Sunshine on My Shoulders

Friday morning with the Friendly Friday Dawn Patrol

It's not quite the end of February, so still far too early for declarations about springtime, but this is New Orleans and as always we are relentlessly teased by Mother Nature. The mornings last week were, by my standards, still chilly, with temperatures in the low to mid-50s, but hey, I'll take that any day instead of low 40s or, heaven forbid, low 30s.

Last Friday we had a big group, no doubt a direct result of a morning conducive to summer kit. It's always funny how that first warm morning brings all sorts of people out of the woodwork. Riding home I briefly contemplated putting in a few extra miles, just to enjoy the sunshine. Back at the house, the oak leaves were falling like rain. If you live under live oak trees you soon realize that the season called "Fall" is a misnomer. Although the trees do drop a fair amount of leaves in the Fall, it is early spring when they shed most of their leaves, just as the new ones are starting to develop. At the moment there are at least ten big bags full of leaves out on the street waiting for Wednesday's garbage pickup. I hate to see them disposed of that way, but the front yard is well covered already and all of the leaves that fell, and are still falling, in the back yard are still there. These were just the leaves in the street that were clogging up the storm drains.

Free tools!

The weekend weather was looking to be better than anything we have had thus far this year. Saturday's Giro Ride had a good-sized group and was quite fast. I think Will was probably on the front for half of it all by himself. Even sitting toward the tail end of the paceline I can usually tell when Will has settled in for a long pull at the front because the pace becomes so steady that you'd think you were motorpacing. Although it was a pretty good workout, I arrived home feeling surprisingly good, probably thanks to my careful attention to wheelsucking. We were planning a longish ride over in Mississippi for Sunday, so I didn't want to do too much damage the day before. 

As a special reward, I found a nice soft-face hammer on the roadside when I was riding back from the lake, so I stuffed it into my pocket to add to my roadside tool collection. Over the years I have picked up some really nice tools that have no doubt found their way out of pickup truck beds.

Sunday morning over in MS

On Sunday I was scheduled for an 80 mile ride that Steve and Charles had organized over in Mississippi, starting at a playground just off of I-10. It was one of those days that challenges your wardrobe selection abilities. When I arrived at the parking lot around 7:30 am the car thermometer read 49°, but there was almost no wind and the sky was clear. The forecast was calling for upper 60s later in the morning. Although I usually opt for at least knee warmers when it's below 60°, I knew it was going to warm up quickly and decided to go with bare knees. Yeah, it was a little chilly, but that didn't last more than about twenty minutes after we rolled out just past 8:00. We had a good group of, I think, nine, plus one other rider on an E-recumbent who tagged along the whole way about five bike-lengths off the back. Most of the route was fairly flat, with some little hills up toward the northern part of the big loop that we rode. Riders were taking super long pulls at the front on the way out. I think we may have had a light but increasing tailwind, and with the pace mostly in the lower 20s riders seemed content to stay on the front a little longer than usual. I think we were at least twenty miles in before my turn came up for my second pull of the day.

After avoiding a bunch of peacocks that were crossing the road in front of us, we eventually came to a store stop at maybe 42 miles into the ride. I got a Coke, but was still carrying around two nearly full water bottles and emptied half of one of them so I could fill it back up with my leftover Coke. I ate a little granola bar that I'd brought along, but wasn't particularly hungry quite yet since the pace had been fairly moderate. I think some were probably just a little apprehensive about the distance. Indeed, when we got to around 65 miles I could tell that a few of the riders were starting to feel the distance. Also, this was where the terrain was the least flat. I was definitely starting to feel the prior day's Giro in my legs on some of the uphills. It wasn't terrible, but I certainly knew I'd ridden 60 miles the day before. 

This morning, Monday, the temperature was in the upper 50s and the wind was light. I went out with covered knees, a base layer shirt, and arm-warmers. I was a little chilly at first but otherwise pretty comfortable. The Mellow Monday group kept it fairly mellow this morning, which was nice because there was still just a bit of residual soreness in my quads from Sunday's ride.

There is a weekend of racing over in Mobile this coming weekend. I am hoping to go, but kind of tapped the brakes this morning when I looked at the forecast, which was calling for thunderstorms on Saturday and some more rain on Sunday. Of course it's still early, so hopefully that will improve. I don't bounce as well as I used to, so that is something that I have to consider nowadays. A rainy road race wouldn't be too bad if it's not very cold, and the criterium is on a pretty non-technical concrete course, so even it the rain it probably wouldn't be sketchy, but I would probably still hesitate to rail the one significant corner like I might otherwise. We'll see. Not looking forward to the time chance coming up on March 10 when all of my morning rides will be thrown back into the dark.