Better Judgement

Riding straight into the storm Friday morning.

The weather battles continued most of last week, which I guess is par for the course this time of year. Likewise for flat tires, both tubed and tubeless. I rushed out to Wednesday's WeMoRi with the temperature in the 40s, and not surprisingly found a number of the usual riders were playing hooky that morning. On the plus side, it did keep the speed down a notch, if that's even a plus. The forecast for the next few days was looking particularly bad with a front coming through and then likely stalling on top of us. In those kinds of situations the only thing to do is wait until morning, look out the window, check the radar, and guess.

So Thursday morning it was not looking bad at all. The temperature was in the low 50s with a moderate east wind as I made my way down the still not-quite-finished Neron Place to Carrollton Avenue and then to the levee. For some reason the turnout for Thursday's ride was a little bigger than usual, which is to say there were maybe seven of us up there in the dark next to the recently re-painted "pipes" that had already been decorated with more extremely non-artistic graffiti. Unfortunately, by the time we were past the airport there were only four of us left, and then Subway turned back at the Little Dip, leaving just three of us. We were going pretty well with a nice little tailwind, though, so I was just trying not to think too much about the ride back. Fortunately, we picked up Boyd on his Pinarello e-bike shortly thereafter, which turned out to be a blessing for the ride back. Boyd is doing great after having to deal with some AFib problems that resulted in an ablation plus a pacemaker, and with the assist from the Pinarello he was taking nice long steady pulls into the wind until he peeled off for home at Florida Street. I was happy to have gotten in the full ride, but things were not looking too promising for Friday and Saturday.

Saturday morning flooding - State Street at S. Claiborne

Friday morning I looked at the radar and decided that the rain wouldn't hit us until maybe 9 am. The forecast model seemed to agree with that, so I headed out to meet the Friendly Friday group, what little there was of it. I think we started out with just Steven, Charles, Mitchell, Dave, and me, so the pace was nice and steady heading out to Seabrook on Lakeshore Drive. I was still feeling confident that I'd made the right call on the weather ... until we turned back toward the east. Just as we came around the loop at Seabrook it felt like the temperature suddenly dropped ten degrees and the wind shifted almost 180°. I remarked, "That's not a good sign," and looked up to see an ominously dark sky ahead of us. A moment later it started to rain, and a moment after that it started to pour down rain. We turned off of Lakeshore Drive, and Charles and I headed straight home down Wisner while the others headed home toward Metairie. Dave had dropped off the pace shortly after we'd gotten onto Lakeshore Drive so I was thinking  he was the smart one and got home dry. I was wrong, though. It turned out that he had continued on the regular route behind us, so had to battle all of that alone. I was well soaked through-and-through long before getting home, of course. When I took my shoes off I had to pour the water out of them and then set everything in front of the basement box fan to dry. I rushed upstairs and jumped in the shower right away so I wouldn't get chilled.

More rain ahead - Saturday on the levee.

By Saturday my shoes were almost dried out but the streets weren't. In fact, the torrential rain that had started in the middle of the night and was still coming down had flooded a lot of streets in New Orleans, partly thanks to some non-functional drainage pumps that had "power issues." Situation normal. There was no question that the Saturday Giro wasn't going to happen, so I didn't even get out of bed until around 7 am. I was scheduled to attend the Tulane playoff game at 3:30 that day, so I was looking for a little break in the weather. Around 10:00 it looked like there might be a little respite from the rain, so against my better judgement I went out on the old Orbea (didn't want to risk another flat on the Bianchi) with the idea of riding out to the Dip and back on the levee. Given the meteorological uncertainties of the day I stuffed my rain jacket into my pocket before heading out. At least it wasn't cold, so I knew that even if I got rained on, which I fully expected to happen, I probably wouldn't be too miserable. Well, I didn't even get to Williams Blvd. before I started feeling the raindrops. Up ahead to the northwest the sky was black, and when I started hearing nearby thunder, I stopped and put on my jacket. I probably rode less than a mile further before the rain got heavy and the gap between the lightning and thunder got down to about a second, so I made a U-turn and started back. At least I had a little tailwind and there was nobody on the bike path, well until I saw Will W heading in the opposite direction. Granted, the rain had slackened up a little bit by then. I rode back by way of Audubon Park and Tulane to minimize time in traffic. By the time I got back home and pulled off my soaking wet shoes (again) my front tire was dead flat from some big chunk of glass I must have picked up along Broadway. The flooding around there had washed a lot of stuff out into the street.

Took the Orbea out for a bath Saturday.

Finally, the weather was looking a little better for the Sunday Giro. It was still warm enough for basically summer kit. I got to Starbucks half an hour early, as usual, and sipped on a cup of Christmas Blend as riders started to arrive. There was a pretty good group by 7 am when we headed out. The Seabrook bridge still  has the right lane blocked off, but of course that's where most of us ride since we'd probably get run over by speeding cars in the left lane. As we got close to the top of the bridge, I heard Charles' tire explode rather dramatically as he rode over one of the many bits of debris that have accumulated in the right lane. The group eased up and stopped on the other side of the steel grate at the top while I stopped with him just before it. He'd already had a puncture on the way out to the ride that had sealed itself, but this was a big slash that no amount of sealant was going to help. So began the long and messy process of getting a tubeless tire off the rim in order to put a boot and tube inside. The nut holding the valve in place was frozen and it took quite a while for Charles to coax it off and pour the sealant out of the tire. I had a piece of race number to use as a boot and three CO2 cartridges, so we put Charles' spare tube in with the usual great difficulty that you'd expect with a tubeless tire, only to discover that the tube must have gotten pinched by the tire lever. Luckily I had two tubes with me and two more CO2 cartridges. About that time we heard the drawbridge horn blowing and waved goodbye to the group that was on the other side.

So we finally got the second tube in and inflated, only to find that the boot had moved in the process and the tube was now bulging through the slash in the tire. We were now down to one tube and one CO2, so we dropped the tire pressure down to about 30 psi and Charles headed straight home while I continued on, probably fifteen minutes behind the group. By then, the drawbridge had been back down for a while. Charles didn't make it more than a few miles before having to throw in the towel and call an Uber. On Hayne Blvd. I ran into Howard who had turned back at Bullard to look for us. He turned around and we rode out together, finally turning around well before Highway 11 when we saw the group on its way back.

My little "neutral support" episode had cost about ten miles, so after the ride I went down to the levee with Chris and rode out a few miles to make up the difference. As I started back I heard, "Hey Randy! Get on!" behind me. It was Will and Mark who had done the shuffle route after the Giro and were on their way back along the levee. Will was kind of in high Zone 2 mode just motoring along smoothly, so I had a nice ride back to Oak Street where he continued on to the park and I split off for home. All-in-all it was a wet, low-mileage, low-intensity week that was actually a little better than I would have predicted earlier in the week.

Monday's Mellow Monday ride was pretty normal, although for some reason my legs felt a little sore. It may have been from shoveling river sand out of the street and back to where the rain had washed it out from. The roadwork people had just dumped river sand onto the space between the sidewalk and the street after they re-did the sidewalk, and without any grass, and considering the much greater slope, a couple hundred pounds of sand get washed into the gutter now every time it rains. I put down some grass seed last week but I'm not too hopeful that it will actually germinate this time of year.