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.