Rain, Wind, Waves, and Fam

Thursday was flat tire day

It was a busy week, complete with a complete power failure downtown, an almost-complete failure of my laptop, rained-out rides, rides that should not have been ridden, flooded streets, and a house full of family. 

But we survived.

Wednesday morning I headed out for the last WeMoRi before the time change to DST puts us all back into the dark. As luck would have it, I flatted somewhere on Carrollton Avenue as I was riding into a 12 mph north wind. That put me way behind schedule so I turned around at the north end of Wisner and was soon swept up by what there was of the group which had already been shattered by the crosswinds on the lakefront. First, Sam went flying past fast enough that I didn't even consider trying to catch his wheel. Quite a while later a little group came along that was going more my speed. That turned out to be the second group of at least three.

That morning as I rode to work I could hear the big generators running at LSUHSC, which is never a good sign. Sure enough, there was no power to 1555 Poydras or any of the buildings around that area of the CBD. Apparently a bird managed to blow out some key transformer or something. So I turned right back around and headed back with the intention of working from home. I fired up my old laptop and it was installing some push update to Office that ultimately corrupted the operating system. I had to jump though numerous flaming hoops to get the computer to revert to an earlier Restore Point. That process took a couple of hours but fortunately was successful at rendering my computer operational again. I felt lucky even though I'd lost the better part of a day when I really needed the computer for an impending grant deadline. My daily COVID report was, of course, quite late. The power situation hadn't improved by Thursday morning, so that was another work-from-home day.

Thursday morning the levee was pretty wet from earlier rain, but we headed out anyway for the usual 6 am ride. The group was small and the wind was down to a relatively mild 7 mph. As often happens when it's wet, the flats started pretty early, and by the time we were fixing the third we'd already decided to cut the ride a little short in the interest of time. Somehow none of the flats were mine, which was a little surprising considering the condition of my tires.

A cold front was moving through on Friday and looking at the radar I thought I could squeeze in the Friendly Friday ride before the torrential rain and gale force winds arrived. I got about six blocks from home when I started to feel raindrops, so I pulled the plug and went back home, which of course caused the rain to stop. Oh well. As expected, a strong cold front pushed through overnight, dropping the temperature from the 60s to the low 40s. Family started arriving Friday evening. 

Saturday morning the temperature was in the 39-40° range and there was a 23 mph north wind with gusts up to at least 40, but the clouds were gone and the roads were dry. When I turned on my Garmin computer I had a Gale warning, high wind warning, and freeze warning. I figured I'd ride out to Starbucks and see if anyone else was stupid enough to show up. After a struggle into the cold wind that had me down to 11 mph at times I went inside and ordered my usual small dark roast with 4 packets of raw sugar and sat down to see who would show. A little while later Christopher arrived (Julia had been pushing the Tulane riders to do the Giro that day), than Chris from St. Louis who had contacted me earlier that he would be in town. That was about it. We headed for the lakefront, more out of curiosity than anything else. It was clear we wouldn't be doing the Giro. Plan B for situations like this is to ride laps around City Park. 

Waves breaking over the seawall flooded parts of Lakeshore Drive

When we turned onto Lakeshore Drive we could see the waves splashing over the seawall. A couple hundred feet to the east the road was under water, and right there were Julia, Gavin, Dustin, and Jaden. After briefly documenting the situation with photos we headed back toward City Park where, given the 20 mph tailwind, Jaden decided to take a shot at one of the Strava KOMs. I redlined pretty quickly and dropped off the back, eventually getting back together with a few of them to complete the lap and then just head back home. It was really too windy and cold to do much of anything productive, so I didn't feel too bad about it. At least we tried!

The aborted Giro got me home in time to join everyone for breakfast at Satsuma on Maple Street, so that was nice. Later that day we took the kids over to the City Park amusement area where they had a blast riding all of the rides while I sat around watching and freezing. It was pretty cold all day. Dinner was at Frankie & Johnny's where they were playing Irish music in honor of St. Patrick's day (the parade was that day).

It was still windy on Sunday, but nothing near as bad as Saturday had been. The Giro group was a little smaller than usual, and the temperature was in the low 40s. The east end of Lakeshore Drive was covered with deep sand from Friday night's gale-force north wind, so we had to detour at Franklin Avenue to Leon C. Simon. It was the first day of Daylight Saving Time, which meant that the sun wasn't quite above the horizon when we rolled out at 7 am. A little group went off the front on Paris Road and nobody seemed too interested in trying to catch it, so we had a nice paceline going on Chef out to Venetian. Pretty much the same group, led by Brett and Lisa, took off early on the way back so the situation was basically repeated for the return ride. It did have its fast moments, of course. Charles was finally back in the pack after surviving a bout with COVID.