Seasons

Fall colors in New Orleans

Technically, it's Fall, and my Strava feed is full of beautiful images of winding roads and colorful foliage, none of which is here. As with gravel riding, we live in a fall foliage desert down here where the months of September through November offer only brief samples of windy arm-warmer weather interspersed with foggy humid mornings that morph into 80° days. There are a few imported trees that actually change color, although not usually until November, but mostly Fall just means that the Live Oaks drop a lot of leaves while those that remain just turn a slightly darker shade of green. All of which is kind of irrelevant since the weekday morning rides right now are completed almost entirely in the dark and photos are mainly of peoples' butts illuminated by headlights or a bunch of dark silhouettes partly obscured by bright red tail lights. 

Last weekend Danielle was in town for her high school reunion. We went to the soirée in the school courtyard Friday evening, which was surprisingly nice, but otherwise the weekend consisted of two Giro Rides interspersed with lunches and dinners with friends and neighbors.

Speaking of the Giro, Saturday's was a pretty fast one that featured some heavy smoke along Chef Highway due to a persistent marsh fire. We haven't had any significant rain around here for much of the summer and fall (I think we are something like 23 inches below normal), so the fire has been smoldering mainly underground in the dried out peat, which makes it almost impossible to extinguish. They are now pumping water *into* the marsh in an effort to control it. Anyway, we all got back without noticeable symptoms of smoke inhalation, and by Sunday the wind had shifted a bit so it wasn't an issue. Monday, however, was another story.

I went out Monday morning to meet up with the Mellow Monday ride. Although there was a dense fog advisory, there was none to speak of on the way out to City Park, but as our small group - I think only four or five showed up - the fog got heavier. Then, toward the eastern end of Lakeshore Drive, it went rather quickly from heavy to impenetrable. I was glad that we all had lights and that there was practically no traffic. I think maybe two cars passed us along the lake. Meanwhile, out to the west on I-55, there was a horrendous multi-vehicle pile-up thanks to the same "Superfog" that formed from the combination of regular fog and another marsh fire in that area. Over 100 vehicles were involved, eight people died, tanker trailers exploded, etc. Complete disaster. As I write, that part of the interstate is still closed as they finish cleaning up the mess and then inspect the bridge for structural damage caused by the crashes and the fire.

So Monday's ride was quite windy, but otherwise fairly mellow, but for some reason Tuesday's levee ride seemed kind of hard. Rich is back in town so we had three doing the full ride, which should have made it seem easier, but the wind direction that morning made it feel like most of the ride was either crosswind or headwind, mainly the latter. By the time we were halfway home my back hurt, my neck hurt, and my legs hurt, even though we weren't really pushing it. On the plus side, my new computer arrived at the house later that day. On the minus side, now I will have to spend hours getting it set up, installing software, setting up passwords, transferring files, etc. It's Wednesday now and I haven't even turned it on because I know that once I do I'll get sucked down that rabbit hole and won't want to stop until I have at least the most critical things working the way I want. That will include some software from the 90s (actually one from the 80s, I think) plus numerous online applications like Box, Teams, Dropbox, Slack, Quorum, Airtable, Zoom, etc. 

Next weekend there are some small cyclocross races up in Ridgeland MS. I'm thinking I might go do those just for a change of pace, although there might be a little push-back on my absconding with the car for most of the weekend since Halloween is Tuesday and Candy has already been sorting out about fifty pounds of candy into little packages for the neighborhood kids.