Wayward WeMo, BSL Ride

Saturday in Mississippi

Last week seemed particularly disjointed, for multiple reasons. I headed out early Wednesday morning to meet up with the WeMoRi as usual. The temperature was still in the mid-70s and there was a significant east wind, neither of which should have caused any problem for the ride. There was, however, one little fly in the WeMo ointment. That film crew is still working around one of the houses on Lakeshore Drive, and even at 6 am there are lots of people there and the road is barricaded - some days more than others. Each morning, it's a roll of the dice whether a bunch of bikes can slip throught the cracks in the barricades. On the assumption that the group was able to do its usual route, I went out to Lakeshore Drive, looped around the fountain circle, and made my way back to Marconi, looking expectedly over my shoulder for the flickering headlights of the WeMoRi that usually appear right about 6:10 am. Well, 6:10 came and went, and still no lights. I hovered around for a little while, but soon abandoned hope and turned back down Marconi, assuming I'd be doing a lap around the park alone. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, an three-person group of Steve, Marurizio, and Sam came flying by, so I latched onto whatever scant draft there was at the back. When we hit the Wisner overpass, though, Sam and/or Maurizio attacked it, opening a gap on Steve, to whose wheel I was desperately clinging. Despite Steve's heroic effort, we never quite made contact with the lead duo again, and by the time we were nearing Lakeshore Drive again, Steve was toast and turned off onto LSD westbound to head home, leaving me to my own devices. I eventually found out what had happened that morning. It seems the police were particularly lively that morning and had prevented the group from continuing down Lakeshore Drive, so the riders decided to do two laps around City Park to make up the difference. Somehow that kind of shattered what there was of the group, and the timing was such that they were on Toussaint as I was hitting Lakeshore Drive, so I missed them entirely. Anyway, it was kind of a mess. 

On Thursday there was a 10 mph NNW wind, but at least we had a few riders on hand for the long ride out to the casino and back. I think Maurizio was on the front about 80% of the time, but it still didn't feel like an easy ride. The bike path along the lake was pretty wet from levee runoff, so although it didn't rain on us, there was a fair amount of wheelspray to deal with, and I got home kind of wet and grimy for at least the second time that week. 

Friday threw another monkey wrench into the works, at least for me, because I had to work a Tulane conference that started at 8 am. On the plus side, I was able to slip away around 3 pm for a few miles on the levee. By then the weather was pretty nice, with just a bit of a northeast wind. I rode out to the upriver end of Jefferson Parish where it's been barricaded since last Spring. I thought I could see some torn up levee in the distance, but at any rate, the section right at the parish line is still completely untouched. Riding back downriver I saw an eagle dive down below the batture trees along the river and then come back up with a fish, flying almost directly over me before deciding to perch atop one of the big metal power line posts to eat its catch.

I had been considering doing a little informal gravel ride over in Mississippi on Saturday to try out the new tires I'd put on the 'cross bike, but when I pulled out my MTB shoes I discovered that the sole was separating from the rest of the shoe and decided maybe that wouldn't be a good idea. Luckily, I found a pair of last year's Bont MTB shoes on sale on the Bont site and ordered them. Ordering directly from Bont pretty much guarantees I won't seem them for another week or so. Amazon they are not. So as a result, and in consideration of all of the missed mileage I'd already accumulated that week, I decided to do the 73-mile ride out of Bay St. Louis (more or less) that Steve M had lined up.

So Saturday morning I headed for Mississippi, stopping briefly at the relatively new Starbucks along I-10 in Slidell. Crossing the 5-mile bridge, the temperature was around 65°, but by the time I-10 headed east for Mississippi, it had dropped to around 55°. No surprise, of course, as I was expecting to see something around 54° for the start. On the plus side, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the wind was fairly light, relatively speaking. We had I think nine riders for this ride, and as usual it was mostly smooth enough paceline that you could enjoy the scenery. Toward the end a couple of riders started to come off the back on the little climbs, so we waited a few times at intersections for them to catch up. It was a pretty nice ride, so I was glad I'd made the trip. Sunday was a regular Giro day for me. We had a good enough group, a bit smaller than usual I'd say, but still enough to allow for some recovery time at the back. Rob was kind of pushing the pace on the way out along Hayne and Paris, but turned off at Chef, after which things kind of settled down a bit. I was feeling fine, the prior day's ride not having left much of a mark for some reason. This morning, Monday, however, I was feeling like crap, possibly due to too much wine the prior evening, or maybe just accumulated stress, so I quickly dropped back to a spot where the draft was wider. The Mellow Monday pace wasn't particularly fast, so that strategy worked out fine, which is to say I survived. 

Adams Street, a couple of blocks away. A long and winding road?

The forecast for tonight and tomorrow is not encouraging. From 5 am through 8 am the probability of rain goes from a dismal 98% to an equally dismal 84%, so it's likely to be a rain day until the next cold front blows in around noon and the winds shift around to the north again, which means cold and wind for Wednesday and especially Thursday and Friday. It looks like we will be riding the meteorological roller coaster for a while, with cold fronts followed by warming followed by cold fronts. Nothing below 50°F for the next ten days, though, so it'll just be a matter of dealing with rain and wind.

Still Summer?

Sunday morning hoping it wouldn't rain. It did.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining, just noting that we are nearly halfway through November, still riding in summer kit, and won't even be considering firing up the central heat for at least another week, probably two. Despite the warm temperatures, however, we still have the humidity, often manifested in the form of rain, to deal with, and as usual for this time of year, the daily forecasts are, to say the least, hit-or-miss.

Wednesday morning, the day after the election, I headed off "to get my fair share of abuse" at the WeMoRi with the Rolling Stones' "You can't always get what you want" in my head. The temperature was in the mid-70s, and the humidity in the upper 90s. I had somehow awakened early that morning, so despite being back on standard time, it was still pretty dark as I made my way down the right lane of Wisner Blvd., following the headlight beam shining on the road ahead of me. All of a sudden a big dead branch hanging down from one of the oak trees materialized in front of me. There was no time to react, other than to white-knuckle the handlebar and plow through it. I got whacked pretty hard on my helmet, shoulder, and left hand, the latter of which lost some skin despite being inside my glove. As the sweat started to infiltrate the wound, I began to sting. It pretty much stayed that way for the next few days, actually. Anyway, being earlier than usual, I rode east on Lakeshore Drive out to Elysian Fields, turned around and eventually merged into the rather smallish group somewhere along Marconi as usual. The pace was relatively moderate, and as a result I probably did more work and less drafting than usual. There's been a huge movie filming operation going on lately on Lakeshore Drive where all the big houses are, and they've been blocking off the westbound road completely. The group had already made one apparently chaotic early pass through that obstacle course, so when we got back to LSD there was some discussion about what to do. It seems that a consensus wasn't reached in time, so as we came around the traffic circle after the bridge, some people went all the way around and back over the bridge, while some, including me, continued on just to make a U-turn shortly thereafter. Anyway, that killed the momentum entirely, so that was that. It was windy as hell that morning, so no complaints.

Thursday's long ride was warm and a bit windy, but otherwise unremarkable. The speed was fast all the way out to the casino, but much slower all the way back. On the return trip, as we came over the levee at Causeway, I almost lost it when my rear tire went all mushy. It had maybe 20 psi in it at the time, so I had to stop and put in a new tube. I'd been running a latex tube in there for months, and figured something had finally punctured it and caused a slow leak, but my later forensic examination confirmed that the valve had apparently just not sealed when I'd topped up the air that morning. 

Friday's Friendly Friday ride was about what you'd expect with a 10 mph ENE wind - slow and plodding into the wind, then fast as you can go in the other direction.

Maurizio

So that brings us to the weekend. We were still in summertime mode on Saturday with the same 10+ mph east wind and the same mid-70s morning temperature, but at least there was a nice big group on hand. I don't think I ever hit the front, as there were ample horses up there to keep things quite fast enough. Surprisingly, things didn't get entirely out of hand on the long tailwind stretches, staying mostly in the 28 mph range, so all was well. I always have a hard time making an effort this time of year, so situation normal, I guess.

William

Sunday was quite a different story. It was still warm and humid, but the wind had started to shift around more from the south, which of course meant clouds and rain. The streets were quite wet as I rode out to Starbucks that morning, comtemplating the possibility that nobody would show up, which almost turned out to be the case. We headed out with a small group of about eight, which had dropped down to six by the time we hit Chef Highway. With only Chris, Apryl, Charles, Tim, and me, it was a collegial Zone 2 kind of ride, with the added bonus of lots of wheel spray from the wet roads. On the way back from Venetian Isles we finally got some actual rain, and by the time I was heading home my shoes were well-soaked, but thanks to the warm temperature it wasn't too uncomfortable. As I made my way down Norman Francis I was listenig to the sound of my tires on the wet road, not realizing that what I was hearing was actually the sound of my front tire slowly going flat. Fortunately I made it to the house just as the last molecules of air made their escape. I'd been running one of those cheap TPU tubes in that front wheel for months. When I examined the tire I found two nicely embedded pieces of broken glass, one of which had caused a teeny tiny puncture in the tube, which explained the slow, slow leak. I patched it with the special TPU patch kit and stuck it back in, and it's been fine since, so that was nice. 

Apryl, Tim, Charles, Chris, and me

Yesterday I got a couple of 35mm Continental Terra Speed gravel tires that I want to put on the 'Cross bike. Of course, they are tubeless ready, which just means that it's nearly impossible to coax them onto the narrow aluminum rim-brake non-tubeless rims I have on that bike. I don't think I could really go any wider with those rims, but at least these should roll considerably faster than the actual 'cross tires I normally have on that bike - assuming I can actually get them mounted. For now, I put them on the rims without inner tubes to let them stretch out a little bit before I try to put the tubes in them. Hopefully that will make it possible to get them set up without pinching a tube in the process, and will also make it at least possible, if not easy, to change a flat out on the road. Hopefully I'll be able to do a little bit of gravel riding over the next few months when the opportunity arises, although I'm quite certain it will just be a diversion and will never be my primary discipline, since I have absolutely no relevant skills.

Tour da Parish 2024

Well, it's that time of year again. The days are getting shorter and shorter, and my Strava feed is increasingly cluttered with Zwift cartoons rather than photos of tranquil summer country roads. Last Saturday was the annual Tour da Parish, and also the last day of DST before switching back to standard time in the wee hours of Sunday morning. For reasons I cannot fathom, a number of the Tulane riders who should have done the TdP didn't, and the couple who did had their own transportation, so I had an uncomplicated 40-minute drive down to St. Bernard Parish, arriving in plenty of time for the 7:30 am start. The start time had been moved up because of some ongoing construction along the route involving trucks.

The week prior had been just the usual morning group rides, although I think the upcoming beat-down in the parish was weighing on some minds and slightly limiting the effort levels. Not to worry, though, because Mother Nature stepped in right on time with a rainy Friday that kept many, including me, off the bike altogether. It was still quite dark as I neared the uncomplicated Los Isleños Museum Complex, causing me to miss a turn, but I found my way there easily, parking near the entrance, where I was quickly targeted by a thousand or so hungry mosquitos that I couldn't even see. I'm still full of itchy mosquito bites from head to toe since summer weight lycra apparently offers not the least bit of deterrent to the pesky purveyors of misery. Anyway, I quickly hiked over to the registration tent and picked up my number and wrist band and a couple of free water bottles. The back numbers that they use for this event are like no others. They're rather large, and printed in full color on some kind of relatively stiff crinkle-proof plastic material. Lots of riders just folded them up and put them in their pockets rather than struggle with actually pinning them on. Since the numbers serve no purpose other than to identify who actually paid the registration fee, it doesn't really matter much anyway. There is no finish line or results listing, not that that made it any less of a race for the front group, of course. On the plus side, it was basically summer weather, with just a moderate bit of wind out of the east.

So we started off on time at just a moderate pace until we came to the infamous barricade about a mile and a half from the start. I'd ridden down there before the start and saw that there was a little single-track path around the right side of the barricade. The actual ride routed everyone around the barricades to the left through a gravel driveway of sorts. It's always kind of a cluster there, and it also always gets really really fast immediately after. This morning was no exception. I had been careful to stay near the front of the group, more out of fear than anything else, and after going around the barricade on the right I looked over to see Peyton coming back onto the road just ahead and to my left. He sat up and looked behind him briefly, and that was pretty much the last I saw of Peyton that day! Within half a mile I was going 31 mph, into a slight headwind, with a long string of gaps and riders ahead of me. I thought to myself, "this isn't sustainable." Of course, I was referring to myself, not the rapidly forming front group of, I guess, around twenty. By the time we were four miles in I knew we weren't going to catch the lead group, which already included most of the local talent, and things slowed down to around 27 mph as riders shelled from the front started losing the draft.

It was at around 4.5 miles that you come to a section of road where the right lane is partially barricaded off and everyone has to shift over to the left. I was a wheel or two behind Pat there, and ahead of him, but still over toward the right, was Scott. Suddenly, I heard the sound of a crash. Scott had hit a block of wood or something, and as far as I can tell, was thrown forward, losing his grip on the handlebar. We slowed for a moment, but with so many behind is, stopping there might have just caused more of a problem. Scott ended up in the hospital, but reportedly had no broken bones,  just a lot of rather bad road rash, including some on his face. Could have been worse, I guess. Anyway, we were still kind of in chase mode there, but soon enough a group started to come together and things settled down to a relatively sustainable 24-25 mph. This second group turned out to be a nice size with a number of people, largely Giro Ride regulars, willing to take some pulls, so we soon had a nice paceline going. At the first turn, 7 miles into the ride, we caught a small group that had been dropped from the front group, so that was good. The 7-mile stretch down to Delacroix was fast but fairly smooth at a 26.5 mph pace, even though nobody had any illusions of catching the front group that was already a couple of minutes up the road.

So that was pretty much how things stayed for the rest of the 51 mile ride. There were a few lulls here and there where the pace dropped down to the low 20s, but basically it was a typical brisk group ride pace. I think our group had an average speed just under 24 mph, while the front group (what was left of it) averaged a bit under 28 mph. Big difference. Really big difference. I think Will and Peyton and for a while Connor were off the front of the front group from Hopedale all the way back. Anyway, it was a nice ride other than Scott's crash. Afterward, I had some fried catfish and a Coke and kind of rushed back home for a little family get-together at my sister's house.

Sunday morning I headed to Starbucks not quite in the dark thanks to the time change. There was a good group on hand and it still felt like summer, so we had a pretty typical Giro Ride, although clearly a few people were still feeling Saturday's ride in their legs (apparently there had been a good group for the Saturday Giro as well).

Mellow Monday was mostly mellow, but not without a few of the usual fast miles on LSD and Wisner. That was fine with me, since I was still not feeling quite recovered from the weekend. This morning we had a nice sized group for the 6 am Tuesday ride. After an easy roll out to the lakefront, Maurizio took the front and pretty much stayed there unchallenged for the entire rest of the ride. It still felt like summer with a significant east wind and temperature in the mid-70s. For some reason I felt kind of stressed for much of the ride today. 

I arrived back home and had just enough time to make coffee before the power in the whole neighborhood went out. Sounded like a couple of transformers blew out. There's a tropical depression forming in the Caribbean right now that seems to be headed more or less in our direction. The models are expecting it be become a hurricane somewhere around Cuba, but it's expected to start falling apart as it gets into the northern Gulf. Guess we'll get a lot of rain, though. The "Cone of uncertainty" is about the size of Texas right now, so I don't think the models quite know what to do with it beyond a couple of days yet.