It had already been a high-mileage, if not high-intensity, Christmas week as we collectively closed in on another lap around the local Yellow Dwarf we call "The Sun," and I coincidentally closed in on another fourteen thousand mile year. As the week started, there was yet another lap in my immediate future, although I didn't know about it at the time.
The one nice thing about working for a university, aside from the frequent interaction with overworked administrators and overconfident students, is the long holiday break that this year began the Monday before Christmas and ends the day after New Year's Day. This provides great opportunities to do things like fix up the house, which I almost never actually get around to, and ride a lot, which I almost always do get around to. As we often do, we had a Holiday Giro ride the day before Christmas, which started off a little chilly but was otherwise nice despite the steady east wind that I was doing my best to avoid.
On Wednesday, Christmas Day, it was warmer. I got up at the usual time for the WeMoRi, which I knew would not actually happen that day, looked out the window, and remembered that I could ride later when the sun was up and it was even warmer.
I finally rolled out of the house some time after 7:30, on the 'cross bike, for a little easy spin before the scheduled festivities at my sister's house. Fortunately for my grossly inadequate off-road skills, the City of New Orleans has thoughtfully provided numerous stretches of gravel and dirt roads, interspersed with the occasional pavé segment, within a few city blocks of home. After sharpening my skills on those without incident I made my way out to the levee to ride the little batture trail. It made for a short but peaceful and relaxing Christmas morning ride.
Thursday morning the somewhat wet streets were deserted as I rode out to NOMA to see if anyone would show up for the 6 am ride. Nobody did, so it was another solo ride for me, mostly along the lakefront. I did see a couple of other riders, also alone. So go the holidays, I guess. By then, Charles and Dan, who is apparently back in town, had hatched the slightly insane idea of doing a ride around the Lake the following Sunday, starting at the equally insane time of 4:00 am. These are the kinds of things that tend to happen around this time of year when people start looking at their annual Strava mileage and searching for some last-minute challenges to coax a few more kudos from their devoted followers. I was definitely on the fence, and definitely feeling no need for any additional challenges this year beyond just waking up each morning on the right side of the dirt.
Friday was another wet and even warmer morning as the wind had shifted around to the SSE, so I once again decided to wait for the sun to rise before venturing out. It wasn't until 10:00 that things looked good and the streets looked a little less wet before I stepped out the door and rode off toward the levee. Lured into a false sense of fitness by the tailwind, and the fact there was little traffic on River Road, I decided to drop down to the highway at the parish line and make the two-mile detour around the closed section of bike path. I ended up going all the way out to the Spillway and logging over 50 easy miles. By then I was starting to seriously consider joining Sunday's ride around the lake, despite the 4 am start and the fact that there were storms forecasted for Saturday night as a cold front was coming through. The hourly forecast predicted the rain to stop by 3 am or so, which was cutting things kind of close.
Saturday was the usual Giro Ride, which had a smallish turnout thanks to the weather radar, and despite a totally conflicting weather forecast. The Giro ended up being on mostly wet roads with a bit of rain during the ride, and then a significant amount of rain on my way home. I had to wash off the bike for the third time that week. Although the pace had been moderate, by Giro standards, I was still rather tired by the time I got home, soaking wet, and jumped straight into a warm shower. The higher mileage for the week was already taking its toll and I was already questioning my decision to ride around Lake Pontchartrain the following day. As predicted, there were some big thunderstorms overnight, but also as predicted, they ended around 2 am or so.
The alarm went off as planned at 3:00 am, and I looked out the window at the wet streets below. It was a dark and moonless night, and the wet streets made it harder than usual to see all of the little things that want to puncture your tires. My legs already felt a little sore and stiff, and if I had been expecting the ride to be fast I would have definitely bailed. The cold front was working its way through with a WNW wind that would be gradually shifting around to mostly north by early afternoon. The group had decided to do the ride in the counter-clockwise direction based on some rather tentative logic involving the wind, but, you know, it's a loop, so if there's wind, you aren't likely to escape it much. The temperature was in the low to mid 60s and would probably fall a few degrees over the next few hours until the heat from the sun could counter the cold air streaming in from the northwest. I arrived at NOMA to find just Apryl, and a text from Charles that he and Dan would be delayed because Dan's bike had a flat tire. It was an omen. Will rolled up shortly thereafter. I knew that three hours in the dark on wet streets would mean a flat tire or two among the five riders we'd have. That would turn out to be a huge underestimate.
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| This image pretty much sums up the day. |
We finally rolled out about fifteen minutes late with Dan, Charles, Apryl, and Will, and I immediately realized my rear tire was almost flat. I pulled a piece of glass out of the tire and put in one of my two tubes, and we headed out to Chef Highway where, ten minutes later, my rear tire was flat again. This time it was a piece of metal wire that I had to pull out using the scissors of my little pocket knife. We had gone ten miles and had three flats. Dan had forgotten his saddle bag at home, but the other four of us had two inner tubes each. We were now down to six, but no worries, right? The streets were still soaking wet and it was a dark moonless night, so although there was virtually no traffic, the next couple of hours from there to Slidell was all wheel spray and blinding bike tail lights. On the plus side, not a single car passed us on Highway 90 from Venetian Isles to Fort Pike. We stopped at the store in Slidell a bit before sunrise and then made our way to the Tammany Trace. There we found the soaking wet bike path strewn with debris from the prior night's storm. A tree was down at one point that we had to climb over. It was fairly sketchy riding, and Dan was trying to keep up a pace that some of us weren't, under the circumstances, and kept riding off ahead. Dan wanted to see if Highway 190 would be a better option, so he, Charles, and I rode over to it, only to decide against the idea and return to the Trace. By then Apryl and Will were a few miles ahead of us, but when I called them I found out they were stopped to fix a flat (number 4 if you're counting).
Then Charles flatted. As usual with a tubeless tire flat in the wet, it wouldn't seal. We eventually found another piece of steel wire, among other things, in the tire, then pinching the first tube we put in, and finally getting rolling again with another tube. So we had by then used 5 of the 8 tubes (by then I'd lost count) we had and still had about 100 miles to go. Dan rode off ahead of us to meet back up at the trailhead, and I called Mignon who lives practically along the Trace to see if she had any tubes she would give us so we wouldn't end up a Walmart. She saved the day by meeting us with four tubes. When we got to the Mandeville trailhead to meet up with Dan we found him with a flat front tire (#6). As we finished fixing that one, Apryl discovered that one of her tires was flat. So that made 7 (I think) flats, but thanks to Mignon we still had four good tubes and Will had an actual pump. As we were fixing Apryl's flat a group of triathletes showed up, having finished their morning ride, and taking pity on us, they donated a couple of CO2 cartridges to the cause. By then the streets were starting to dry out and we headed out of Mandeville toward Pontchatoula on infamous highway 22 where traffic was fast and heavy. We almost made it, but Charles had another flat, so we used another tube. On the plus side, the clouds were clearing and the sun was starting to shine. We were probably well over an hour behind schedule.
The rest of the way down highway 55 was thankfully without incident except that my Garmin battery finally died somewhere around Pass Manchac, thanks to the extra hour(s) and probably the fact that it had also been handling live tracking, the Varia radar tail light, and navigation. My Varia battery had already been warning me it was low, so I turned it off and then started Strava tracking on my phone for the remainder of the ride. It was right around noon by then, which wasn't far from the time I'd expected we would finish. We still had around 45 miles to go.
We took a long break at the Circle K near LaPlace. People were starting to feel the miles by then. My neck was killing me from all of the tension caused by riding in the dark and watching for holes in the road and everything, and my legs were hurting from all of the extra miles I'd accumulated over the week. It also felt a little strange to be riding with a dead computer and no speed or mileage, but at least I knew the roads well by then. When we finally hit the levee bike path and headed east, the mostly west wind we'd been expecting had shifted to more northerly, but at least it wasn't a headwind. The final run-in along the levee to Oak Street was mostly uneventful, and I arrived back home with around 150 miles for the day, over 400 for the week, and quite sore legs.
