Ahundred

The Saturday Giro waiting for the Seabrook bridge

After three consecutive rainy Sunday mornings I was starting to lose hope that we'd be able to get in a long northshore ride as part of the annual winter ride series. The week had started out about like prior recent weeks, which is to say it was chilly, windy, and/or foggy, but the forecast was calling for the next cold front to come through on Thursday rather than on the weekend, which meant that Saturday and Sunday would be cool but sunny. Finally.

By Wednesday I was pretty sure we'd be able to go for a full century ride on Sunday. Whether I'd be doing that alone or with a group was still an open question, of course. The WeMoRi had a good-sized group on hand, and although the pace was brisk it wasn't hard enough to prevent me from putting my face into the wind a few times. Thursday, however, was a different story. It was cold, with a fairly thick fog when I arrived at the meeting spot on the levee, which was rather predictably deserted. I'd dressed with the expectation of being wet from the fog, so I figured I'd go ahead and ride alone out to the big dip and back. A mile or so after I started I found Howard who said, "Is this it?" as he turned around to join me. Then a little while later we picked up Mark M. Even with a light tailwind going out the pace remained pretty calm but even so we lost Howard somewhere around the parish line. As we approached out turnaround at The Dip I commented, "I think we'll have a bit of a headwind all the way back," which turned out to be the case. Our earlier 20-23 mph pace immediately dropped to 18-20, and after a while Mark remarked, "My legs feel like jelly." Around that time we picked up Howard again. Anyway, by the time I got back home I was quite wet, inside and out.

A Friendly Friday on the Lakefront

Friday morning was the coldest of the week and perhaps that was what kept the Friendly Friday ride so Friendly. Well, that and the fact that a lot of people were anticipating some hard or long weekend rides. Will was kept in check by his plan to drive over to Gainesville for the Swamp Classic races. Charles and I were by then committed to doing the Saturday Giro and then 100 miles on Sunday, so we were happy with the relatively sedate pace.

Saturday's Giro turned out to be fairly fast. We came down the overpass onto Hayne Blvd. into a stiff northeast wind that, thanks to the levee, felt more like a direct headwind. There were a few surges right away that disconnected a number of people from the back who mostly ended up taking the Bullard shortcut. As we rounded the turn at the end of Hayne we saw Geoff and a few other riders from the 6:45 SaMoRi off to the side fixing a flat, I guess. As I was to later learn, the SaMoRi had gotten off to a very delayed start when someone had a dead shifter battery and they tried unsuccessfully to find one at Matt's house. The ride down Chef featured a number of surges but in general stayed together, and thanks to the SaMoRi's late start we caught up with that group out a Venetian Isles which made for a much bigger group heading back. That was all going along nicely until we came over the casino overpass and, as always, it got really fast heading for the Seabrook bridge sprint. Up ahead, though, I could see a lot of brake lights and stopped cars on the bridge and knew the drawbridge was either about to open or had just closed. Of course it was the former and we all had to stop for a while until it came down again. Then the bridge tender walked out and with a big length of chain and had to do some kind of kludge that is apparently standard practice now in order to keep one of the metal grid spans from popping up. I assume something is broken and they're just using some kind of hack rather than actually repairing it for now. Afterward I ran into Dustin and a couple of the Tulane riders who were doing a little ride and some criterium practice in the UNO parking lot.

So Sunday's weather on the Northshore was looking pretty good. The wind was light, the sky would be sunny, and the temperature would be rising from the low 50s to the upper 60s during our planned ride from Abita Springs up to State Line and back. Apryl had driven over from Gulfport or Biloxi, Pat and Steve were there, Charles was there, Ray and Evan were there, so by the time we rolled out at 8:30 I think we had nine. Although a few turned back along the way, the ride was never super-fast, I guess because everyone knew the rolling hills would take their toll eventually. My vest went into my pocket within the first hour and I would have put my knee-warmers there as well if I'd had the space. The ride was a really nice kind of zone 2 paceline with everybody taking pretty long pulls and nobody attacking the climbs, so for the most part six of us stayed nicely together until the last fifteen miles or so, which is pretty normal. I had mapped out the ride on Plotaroute but had neglected to look closely at the detail, which turned out to be a bit of a problem. Either Poltaroute or I had selected some of the wrong roads here and there. I had picked the wrong turn to make the loop up at State Line, but fortunately I was familiar enough with our usual route that we just ignored that turn and continued to the correct one. There were a couple of other places where I think Plotaroute must have been in "bike ride" mode and routed us onto some essentially parallel smaller roads rather than the ones I'd intended. Regardless, we didn't get lost and all was well. Thanks to the moderate pace and perhaps my lower mileage prior week I was feeling pretty good and was kind of taking longer and longer pulls as we got closer to the end. We eventually lost Ray somewhere around Tung road, but he knew where he was and arrived back at Abita Springs just a few minutes after we did. When we got back I noticed that we were still just a little bit short of the 100 mile goal, so we rode down the Trace about a quarter of a mile and back to make up the difference. All-in-all it was a really pleasant ride, and IMHO perfect for this time of year. Other groups were up in St Francisville riding parts of the upcoming Rouge-Roubaix that I probably won't be doing myself now that there's even more "gravel" than in the old days. I am clearly not built for that kind of stuff.