Hotting UP

Monday morning haze thanks to the marsh fire out in the east

It's been nothing but hot and dry around here lately, and the outlook for the rest of this week isn't offering much else. Most of the rides can be described pretty much the same. Things start off briskly with the pre-dawn temperature in the 81-84° range. Then the number of people working the front begins to dwindle along with the water levels in the bottles. Eventually the speed drops and the number of people hanging on for dear life grows. I get home and walk into the 75° air-conditioning and quickly peel off the soaking wet jersey before I get chilled, hanging it on a rod in the hamper so it doesn't grow mold down with the rest of the laundry. The bike's top tube is spotted with sweat, and the glasses are practically opaque. August. Situation Normal.

The week started out with a nice enough Mellow Monday ride that didn't get too much out of hand as sometimes happens. Back at the Museum of Art in City Park I noticed that the little green plastic frog that had been underneath the statue of bacon (actually it's supposed to be brush strokes but I guess my imagination isn't artistic enough for that) had moved and was now atop a lily pad. It's been kind of like Elf on a Shelf - appearing in a different place every few days. Anyway, since Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were all just more of the same hot rides I'll skip ahead to Saturday. 

With the unusually, even for New Orleans in August, hot mornings we've been having lately a lot of the regular Giro riders have been doing the SaMoRi that has shifted to a 6:30 am start. Of course the difference between starting a ride at 6:30 compared to 7:00 is entirely academic but nobody ever said cyclists weren't like sheep. So the Saturday Giro turnout was quite small. Then to make matters worse, a few of those who started announced they would be turning back with the SaMoRi group, effectively shortening their ride by ten miles or so. If any of those riders were on the fence about turning back early, their doubts were put to rest after Will and a couple others kept the Hayne Blvd. speed between 28 and 32 mph all the way out to Paris Road. Even with the light tailwind, it was pretty intense. So halfway out on Chef all but I think four of us turned back. In a way is was a relief because the pace slacked off a little bit, especially after the turnaround when that tailwind turned into a headwind. So we're cruising back, mostly just sitting in Will's ample draft when, after turning onto the Interstate Will's rear tire erupts into a volcano of sealant. I was two bikes back and still got pretty well sprayed. We took inventory on the shoulder and put in a tube, which got Will back to the Bayou St. John overpass where it went flat again. Another tube and a boot got him home.

Long Giro

So after the practically unavoidable dehydration event of Saturday you would have thought I'd have been smart enough to decline the invitation for a Long Giro out to Fort Pike on Sunday. Of course I wasn't. 

Knowing it was going to be a hot and possibly miserable 78 miles despite the store stop at the marina, I put a partially filled large water bottle in the freezer the night before. That morning I headed out with one big bottle of ice and water, a small bottle with electrolyte, a couple of gels, and a couple of bucks for a cold Coke. Once again we had a bit of a tailwind on the way out and when we got to Venetian Isles I was surprised how many people decided do the long ride. I think we had nine. Once we crossed Chef Menteur Pass the pace, which had already been pretty fast thanks largely to Brett and Will, picked up so that the average speed for that whole stretch was a bit over 28 mph. The whole time I'm sitting at the back wondering if they're saving anything for the ride back into the gradually increasing west wind. All I knew was that my own survival was going to depend on staying the hell off the front. I think everybody in the group ended up at the top of the Strava "Chef to Rigolets" segment. Indeed, the ride back was considerably slower. Despite the store stop rehydration and cool-down, I the speed on the way back was more in the 23-25 mph range as everyone was starting to get overheated and dehydrated. I finally limped back home from the lakefront at 15 mph and proceeded to down about half a gallon of cold fluids, after which I was still a couple of pounds low on the bathroom scale.

In addition to this being the time of year when rides get hot and brutal, it's also the time of year when equipment starts to fail, and my own equipment has been no exception. I'd been noticing some unusual drag and noise that, as is almost always does, sounded like it was coming from the bottom bracket area, which, as is almost always the case, wasn't. I moved the chain out of the way and the cranks spun as smoothly as ever. So then I swapped rear wheels, which confirmed that the problem was the rear hub that has over 30k miles on it and had recently weathered a few long rides in the rain. I found the cassette body to be kind of wobbly which pointed to the freewheel bearing, which I then found to be orange and rusty and generally a big old mess. I just threw up my hands, stuck an old wheel in there, and order an whole new cassette body which cost about what the entire wheel was actually worth. I badly need to change out all of the shifter cables, which I'll probably do some time this week. The shifters themselves are also about at the end of their lives but the Campi 11-speed system I have on there is like four generations old now and it's questionable whether it's worth replacing at this point.

Meanwhile, we've been without the car for, I think, ten days now thanks to some hit-and-run person who crushed the side-view mirror into the door. The car should have been ready last Friday but they were sent the wrong mirror, so now I'm hoping maybe late Tuesday or Wednesday. Of course, since the street alongside the house is still completely torn up, which is to say it is just dirt, the car would be covered in dust anyway. The roadwork crew put in new curbs last week, built forms for some of the sidewalks but not all of them, and then ghosted us ... again. When will they return to finish the job?  Your guess is as good as mine. It's like they have a weekly Wheel of Fortune wheel that they spin and every now and then the pointer lands on your street, or Bankrupt. The electricity bill last month was almost $500, and every time I hear the a/c unit kick off, which isn't often, I wonder if it has broken.