Long Lake Loop, and another hurricane

Somewhere between Pontchatoula and LaPlace on Sunday

Oh crap, I'm late! I jumped out of bed early Sunday morning a full half hour later than I should have. Somehow in my half-asleep head I was thinking the start was at 7 am rather than 6 am. I had made a last-minute decision (possibly not my finest) to join a group in Mandeville for a circumnavigation of Lake Pontchartrain at 6:00 am. I was nearly 5:30 when I hit the road for the drive to the Mandeville trailhead with Google Maps predicting an arrival time of 5:57, so no coffee, tires not fully aired up, no electrolyte in the bottle, etc.

The prior days had all been pretty normal riding-wise, and I had even ridden the Saturday Giro the day before, and a rather fast Friendly Friday ride the day before that, so I was not exactly well prepared for a 150-mile day on the bike, and I knew it. Carly had been in town with a friend, and so I'd spent some time earlier in the week getting a couple of the team bikes in shape since they had both been somewhat cannibalized and needed chains, pedals, wheels, tape, front derailleur, etc.

On Friday we had a pretty big turnout, which has been the status quo lately for the 6 am Friendly Friday ride. Of course, a big turnout can mean only one thing, which is that the ride is going to get fast, which it did. On the other hand, a big group also means lots of hiding places for wheelsuckers like me, so it kind of balances out.

Saturday Giro turning onto Hayne

By Saturday I was still on the fence about doing the ride around the lake. It isn't a particularly scenic ride, and it's dead flat, and by dead flat I mean 147 miles with all of 562 feet of elevation. Since I was planning on doing Six Gap the following weekend, I did not want a ride that was going to turn into a race. I also wanted to see how I felt after the Giro before making a decision.

The Saturday Giro had a solid turnout, but a few of the usual instigators were missing, which I took to be a good sign. Of course the ride had its fast segments, but in general, on average, more or less, it wasn't super-fast, so I arrived back home none the worse for wear, and started to seriously consider doing the long loop around the lake. I got some intel from Charles on the route and expected participants and expected pace, and taking all of that into account figured it would be mainly Zone 2 pace. Granted, 7 hours of Zone 2, but Zone 2 nonetheless. So late on Saturday I sent an "I'm in" message to Charles and put the Garmin and tail light on the charger.

So Sunday morning I'm in fire drill mode to get to the start on time. I pumped a bit of air into the rear tire but not the front, grabbed my bag, Garmin, and light, and threw them into the rental Toyota (the Volvo was still in the shop for body work) and took off for the northshore. Most of the route is on the Causeway, and you just can't really speed there because there is a whole separate police force for that bridge, and they are always out monitoring the speed and writing tickets. As predicted, I arrived with five minutes to spare, pulled the bike out, stuffed some Hammergel and money in my pockets and, somewhat amazingly, was more or less ready to go when the 13-rider group rolled out. I was already missing my morning coffee, had nothing but water in my bottles, didn't have a headlight (it was still pitch dark), and generally felt a little ragged.

Fortunately, the pace was nice and moderate as we got to Highway 22 for the first leg to Pontchatoula, with everyone riding a double paceline at 21-22 mph with a nice little tailwind. Michael J and Steve and a couple others seemed to be doing much of the work on the front, with the rest taking shorter pulls as needed. The first store stop was in LaPlace, at about 50 miles. The morning had been so cool and the pace so moderate that I don't think many of us had gone through very much water. That would change, of course. I knew that once we got through LaPlace and started heading west we would have a headwind pretty much all the way to Fort Pike, and the temperature would be climbing toward the low 90s the whole time. After making the left turn at LaPlace we stayed on the river road through the Spillway before getting onto the levee bike path. Then, when we got to LaRose and had to drop back down onto River Road to go around the levee construction zone, I pinch-flatted my front wheel - the one I hadn't pumped up that morning. That was a quick inner tube change, but somehow I didn't get the tire fully inflated. It felt good enough, though, so we took off again. I would later get home and discover I'd ridden the rest of the ride with maybe 25 psi in that tire. Near New Orleans a few riders turned off, having planned on doing just the first part of the loop. Jenn, one of the Tulane riders, had said she was going to do the same, but ultimately decided to hang on for the full distance, which ultimately did not seem to be a problem for her at all.

My flat.

We dropped down into New Orleans at Oak Street and stopped at Canseco's for our second stop at 85 miles, then continued down Carrollton toward Fontainbleau. As we approached S. Claiborne I spotted Candy who had been watching our progress with Garmin LiveTrack and walked over to say hello. We then took Fontainebleau to Vendome to Norman Francis to Moss to Grand Route St. John to Gentilly Blvd. which put us on 90 all the way out to Fort Pike. Along the way we stopped again at the gas station at Industrial Parkway, which was around mile 102. By then it was getting pretty hot and people were getting pretty tired, so that was a good 15-minute stop. I'd been topping off my bottles with Gatorade since the first stop, and although I had a big Payday bar in my pocket in case of bonk, I never needed it, relying instead of the full flask of Hammergel I had, along with the occasional cold Coke.

The flat from hell

The long stretch on Highway 90 out to the Rigolets bridge was into a decent headwind, and by then the miles were starting to tell on the group. Every time the speed crept up above 21 or so, gaps would open up and we would ease up to regroup. Of course, when that starts to happen it's kind of like putting a band-aid on a snake bite, so the speed got a little erratic. Somewhere out there near Fort Pike we lost Mary Beth. Our last stop was at a gas station on Old Spanish Trail at I-10 where we stopped for quite a while. As we rolled out from there Steven punctured, which started a long flat tire repair episode that took us a good half hour to resolve. The puncture should have sealed itself (he rides tubeless) but didn't, so he first put in a plug. It was a good try, but it continued to leak despite trying all of the tricks of spinning the tire, holding a finger over the leak, etc. I think we went through two CO2 cartridges before deciding we were going to have to put a tube in it. Upon removing the tire we found that most of the sealant had dried up, which explained why it kept leaking. Around that time Mary Beth, who had been on her own since a bit before Fort Pike, caught up to us. Then, the tube didn't have a long enough stem, but luckily I had a valve-extender in my bag, so we finally got rolling again with 125 miles on the odometer, running into Kenny B (in his car) as we negotiated Slidell traffic. At this point I guess some of the northshore guys could smell the barn and started pushing the pace and accelerating out of turns that the rest of us didn't expect, and almost losing a few of us along the way. Eventually we got back onto the Tammany Trace where things settled down to something in the 22 mph range as we negotiated the yellow posts and unending stop signs. 

So we finally rolled back into the Mandeville Trailhead at around 147 miles with my Garmin battery almost dead (I think the LiveTrack and Varia tail light take a toll on battery life), at which point Joe Paul produced an ice chest full of much appreciated cold drinks. After cooling down a bit, I threw everything back into the car, arriving back home mid-afternoon. So it was a good ride for me in that I was able to avoid making any long hard efforts, as planned, and doing no damage that shouldn't require more than a couple of days of recovery.

So now we have Tropical Storm Helene that will soon be a Hurricane, definitely a major one, and quite possibly up into Category 4 territory, before it makes landfall on Thursday night somewhere in the Florida panhandle, if the models are right, which they often aren't. We are planning on driving  up to Dahlonega for Six Gap on Saturday, and hoping that the predicted timing holds and the storm is way up in Indiana by Saturday morning. Could be some rain for Six Gap, but hopefully not anything more. On Monday afternoon I got a call that the car was ready, so I went home early so I could pick it up and return the rental car and shell out about $1,200 between the deductible and the discounted rental. Next up is $3,500 in roof repairs.

Matt, Tuesday morning on the Lake Trail

This morning's Tuesday ride picked up a nice group along Marconi, all of which turned off at the end of Lakeshore Drive except Matt and me. I was still feeling Sunday's ride in my legs, but fortunately once it was just the two of us on the lake trail the pace wasn't super fast going out. We came back at just a conversational pace, which was great for me, actually. Hoping to make it out for the TUCA team ride this evening at 5:30.

A Little Hurricane Week and a Double Giro

By Tuesday it was clear we'd be dealing with a bit of a hurricane by Wednesday night, and indeed we were already getting rain, rain, and more rain starting on Tuesday morning. Everyone was working from home and making preparations for power outages. Around 11:00 I saw a little window on the weather radar and headed out to the levee bike path on the old full-fender Pennine with a rain jacket stuffed in my jersey pocket. Somehow I got back home reasonably dry despite some occasional light drizzle, so the 20 miles felt like a success. It wasn't raining much early Wednesday morning, but I knew that the floodgates on Lakeshore Drive were likely to be closed, so I headed back to the levee on the Orbea. There was a light rain for much of the ride, but not quite enough to soak through my shoes. I had already filled up a 5-gallon gas tank, just in case of an extended power outage.

Leakage - that'll be about $4 grand to fix.

Hurricane Francine came through west of the city, pretty much overnight. I guess it might have been barely Category 1, or just Tropical Storm level wind, but the rain was another story entirely. It rained hard for what seemed like forever, and by 10 pm or so there was water dripping from the ceiling in the back of the house where there's an old shed roof over what was once a back porch and is now part of the kitchen. I wasn't terribly surprised since that roof has long been a problem and has shown signs of leakage during wind-driven rains in the recent past. It wasn't a lot of water, but of course it wasn't good either. On the plus side, we never lost electricity despite some occasional flickering and the sounds of exploding transformers in the neighborhood. Much of Carrollton was without power for a few days after the hurricane, so we just got lucky this time. At one point the a/c shut off, though. Down in the basement there was a lot of water that had seeped through the chainwall on that side of the house, which isn't all that unusual when there is extended torrential rain. The problem turned out to be a moisture sensor that they had installed when the new a/c unit had been put in. It was on the concrete pad that was once where the original coal furnace was, and since it is a little bit below grade, it had a quarter inch of water, which triggered the moisture sensor. I just dried it off and put it on top of a piece of wood and everything started back up right away. So we got through the hurricane with a roof leak and of course some tree branches in the yard and street, but were otherwise fine. Things were still pretty messy on Thursday, and I knew the streets would be full of debris, so I didn't ride at all on Thursday, but did go out to Friendly Friday the next day. We altered the route a bit to avoid the standing water on Lakeshore Drive where two of the storm drains have been clogged up for at least a year, but got in a good enough ride.

So the weekend was a two Giro Ride weekend. Not surprisingly, the Saturday Giro had a big turnout and got pretty fast here and there. I know I was looking at 34 mph at one point on Chef Highway, although we did have a little tailwind. Naturally, I was staying safely tucked into the back of the group, but even there I had to make a few big efforts to close gaps and keep from being dropped. 

Sunday Giro heading over the Seabrook bridge

Sunday's Giro group was significantly smaller, but included four of the Tulane riders, most of whom are planning on doing Six Gap in a couple of weeks. This ride was a little easier than Saturday's, but still qualified as a fast one, I think. With a bit of tailwind on the way out, the group averaged 26 mph from the start of Hayne to Venetian Isles. Jess, who had ridden around 80 solo miles on the northshore the day before, dropped off the back when we turned onto Chef and there was a surge to close gaps, but I think that was part of her plan because, as I learned later, she ended up riding all the way past Slidell to meet up with her parents, and then do a swamp tour. I almost turned back at the end of the Giro to make sure she was OK, so I'm glad I didn't.

I ended up over at TUCA headquarters for much of the afternoon getting some of the team bikes back into working order. TUCA Alumna Carly had told me she would be in town with a friend and wanted to borrow a couple of small team bikes. One was Mignon's old Specialized, that was missing both its front derailleur and chain and front wheel. The other was the nice steel Jamis that was also missing parts and needed an inner tube and a shorter stem. Fortunately, I found the missing components and happened to have a spare chain. The Specialized is 9-speed, but should work OK with my 11 speed chain for a while. I ordered a three chains - 9, 10, and 11 - the next day since I will need a new 11 speed chain soon and two of the team bikes definitely need new chains. I also got the team cyclocross bike working since Jess is interested in giving that a try this fall. That bike was also missing its front derailleur, but I found one and got it working too. Evan got a couple more team bikes working for some of the new riders.

This morning, Tuesday, Brian B was in town from Florida, so I met up with him to ride out to NOMA at 6 am. There were only a few of us there at the start, but by the time we were on Lakeshore Drive there were at least a dozen. As usual, most people turned off before we got to the lake trail, so for the rest of the way out to the casino and back it was mostly just Charles, Brian, and me. After I got home I rushed over to TUCA HQ to meet Carley and her friend and get them set up on the bikes, the rushed back home to meet the roofer who figures that fixing the flat roof will be around $3,500, and told me that the main roof, that was installed after Katrina, is about at the end (so much for the "lifetime" warranty on that) and will need to be replaced soon. On the plus side, at least that's not leaking. Well except around the chimney which is slowly leaning away from the house, but that's a whole other story.

Southern Magnolia

Mellow Monday a week ago

The past week or so has been quite a mixed weather bag. August should have ended with a Saturday Giro Ride but was instead a slow mid-afternoon levee ride during a lull in the rain. The following day we lucked out and got in the full Giro.

The next day, Monday, the weather was pretty nice, and so we had a good Labor Day Giro. Knowing that the forecast for the rest of the week was calling for nothing but rain, I went ahead and extended my ride out to the end of the lake trail, and then back down to the river levee, which left me with around 91 miles for the day. The holiday Giro was fairly fast, but for the rest of it, I wasn't pushing myself, so it was longer than it was hard. My legs were still feeling Monday when I headed out to the NOMA for the 6 am Tuesday ride. It wasn't raining (yet), so that was good. We had a nice tailwind on the westbound stretch, which of course made the return trip harder than I would have liked, but, again, I was expecting the weather to mess up at least a couple of days that week. Somehow we did get through the WeMoRi, which seemed to have been pretty well splintered by the 10 mph east wind that was still hanging around, but a number of riders who had been shelled at one point or another managed to find their way back into the group for the last few miles.

My weather luck ran out on Thursday, and so I never did get a chance to ride at all, which was probably a good thing considering the prior three days. Sometimes when the weather gods decree a rest day, you should listen. The rain pretty much never stopped from then through Saturday. I did sneak out on Friday afternoon for a short ride on the levee. Although the rain never really stopped, it had been pretty light all day, so I dusted off the old rain bike with its full fenders and tire liners and thick touring tires, pulled on my rain jacket, and logged a few rather soggy miles. The temperature was warm enough that the wet feet and legs weren't a problem at all. Saturday morning was more of the same, though, and I just could not force myself to go out in it again. Fortunately I had already set up the track bike on the old wind trainer down in the basement, so I did eventually spend an hour and a half or so riding into a box fan and dripping sweat on the floor, despite never having elevated my heart rate much above baseline. Better than nothing, I guess. Besides, I was planning on riding the Southern Magnolia "century" ride near Biloxi on Sunday, and for that the forecast was looking much better.

The Southern Magnolia ride started at 7:00 am, and for some reason I woke up a bit before 4:00 am and was therefore in the car and on the road around 4:15, which would get me there rather early. As soon as I started the car I got a warning that one of the headlights was out, so I spent a lot of time with the high beams and fog lights on, which probably wasn't much of a problem for oncoming cars since the plastic headlight housing are so cloudy anyway. As it turned out, when I went to replace the bulb I discovered that the problem was actually the plastic connector, which was cracked and broken. It's working now, but I'm sure if it jiggles the right way it will lose its connection again. Just another car problem for the week. First there was the bad tire, then there was the accident, then it was time to schedule the 120k mile routine maintenance, and then the broken headlight connector, and now a hurricane gets thrown into the mix. 

Anyway, I had been expecting the 98 mile ride to be pretty fast, so I made sure I was near the front at the start. The weather was practically perfect, with a morning temperature below 70°, which felt chilly to those of us who haven't ridden in anything under 80° in months. I was a little worried about the north wind, but it never seemed to be much of an issue. That's typical for rides on quiet country roads that are lined by trees. Of course, the pace picked up right away with the first 20 miles being completed at an average speed of 25 mph, which was pretty much what I'd expected. Up at the front were a lot of the local Giro Ride people, along with some of the Mississippi riders who I recognized from Steve Martin rides. Mixed in was at least one rider on a TT bike, and a few others who I thought might be riding more on optimism than experience. Even so, thanks in no small part to the relatively flat course and mostly steady pace, there was still a pretty fast group well into the "out" part of the out-and-back course. At one point there was a big surge that I think must have split the group, so we arrived a the turn-around with what I'd guess to be maybe 20 riders. Shortly after the turnaround there was a rest stop. The whole group pulled over there except for a couple of riders and me. I still had tons of water on hand, along with the equivalent of four gels in my little plastic flask, so I just took the opportunity to spin easily for a few miles until the group caught back up to me. There were a couple of other riders ahead of me who had been with the group, but I don't know if either of them stayed with the group when they were caught. I was still feeling pretty good, since I'd been careful not to do very much work. I was expecting the ride back to get pretty fast because we'd have a tailwind. It mostly was. 

I should have taken a few photos, but didn't, so here's one someone else posted. Devin V posted some video on Youtube, though.

We were about 70 miles in when we came to a sharp left-hand turn, at which point Connor and "Powered by Donuts" (Michael Giem from Biloxi, I think) flew through the intersection at the front. The turn kind of spit up the group so the rest of us took a little while to get back together, by which time the duo had a pretty good gap and was showing no signs of slowing down. We did eventually get the rotation going again, and although we were holding them at about a minute for the next ten miles or so, some of our group were starting to feel the miles and we weren't really in chase mode. By then our group was down to 8 or 9 riders, and for the last 20 miles or so people like me were skipping pulls. I was actually feeling pretty good, and in retrospect was being way too conservative. Toward the end I finally realized that I wasn't going to die or anything, and by then our pace had eased up a bit in order to keep everyone together, so I started taking more and longer pulls. By then the lead duo was out of sight and out of mind, and our speed had dropped one or two mph, I guess. I finished up with a moving time of 4:07, which included that stretch where I was just spinning and waiting for the group to come back up to me after they had stopped at the rest stop. That made my time about five minutes longer, I think. The lead duo came in just under 4 hours. I definitely could have gone harder, I think, but anyway it felt like a really good workout. Somehow, I ended the week with 327 miles despite one skipped day, one day on the trainer, and one short day in the rain, thanks in no small part to that long Labor Day ride and the Southern Magnolia ride.

This morning on Lakeshore Drive

This morning we had a good turnout for the Mellow Monday ride, possibly because of the weather forecast for the rest of this week. That made it a little faster than my tired legs would have liked, but it really wasn't too fast for too long, despite the 15 mph wind along the lakefront that had me escheloned into the left lane where there was, fortunately, almost no car traffic.

So here comes Tropical Storm Francine. It was just named a TS today, and is fully expected to develop into a hurricane by Wednesday when it will probably make landfall Wednesday evening somewhere between east Texas and New Orleans. We are well with the uncertainty cone right now. The 10 am Intensity guidance is predicting Cat. 1 or 2 at the moment. I'd plan on a solid Category 2 for this one, with New Orleans on the bad northeast side. Naturally we are supposed to be bringing the car in for repairs Wednesday morning. It's also due for scheduled maintenance, which I've been putting off until the body work is done, so all that's kind of up in the air at the moment. I plan to get a rental car Wednesday morning when I drop off the car, but I guess all of that is a little bit uncertain at the moment. With the Gulf water currently at hot tub temperature, I won't be surprised if this thing develops quickly. When it rains, it pours.