Seasonal Changes

Saturday Giro cool-down on Lakeshore Drive

Down here in New Orleans this time of year can be the best of times or the worst of times. On the one hand, the days are finally getting a little longer so I'm spending less time riding in the dark, and although I haven't yet been able to permanently put away the arm and knee-warmers, we're definitely done with the long tights and heavy gloves and thick wool socks. On the other hand, we keep having these weather cycles where a cold front is heading our way, all sorts of dire warnings about rain and storms go out, and then maybe it rains or maybe it doesn't. At the beginning of last week is looked like it might be raining practically all week, and yet all of my regular group rides stayed dry except for the Sunday Giro. The cold front that brought heavy overnight rain that ended shortly before the Sunday Giro starts brought with it a few chilly mornings where the temperature was down into the 50s. That had me reluctantly pulling out the knee warmers and full-finger gloves for a couple of mornings. Yeah, I could have left those at home and just been cold for the first thirty minutes, but really, what's the point of that?

My turn-around point on Sunday

Looking at the hourly forecast last Friday I thought that the Saturday Giro might be a wash-out, but like I said, you can't really trust the forecast this time of year. Saturday morning was a little cloudy but the rain forecast just kept being pushed back farther and farther so it turned out to be a perfectly fine Giro Ride. Eventually, of course, the line of thunderstorms came through in the middle of the night with the rain ending right around 6:00 am when I would normally be heading out the door. Looking out the window, however, I could see that the streets were still soaking wet and full of puddles, and then looking at the radar I could see that in a few hours the sky would be clear and everything would be dry.

Spillway whitewater, and a dead fish

So Sunday morning I pulled the covers back over my head for an extra hour, made coffee, and finally rolled out the door around 9:30, by which time the streets were nearly dry and the sun was up and everything was wonderful ... except for the 12-20 mph northwest wind. I headed for the levee and rode upriver a few miles past the Spillway, turning around at 30 miles or so. The wind kept my speed, and motivation, in check most of the way, which was fine since Saturday's Giro had already provided a decent workout. The river has been rising again lately, and it is now high enough that a good amount of water seeps through the Spillway control structure. There are a few places along the Spillway road where the engineers have designed culverts with pipes underneath the road, which keeps the road nice and dry but still allows for quite a bit of water to flow through to the lake. The culverts are lined with big rocks, so it makes for some artificial whitewater. On the other side of the road there were a lot of people fishing. Anyway, it was a good solo ride, and like all long solo rides it took a fair amount more effort than an equivalent group ride, despite my attempt avoid over-doing it. 

Stopped for a long train

I was surprised Monday morning that I was still feeling Sunday's ride in my legs when I rode out to meet the Mellow Monday group. There were a lot of people who showed up for this one, and from the start I knew it was going to get fast. Which it did. There was still a significant north wind blowing and when Chris and Donald, who was on his TT bike, started pushing the pace things started falling apart. I eventually ended up in no-mans-land until I felt my rear tire going flat as I went through the Elysian Fields traffic circle, where I had to stop to fix it. I took the shortcut down Wisner and that got me back to the Museum of Art in time to meet back up with the survivors, anyway. Even with the flat, that ride was a bit harder than I really wanted under the circumstances.

Tuesday's ride had a small turnout and by the time we were past Williams Blvd. it was just Martin and I. It was chilly and a little windy, and we were taking long pulls on the front at a moderate 22-23 mph most of the time. I felt sorry for Martin who is big enough that I was probably providing a significant draft for nothing above his knees. That turned out to be a pretty good workout anyway since I was spending so much more time in the wind than usual. There was a train crossing Oak Street on my way back and for some reason there was a lot more traffic than usual on Oak Street and Carrollton, perhaps because the damned city has Broadway, Pine, and Lowerline closed off following a big water main break on Audubon that resulted in them putting a temporary above ground water pipe across about four blocks of city streets.

It was a little warmer for today's WeMoRi - a bit over 60°F - so a base layer and arm-warmers were more than sufficient. For some reason the ride had started off with a somewhat smaller group than usual, not that it made the pace any slower. In fact, it seemed quite fast and I was happy when we had to stop briefly for a couple of red lights.

Long Week

Last week started out as usual with a nice Mellow Monday ride, followed up the next day by a nice Tuesday levee ride and then a pretty fast WeMoRi on Wednesday. Thinks went downhill from there, though. 

Arriving home Wednesday morning I learned that my father had been taken to the hospital around 6 am with blood in his stool. I jumped into the shower and then headed over to Touro hospital to meet my sisters Patty and Ginger. 

By mid-day they had found and presumably fixed a duodenal bleed, so we all breathed a cautious sigh of relief. I went by the hospital briefly that evening for a quick visit where they were giving him a second bag of blood. By 1:30 the next morning the hospital called. He was in the ICU having difficulty breathing, feverish, and presumably septic. He'd just been in and out of the hospital a couple of weeks prior with a UTI that required a stint and a lot of antibiotics. The hospital advised us to come to the ICU because it was not looking good. They worked all night to support his falling blood pressure and administer antibiotics, and by early morning he seemed just a little bit better, but that was probably because of the norepinephrine and vasopressin. Soon, however, they resorted to straight epinephrine as well. Jay was on his way down from Jackson by then. An hour before he arrived around 1:30 pm it was becoming obvious that we were running out of options and that dad was in kidney/organ failure. Lactic acid was off the charts and prepared ourselves for the inevitable. He passed away around 2:30 pm that day at 95 years old with his four children at his side. We'll have a memorial service on May 13 so that most of the grandchildren and great grandchildren who are scattered across the country can attend. 

We spent a long time at Lake Lawn funeral home on Saturday morning making arrangements, but by afternoon the weather was nice enough that I went out to the levee for a somewhat windy ride out to Ormond and back. Sunday was a regular Giro Ride, still windy. There's a disturbance in the Gulf just south of us now and the weather is going to be sketchy for a while. 

On Monday the streets were wet and there was a mist falling, so I aired up the tires on the old Pennine and went for an easy ride on the levee. At least it was as easy as it can be on a full-fender bike in a 10 mph wind. Tuesday morning's levee ride was equally windy and with only three of us continuing beyond Williams Boulevard we decided to turn around at The Dip which cuts out eight miles. Nobody complained about that. I ended up having Candy drive me to work and back because the forecast was showing nothing but rain all day, which of course meant that it never actually rained. This morning I woke up to wet streets but, looking out the window it didn't look like it was actually raining. I kitted up and stepped out the door and immediately felt the heavy mist that was falling (and was showing up on radar). I briefly contemplated riding in it but ultimately decided it just wouldn't be worth it. Again, the forecast was predicting rain all day but I rode to work anyway and I don't think a drop has fallen yet as of 4 pm. More rain is in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow morning, so odds are we will eventually get something.

In the meantime I got the event permit and BikeReg pages done for the Tour de La coming up on June 3-4, and people are beginning to register for the TT championship that will be on the 30th of the month. The Time Trial is pretty simple, so assuming we get a few volunteers and the weather is OK, that shouldn't be a problem. The Tour, however, is an entirely new thing this year. We'll be doing everything on the southshore, there will be a circuit race on Lakeshore Drive instead of the long road race, the TT will be on Lakeshore Drive immediately following the road race, and the criterium will be in Chalmette on Sunday. GC will be based on points rather than time, riders won't have to ride all three stages, etc. There are still some loose ends to tie up for both venues, and as usual there's no solid sponsorship in place. I'm just hoping we get a good turnout since there will be few valid excuses for the local riders this year!

Summer Again

Sunday Giro heading out along Lakeshore Drive

By the end of the week I was thankfully back to just jersey and shorts in the morning, which probably saved me ten minutes and got me to the rides a little earlier than usual. Tuesday was a little odd in that I skipped riding in the morning because things were a little wet and road in the afternoon instead. It was, at least, warm, but there was a strong north wind blowing which meant mostly crosswinds out on the levee. The wind kind of kept me a little more honest than I'd otherwise been since it required a certain minimum amount of power just to keep from falling over, and meant that what might have turned into an easy evening sightseeing ride was instead some kind of a moderate zone-2 thing. 

Wednesday was a little cooler, and although I did pull out the arm-warmers and base layer, I could have gotten by without them. The WeMoRi featured some of the same generally north wind as had the prior day, which resulted in the group being somewhat split up somewhere along lakeshore drive before I got there. There was still a decent enough sized group when I jumped into it, but I wondered for a while why there weren't more riders. When I jump into the group along Marconi I never know if it still includes everyone or if it is some kind of breakaway or if the group just shattered along the lake and that's all that's left of it. In this case, I think the latter was the case. Anyway, it was a good enough workout. Thursday we started with five or six and ended with two or three, which made for a harder ride than you might think if you looked only at the speed. 

The weekend for me was just two Giro Rides. With the wind now shifted around to the southwest, Saturday's Giro seemed fairly fast with the speed rarely dropping below 25 mph all the way out to Venetian Isles. I did a fair amount of work on that ride since the group wasn't quite as large as usual.

Sunday was noticeably easier than Saturday had been, but probably just because the wind had finally died down a bit. The group was smaller than usual, but there were still enough people at the front looking for a workout that it was still pretty fast. I made a couple of big efforts along the way, particularly at the turnaround and between the bridges on the way back. In both cases I was basically closing, or trying to close, big gaps that I was on the wrong side of. I was feeling pretty decent on the way back along Hayne Blvd., and went up the first overpass fairly easily, but as we came over the top someone ahead of me let a gap open as the speed suddenly ramped up to 36+ mph. I put in a hard effort but was losing ground until Brandon came by and I jumped onto his wheel. He pulled me up to about 50 meters from the front group before pulling off, and although I may have closed it a little bit more I never really got close enough to catch the draft. I still made an effort over the bridge, rolling past a few riders who had blown up before the top. It was a good ride, but I found myself all weekend wishing I'd been racing instead.