Rerouted

The Sunday Giro starting to string out as the pace rises on the way back down Chef.

After last week's excursion to Augusta I was really wanting to race. Unfortunately it was just another week of the usual group rides, however. I guess I had maybe 4 hours of sleep before I headed out on Monday morning for the 6 am Mellow Monday ride. I might have just slept in except for two factors. One was my compulsive need to mitigate the lost training mileage from the prior week. Another even more critical factor, however, was that the dog woke me up at about 4:45 am. Although the dog is getting better about it, he is still waking us up once or twice a night in order to go out. He is also getting a little bit better about not wanting to wrap his teeth about arms and ankles. Even so, there's still a lot of puppy left in him. He has destroyed all of the soft dog toys so we are now just getting the relatively indestructible ones from places like Bullymake. They seem to last a bit longer and he can't tear them apart and swallow the pieces quite as easily. 

Thursday on the Levee Ride

Anyway, the weekday rides were fairly routine. It's finally getting warmer, bordering on hot, around here, and the sun is coming up early enough that headlights aren't needed for more than twenty minutes or so, which is good because the battery in mine is definitely on its last leg. I love this time of year when I don't need to check the outdoor temperature before getting dressed. It probably saves me ten minutes in the morning since I don't have to make wardrobe decisions, search for the right layers, put on base layers and then outer layers and long gloves and caps and stuff. What a relief. Of course, that all means that we're only a week or two away from having my glasses covered with sweat, but I'll take sweat over ice any day.

Sunday's alternate Giro Route.

One little wrinkle this week was the emergency closure of the Seabrook bridge at the eastern end of Lakeshore Drive. That resulted in an ad hoc route change for the Giro that was nevertheless well-attended. The only way over the Industrial Canal for the Giro will be via the big Chef Menteur Blvd. Danziger bridge for at least the next month or two until they get the Seabrook bridge repaired. On Saturday we took Franklin to Leon C. Simon to Press down the Chef, crossed over the bridge, then worked out way over to Almonaster. We went all the way out to where Almonaster turns into Old Gentilly Road and meets up with Chef Menteur. The only problem with that was the diagonal railroad tracks near the end. I was amazed that nobody crashed. For Sunday we decided instead to turn off of Almonaster at Michoud just to avoid the tracks that are guaranteed to eventually take someone down. Too bad, though, because I really liked that long unbroken stretch. We used to ride Almonaster as part of the Giro years ago, but switched over to Chef Menteur when the road surface started to get really bad. It's been mostly re-paved since then, so it's pretty fast with just a couple of surprise potholes, although I hear it can be kind of muddy when it's been raining. Coming back on Almonaster I was having flashbacks of the sprint at the western end that we used to do for the Giro Ride. On Sunday we didn't quite make it that far without stopping, however, because Jaden picked up a screw in his rear tire. That took a couple of tries to repair and since that was the second flat for the day I was a good twenty minutes late getting home, which wouldn't have been much of a problem except that it was Candy's birthday and we needed to go out to Gambino's to pick up a Lemon and Chocolate Doberge birthday cake because we were having the neighbors, one of which was also celebrating a birthday, over that evening.

The Tour de Louisiane is looming just a few weeks away and as usual I feel like everything is still up in the air. I'm cautiously optimistic that we will have a decent turnout this year but you never really know until a few days before the race. As always, the big challenge is finding enough volunteers to handle the road race setup and follow cars, and then for the criterium course setup and marshaling. Hoping for the best, as usual.