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.