Short Supply

Saturday Giro

Ride photos, especially mine, have been in short supply lately, due in no small part to the copious amount of sweat with which my phone, glasses, gloves, handlebar, and everything else is coated. You will just have to take Strava's word for it that the rides actually happened, I guess. Just as well, I guess, as last week's rides were quite routine.

As has been the case in recent weeks, the Friendly Friday ride had a big turnout. While 20-25 riders may not seem like a particularly large number, for a 6:00 am ride on a Friday morning when the temperature is already 80°F and the relative humidity is pushing 98%, it's still impressive. Naturally, with that many riders there are a few willing to sit on the front and push the pace, so it was a bit faster than usual. 

A Green Heron visited the NOMA fountain
after the Friendly Friday ride.

There was also a pretty good turnout for the Saturday Giro, and apparently also the earlier SaMoRi, and although the pace was fast, it wasn't super-fast as it sometimes is. I rushed back home afterward so I could jump into the shower, change, and drive over to Lake Lawn for Keith Andrews' celebration of life. The place was packed. Keith was involved in a lot of things, so you had the cycling people, the sailing people, the Rolling Elvi people, the restaurant people, and the attorney people. It was nice to catch up with some of the local cyclists who I haven't seen much in the past few years. Even Matt Rinard showed up, which was good to see since he had been in the hospital for a hernia operation and subsequent infection. One of Candy's sisters over in Texas passed away that day, as we later learned.

On Sunday I decided to go over to Bay St. Louis with Dylan for once of Steve Martin's rides. Surprisingly, that ended up with just four of us - three from NOLA and Steve. The plan was for a 70-mile ride. These are always just steady Z2 type rides with most people taking long steady pulls, and this one was no exception. Of course, with only four riders the pulls came up more frequently, and we were treated to a couple of pretty good "dog intervals" along the way. The first couple of hours didn't feel very hot, with is kind of typical there. Eventually, though, we turned back toward the south and things heated up, and the 70 mile ride quickly turned into a 64 mile ride. My legs were achy the entire time for some unknown reason. Perhaps the fact that I haven't missed a day of riding in 56 days had something to do with that, but it's not like I've been pushing myself very hard lately. Afterward we stopped for a quick lunch over at Long Beach Market & Deli (Steve's favorite).

Mellow Monday

Mellow Monday was reasonably mellow yesterday. Most, but not all, of the group successfully forded the Lakeshore Drive pond east of the Elysian Fields traffic circle, despite about four inches of water covering the shallowest part. I wish they would fix the nonfunctional storm drains there. They seem quite content to drag our the traffic barrels and shut down the road every time it rains, though. Later on Monday evening there was a lot of rain around the lakefront, although none at my house or apparently in Jefferson.

This morning we knew it would be even more flooded than usual, so the group just looped around the traffic circle and wrote off those extra four miles or so. We had a few people left when we got to the Lake Trail bike path in Jefferson, but lost a few by the time we got to around Clearview, leaving must Charles, Jess, and me. It still felt kind of hard heading west, at least to me. Perhaps there was just the slightest of headwinds along with some lingering soreness. Anyway, none of us was pushing the pace much by then.

So we now have the season's first spaghetti models, and although it's coming from kind of an odd location, and won't likely be very severe if it sticks to this track, it's looking like Thursday through at least Saturday will be pretty wet and a little stormy here and there. They're giving this one a 40% chance of development as of this morning. Intensity guidance is still kind of all over the map, but only some of the models are pushing it into the lower tropical storm range in 4-5 days.