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.