Conspiracies and Evolution

Tuesday on the Lake Trail

It's a season of transitions here in New Orleans. One day it's 80° and the next it's 55° with a 25 mph north wind. So - situation normal. The evolution of the Tuesday - Thursday morning rides have been slowly picking up more people since the move from the river levee to the lakefront. Tuesday was pretty breezy, and turnout was a little slim, but once we finished the lap of LSD and got out onto the Lake Trail we were easily cruising along at 24 mph. Of course, that meant that the ride back to the east was a bit of a slog and mostly at speeds in the 18 - 20 mph range, but that's not unexpected along the lake where the wind always seems to exceed the official forecast by 8 - 10 mph.

A big group for Friendly Friday

The next day's WeMoRi was a good workout as usual, still with a significant SE wind but far less of a factor with the larger group. By Thursday the wind had died down a bit more, which made for a nice ride. Friday morning was even better, with a starting temperature in the low 70s and only a very light breeze. That resulted in an unusually large Friendly Friday turnout that, remarkably, did not feature a blistering pace.

On Saturday I once again opted for the lakefront training race rather than the Giro, although I did start out with the Giro group at 7:00, looping back around on Lakeshore Drive to meet the 7:30 group as it headed up Marconi. This week the training race, which basically has a rolling start heading east after the bridge, blew apart almost immediately when someone, I think maybe Rob, attacked. I was dragged along briefly at 29-31 mph until I went to seek shelter, which as it turned out was farther back than I'd expected. A second group formed up fairly quickly and for the next fifteen miles or so we weren't losing much ground on the small lead group that was around a minute ahead, but the chase kind of lost it's motivation on the last lap, of course. Afterward, we had a good sized group that headed out to The Wall and back, leaving me with around 70 miles for the day. 

My plan was to do the Giro on Sunday. It had rained overnight as a cold front came through, leaving the streets wet and the radar unpromising. I rode out to Starbucks anyway, and as I sat there drinking my coffee there was a brief rain shower that ended just as VJ rode up. Of course, nobody else showed up, so VJ and I rode a lap of Lakeshore Drive. He peeled off to go home and I continued down Marconi. It still wasn't raining, so I thought I'd cut across City Park and maybe do another lap of Lakeshore Drive. Naturally, that's when it started raining again, so I aborted that plan and headed back home before I had a chance to get too chilled. Mellow Monday's ride featured a 20 mph northeast wind and a temperature in the 50s, which of course meant that just a few showed up. It was 15 mph heading east and 25-30 heading west.

The potholes on Marconi become so bad that the locals had to take matters into their own hands.

This morning we had a nice group for the Tuesday ride that featured almost no wind, a clear sky, and a starting temperature around 57°. It was nice. Even nicer, we found that the huge potholes along Marconi had been patched (I'd reported them to NOLA311 a week or so earlier, complete with photos), and the final layer of asphalt overlay had been put down around the Bayou St. John bridge. So that was nice. 

Total crap for us

This evening I'm going to have to go to a Public Meeting called, almost in secret, by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority and Lakefront Management Authority so they can tell us how they will completely screw up Lakeshore Drive for us. I swear, it's like there is a regional conspiracy afoot to screw up every single route we use. Lakeshore Drive, Seabroook Bridge, and the Levee bike path. Anyway,  nobody, and I mean nobody, in the cycling community would have known about this meeting if councilmember Morrell hadn't posted an image of the announcement on his (formerly) Twitter feed that I happen to subscribe to for work. There was no involvement or notification by or to the local cycling clubs or, amazingly, even Bike Easy, which had actually floated a plan like this back in 2014 that we collectively opposed. I sent that around to everyone I knew, and then emailed the Flood Protection Authority contact for more information, which they refused to provide until the meeting. I also sent an email to our two at-large City Council members. As far as I can tell, the Flood Protection Authority answers to nobody and does whatever it wants, and this public meeting is just window dressing for a project that is already a done deal. Later, someone with contacts told me that the plan is, as I'd feared, to continue the 2-way bike lane in the gutter and road diet and road furniture clusterF that currently exists at West End for the full length of Lakeshore Drive, which will make the multiple daily group rides there even MORE dangerous while concurrently causing us to hold up motorists who will hate us even more than they already do. I hope I'm wrong, but I seriously doubt they give a damn about us and just want to try to force the cars to go slower by making it too dangerous and inconvenient to do otherwise. Of course, we will end  up in that narrower traffic lane with oncoming traffic on one side and probably flex posts on the other, since riding 30 mph in a two-way bike lane occupied by young children and beach cruisers and probably also runners and walkers would be even more dangerous for all involved.