Thanksgiving Week Weather

Saturday Birthday Giro Heading Out

As she often does this time of year, Mother Nature has been toying with us. I went out into the dark on Monday morning to meet up with the Mellow Monday group at City Park. The temperature was in the low 60s, so actually not bad at all, but the forecast for the week was a little questionable. There was a steady rain most of that night and I awoke to find the streets soaked. Most of the rain had ended by around 5:30 but considering how things looked I debated for a while if it would be worth going out for a ride. In the end, I decided to take the Pennine out for a spin on the levee, and by the time I pumped up the tires and rolled out the door I knew I wouldn't be at the levee by 6 am. I didn't think that would be a problem, though, because I was pretty sure nobody would be there. So as I rode up the ramp from River Road I was quite surprised to see someone waiting, especially since I was at least five minutes late. It was Mike, aka Gumbo 66, who was still in town from Seattle. Although the bike path was wet, it wasn't all that bad, so we rode out to the upriver end of Jefferson Parish and back without incident ... until he flatted. Riding on the levee when it's wet like that comes with a high probability of a flat caused by a teeny tiny shard of whatever aggregate has been shedding from the asphalt for the past twenty years.

Rain Bike Tuesday

By Wednesday morning there was a strong wind blowing. Strong enough that I considered turning around and heading back home long before reaching the lakefront. In the end I persevered, but by the time I got there the WeMoRi, what little there was of it to start with, had been blown to pieces. I got onto the back of the three or four riders who were left and was promptly dropped along Wisner when the pace surged and my legs and lungs didn't, so I cut across the park and picked them up on the flip-side. It was a shorter ride than usual, battling the front wheel in a 10-20 mph north wind the whole time.

As usual, there was a Thanksgiving Day Giro Ride the next day. It was chilly start, but at least the wind had died down a bit. Nobody seemed to be quite in the mood for a mid-week hammerfest, so while the pace remained brisk it was a little easier than usual. I arrived back home in plenty of time to make the usual two trips to the grocery store as Candy cooked a turkey and related stuff. Fortunately the neighbors came over to eat, because four pies, rice and shrimp, salad, and ten pounds of turkey would have been challenging for just the two of us. 

I was off on Friday, of course, so there was really no good reason to go out at 5:30 am in a cold drizzle to see if anyone would show up for Friendly Friday. Of course I did anyway. It was only slightly miserable with the temperature in the 50s and occasional light rain. I arrived home cold and wet of course.

Saturday was the Giro, and also my 70th birthday. Luckily the weather was much improved, although still colder than I like. Being my birthday I was obliged to ride at least my age in miles, which would mean tacking an additional ten miles or so onto the Giro. As I dropped the bike onto the basement floor that morning I heard the unmistakable "thump" of a flat rear tire. A tiny shard of glass or metal was stuck in the tire and it took me quite a while to remove it. I finally got it fixed, arriving at Starbucks only a few minutes later than usual. The ride itself was pretty steady, and it was easy to sit in the draft where I like to be this time of year. On the way back there was the usual surge between the casino bridge and Seabrook (which still has the right lane blocked off). For some reason I optimistically decided to put in a little sprint halfway up the Seabrook bridge, so I came around whoever was ahead of me and immediately slammed into some big piece of debris in the closed-off right lane that dramatically blew out my front tire as if a bomb had gone off. Fortunately I didn't go down. I gingerly limped to the top of the bridge on the flat front where I could fix it. I still needed to put in a few birthday miles, so Pat and Charles decided to keep me company. We stopped briefly at the gas station on Harrison and then did a couple of laps around City Park before I headed  home with maybe 40 psi in the tire. It was only later that I discovered the casing had been cut and the tube was bulging out of the hole. Good thing I hadn't been able to fully inflate it because the valve stem was too short and I had to MacGyver a valve extender by cutting the end off of a plastic valve cap. The forecast for Sunday was looking bleak.

It rained much of the night and into the morning, so there was no chance of a Sunday Giro, but by noon things were looking better. I ended up going out to the levee alone around 1 pm for an easy 44 miles. By then the bike path was basically dry, thanks in no small part to the 10 mph north wind that accompanied the cold front. After a while the sun actually came out, which made things a little better even if I was generally unmotivated and spent a lot of time coasting and looking at the scenery. I mean, it's the end of November, so what the hell. I still had lots of turkey, salad, and lemon meringue pie to deal with back home anyway.

Another Flat Friday

It was much colder this morning for the Mellow Monday ride. With the temperature around 49°F I finally dug the long tights out of the drawer where they'd been hiding since last Spring. Along with the cold temperature came even more north wind, so I was quite surprised to see a seven or eight people when I arrived at the Museum of Art. I was feeling tired and lazy, but apparently not everyone else was. When we came around the loop at Seabrook and started back, I moved way over to the right because there was a car about to pass us. When I did, I rolled straight through a big patch of glass that had once been a bottle. It took about 30 seconds for the rear tire to go flat. Luckily everyone stopped while I fixed it on Lakeshore Drive with the cold wind blowing off the lake. Then, as we approached the Bayou St. John bridge there was an unexpected surge of speed. Jeff went past me mumbling, "I wonder what got into them?" That's when I went to shift to a bigger gear, only to have nothing happen. I looked down and realized I'd left it in the small ring after changing the flat! By the time I shifted to the big ring there was already a gap and I just couldn't summon the enthusiasm needed to close it, so I rode in the rest of the way behind the group, managing to catch every red light and having to stop behind a line of cars in the left lane in order to turn off of Marconi onto Filmore. I was probably four minutes behind when I got back to the museum and by then everyone had already headed home except for Mike who was loading  his bike into his car. At least the weather should be improving for the next few days before the next cold front arrives.

Easy Week, Tour of Jeff, and then Rain ... Finally

Like the weather, group rides this time feature a totally predictable level of unpredictability. Some riders, myself included, are easing off the intensity and trying to enjoy whatever there is of the scenery down here where there are no majestic mountains or fall foliage photo opportunities. What we do have, however, are some nice marsh fire enhanced sunrises. Last Wednesday's WeMoRi, not to be confused with today's, was definitely a bit less intense than usual, perhaps influenced a bit by the fact that the group caught, and had to stop at, essentially every red light. By mid-week the weather prognosticators were already issuing dire warnings of monsoonal downpours for the weekend, which of course nobody with any experience here was putting much faith in. I went ahead a registered for the Sunday Tour de Jefferson ride on the assumption that any forecast made five days ahead of time would most assuredly turn out to have been premature. Besides, I knew Bill Burke was handling the event services stuff and so throwing another warm body into the mix couldn't hurt, especially if the weather didn't cooperate.

Thursday's levee ride was nice with arm-warmer level weather and a light wind, still our of the southeast. The weather forecast was already backtracking by then, pushing the expected deluge farther and farther back. 

Friendly Friday had a typical turnout and weather suitable for summer kit, which of course meant that I wore a base layer and arm-warmers. The weekend forecast was looking even better by then, with most of the rain expected for the beginning of the following week. Even so, Saturday morning was damp and a little cooler. This would be the first Saturday Giro starting at its regular 7 am time and from its regular location since they'd usurped the SaMoRi back in the summer heat. I rode out to Starbucks on damp streets expecting a low turnout, but looking forward to a little pre-ride coffee. As expected, turnout was a little slim. I had to chuckle this morning when I read an article, actually more of an op-ed, in Outside about how everyone has moved to disc brakes. The author wrote, "Also, here’s a fact: 99% of roadies who say you need disc brakes because of superior wet-weather performance also retreat to Zwift at the very first sign of precipitation. As for the ones who don’t, I don’t know how they can stand the sound of their disc brakes howling as soon as they get wet, because I sure can’t. I’d rather crash into a tree than have to listen to that."  Anyway, once we got started and came down from the still partially closed Seabrook bridge, Will W went to the front, put it on cruise-control at what was probably about 200 watts for him, and smoothly towed everyone all the way out to Venetian Isles and back. Well, almost all the way back. He somehow rode away on Bullard as the rest of us were trying to avoid the potholes and keep from being squashed by traffic. I got back home feeling like I'd just been on a sightseeing tour on the back of a tandem e-bike. Just as well, because I was definitely not expecting the same level of moderation for Sunday's ride.

The Tour of Jefferson is one of those late-season fun rides that, like the Tour da Parish, attracts essentially the entire regular Giro group, plus all of the West Bank riders. The course is actually kind of awful in that it incorporates no fewer than six U-turns, and the longest stretch without a turn is probably six miles, but somehow it still turns into a race at the front and six 30-second intervals at the back. As soon as we were past the neutral start, a couple of miles in, Ben Hall took off just like he did last year. There was a very disorganized chase that never really solidified into anything significant, but nonetheless the pace was mostly pretty brisk with an average speed a bit over 25 mph and, for me sitting in the ample draft near the back, and average heart rate of 134 with a max of 163. 

So not really a hard ride for me. By the time we got to the last segment the front group was down to maybe 25 riders, some of whom wanted to sprint for the imaginary finish line which was essentially Bill Burke's car. We were about a mile out when I noticed a number of the faster riders drifting toward the back to stay out of trouble. The speed was hovering in the 27-28 mph range with a moderate headwind when Eddie C went flying past on the right shoulder taking all of the wannabe sprinters off guard. So I guess that was second place since Ben had finished maybe two minutes earlier. Afterward I had a mini-muffuletta and some lemonade and headed back home.

With the long-predicted rainy weather slowly approaching, the Mellow Monday ride turnout was unsurprisingly thin and the roads unsurprisingly wet, but we still got in a nice little recovery ride, which was good because the outlook for Tuesday and Wednesday was not encouraging. The rain started later in the day, and continued all night. At 5:15 am Tuesday morning I could hear the water outside the window trickling down from the broken gutter left behind by Hurricane Ida and just pulled the covers back over my head to enjoy a rare extra hour of what passes for sleep before making coffee. 

I was scheduled to bring the car in to the body shop to repair some damage done some guy who hit The Wife at a 4-way stop and then took off before she could get any contact information or even a definite license plate number. Typical. Probably didn't have insurance. Fortunately by the time I had to bring the car in the rain had turned into just a cold mist, so my ride down Tulane Avenue from the body shop was dominated more by the possibility of being killed in the ill-conceived bike lane by busses or trucks, rather than arriving at work soaking wet. I was cold all day anyway, of course, and the ride home wasn't any better.

Charley wondering why mom
is driving off without him

This morning's WeMoRi featured enough of a north wind to make Lakeshore Drive inadvisable. As came over the Norman Francis overpass a rather heavy cold mist started falling. I was wearing my goretex base layer, arm-warmers, and full-finger gloves, but even so I briefly considered packing it in and turning around. Fortunately the mist eased up a little, so I decided to continue anyway, even though I figured I might be the only one crazy enough to be riding. Then, as I came over the Wisner overpass I saw all three of the WeMoRi riders heading the other way, which confirmed my suspicions about Lakeshore Drive. Knowing that they had likely opted for a couple of laps around City Park, I looped around at Filmore and joined in for their second lap. This was all in an off-and-on cold mist that sometimes bordered on actual rain, so by the time I was heading back home I was pretty wet and chilled. Then, just to twist the knife, my front wheel went flat halfway up the NF overpass, which was about the worst possible place to  have a front flat. I rode the flat with the tire squirming around on the wet road, and somehow managed to make it all the way down the overpass without crashing. I needed my pocket knife to extract the little piece of glass or metal from the tire, and got rolling again for the last mile or so home. It was not fun. In comparison, my ride to work was much more pleasant since I was wearing a rain jacket and wool socks! It still looks gloomy and miserable outside in the way that only November can make it, but hopefully the weather will start to improve, and maybe the rain will help with the marsh fire in the east.

Climate, Catfish, Computers, and Cars

Tour da Parish - waiting to start

We have now entered that time of the year where the relative stability of summer weather, and life in general, begins its annual downward spiral, "turning and turning in the widening gyre," as Yeats would say it, as things fall apart and we plunge ever forward toward the winter holidays. OK, maybe a little overly dramatic, but suffice it to say that the weather, among other things, has been lobbing a few curve balls in our general direction lately.

Most of last week's mornings, thankfully the last of the really dark ones before the clocks get turned back, were less than ideal. Tuesday morning I stepped out into a cold mist and turned on the headlight only to see it flash it's "My battery is about to die" warning. I switched it to the lowest power mode and rode slowly out to the levee that I knew good and well would be deserted on such an inhospitable morning. I'd dressed warmly enough to survive the cold and wet for a while, so I put in an easy, yet slightly miserable, 26 mile "character building" ride since the forecast for the following day was looking no better. Tuesday was also Halloween, and although the temperature was supposed to drop pretty low, there was a big turnout in the neighborhood. It wasn't quite enough to dispose of the, literally, fifty pounds of candy The Wife had bought, but at least we put a good dent in it.

It wasn't. Wednesday morning the wind was howling out of the north and the temperature was in the upper 40s, and I knew the WeMoRi was not going to happen. However, just like that girl in the movies who just has to open the lid of the vampire's coffin to see what's inside, I went out and rode anyway. Another "character building" ride I guess. I first turned off of Wisner onto the street once called Robert E. Lee, holding some faint hope that there might be one or two hardy souls who were doing the WeMoRi, but of course saw nobody. I turned down Marconi went down to the end, turned around again, and rode out to Lakeshore Drive to have a look. With a 20 mph north wind spray over the seawall, I rode down to Canal and back, and tossed any ideas of riding farther on Lakeshore Drive right into the dumpster. At least I had a tailwind all the way home.  Turned out one person had actually ridden the entire Giro route and somehow I'd missed him. Lucky for me. Somewhere along the way this week the car got hit, again, while Candy was going through a 4-way stop intersection. The offending driver took off without giving any information, of course, which implies that he didn't have insurance. I just got a repair estimate of around $2k on that one.

On Thursday I learned that Rich Raspet, a friend and competitor, had died unexpectedly after finishing a ride. Rich was just a few years older than I, and was a lifelong athlete, lately mixing a good amount of running into his exercise routine. It's always a bit of a reality check when someone like that dies without warning. Then yesterday I learned of the passing of one of my cousins. Sunday evening we were over at my sister's place for a family Zoom meeting with her daughter, currently stationed in Okinawa (she and her husband are MDs in the Navy), who just had a baby. Sort of a virtual baby shower or something like that. Amazingly everyone's internet and Zoom handled it smoothly despite the fact that one connection was on the other side of the planet where it was already tomorrow morning. Circle of life.....

Things were starting to warm up a tiny bit by Thursday, but the levee ride still felt cold and windy and tedious. Friendly Friday was ridden with knee-warmers, but could easily have been done without them. Fortunately the weather for Saturday's "Tour da Parish" not-a-race race was looking to be much better.

Saturday morning I drove out to da parish, arriving much earlier than I'd expected. That got me a nice parking spot and time to indulge in one of the hot donuts and a cup of hot coffee that this ride provided. 

As usual, the front part of this ride was basically the entire Giro crowd, along with one rider from Washington DC who had contacted me earlier because he was in town, and Patrick Hennessey who was in town from Atlanta visiting his mother. Before the ride started I rode down to the place where you have to go around a barricade and through some gravel (actually crushed rock) to see how it looked. It looked like I could go around the barricade on the right and skip the rocks, so I planned on that. Sometimes things get backed up there and you end up chasing just to get back into the front group. This year the ride started out at a pretty easy pace, which was a little surprising because there was a lot of horsepower in attendance. I went around the barricade on the right as planned, but then had to put a foot down and lift the bike back up onto the road, so I didn't really save any time. As usual for this ride I was happily stationed near the back of the slowly dwindling front group for about the first half of the ride, having little difficulty sitting in despite the 26-30 mph speed. Then we made a right turn into a bit of a headwind. The whole group started to get strung out along the right edge of the road. It wasn't a problem, but then someone ahead let a gap open and someone else didn't go around, and next thing I knew there was this huge gap. I eventually went around with Charles and we made a feeble attempt to close it, but the front of the group was in full flight and we weren't making any headway. As we approached the next U-turn we decided to try and turn around a little early so we could rejoin the group, but we waited a bit too long had had to wait for them to go by before we could turn. By then they were going 30 mph with a tailwind and there was no way we were going to catch. We made a bit of an effort, though, picking up and then dropping a few riders who had come out of the lead group, and finally picking up one rider who stayed with us for a while. We were going mostly around 24 mph on average I guess, but the front group was doing more like 29, so by the time we go to the finish we were over six minutes down on them. Actually, it was probably a better workout for me the way it turned out, because even at that speed I'd have been doing less work overall just sitting in the paceline. Afterward there was fried catfish, oysters, and lots of beer. 

Groundfog

Sunday's Giro was even warmer, thanks in no small part to the time change, and was relatively tame, other than a surge toward the end that was nullified when the Seabrook drawbridge opened for a sailboat. That afternoon we finished taking down all of the Halloween decorations. Mellow Monday got a little fast here and there but it was a nice morning and I was happy to be riding in mostly daylight again. Likewise, this morning's levee ride required a headlight for just fifteen minutes or so, and since we are in the middle of a big high-pressure area at the moment, there was hardly any wind, which made for a smooth and steady ride at a pretty mellow pace.

Meanwhile, on the new computer front...

So I got this new Dell XPS laptop with a 1 TB SSD, lots of RAM, etc. But of course no CD drive or USB-A ports, or Ethernet port. Just USB-C and Bluetooth. I had picked up a teeny tiny thumbdrive that is literally smaller than the end of my actual thumb, but has 265 gigabytes of capacity and a USB-A connector on one end and a USB-C connector on the other. Since my first computer had exactly 1 k of RAM on a chip the size of a New Orleans cockroach, the very idea of having 256 gigs on something the size of an Excedrin tablet is pretty mind-blowing. Anway, that all led to buying a new expensive mouse that can connect to the laptop's Bluetooth, and then a bluetooth numeric keyboard that really should have been included in the 17-inch laptop's main keyboard anyway. Then the next challenge was to see if I could install some really old software on this Windows-11 machine. Thanks to Belarc Advisor I had the install codes for Photoimpact and Dreamweaver. Photoimpact came as a free application with a computer I had about fifteen years ago. There are other things I could use, of course, but for simple things it's easier and faster to use this antique bit of software. Fortunately I had the installation files for both on my old computer, so it was just a matter of moving them over to the new computer and installing them, using the original license codes. The thing that took the longest, though, was copying twenty years worth of documents and photos from one computer to the other. At first I tried to do that with Microsoft Onedrive, but moving all of that to and then from the "cloud" (aka some collection of mysterious servers in some mysterious location(s)) was going to take forever. Using the new thumbdrive, however, made it all relatively painless and fast even though it was a few gigs of data. So I think the new computer is more or less fully functional for my purposes. I bought the Office 365 subscription, so at the moment I don't need to install any of the software I can get from Tulane that isn't supposed to be installed on a non-Tulane computer.