was like 65°F so I figured I'd ride out to the WeMoRi and see who showed up. I arrived at Lakeshore Drive at the usual time and looked for the headlights of the group that usually gets to Marconi right around 6:10, but there were none, so I headed down Marconi, following the usual route, expecting at least a small group to come up on me at some point since I was only going like 18 mph. That never happened, though, so I basically did the WeMoRi all alone, arriving back home quite wet, but at least not too chilled. As it turned out MJ had actually shown up for the ride after driving across the causeway in the thick fog, but he'd started, alone, about ten minutes late so somehow we never did cross paths. This morning I worked from home until about 10:00, waiting for the rain showers to pass before riding to the office.

Progress!

As an update on the Neron Place road work, they poured concrete for the sidewalks and driveways toward the end of last week and so now people aren't parked all over the place and having to trudge through mud and sand and stuff to get to their houses. Still a fair amount of work to be done, but it's progress for sure.