The mornings have been getting a little cooler -- and darker -- as we suffer through the last weeks of Daylight Time. That combination usually means more people on the group rides, and more surprises on the road. We don't switch back to Standard Time until November 2, which seems way to late for those of us constrained to early morning rides. Next Saturday is the annual Tour da Parish ride that starts at 7:15 am. which, as usual, will be just after sunrise. Also, as usual, we will start heading east with the rising sun in our eyes, unless of course it's cloudy and/or raining, always a possibility this time of year.
The weekday rides were pretty typical, except for the extended darkness and flashing tail lights. I do wish people would figure out how to set their tail lights to a lower setting for these group rides. Yesterday's Mellow Monday ride got pretty sketchy on the way back along Lakeshore Drive. A front had come through in the early morning hours, so in addition to the wind there was a lot of debris on the road, including palmetto fronds, Water Hyacinth blown out of the lake onto the road, and a big upside-down road sign with aluminum L angle reinforcements sticking up that we barely avoided. I uncharacteristically spent a fair amount of time out of the draft over on the left along there just to be on the safe side (literally). These would not be my only close calls that week.
After a windy and fairly sparsely attended WeMoRi I somehow didn't quite set my morning alarm right and woke up Thursday morning knowing I'd miss the start of the 6 am ride. I rushed out the door into the dark, flew down Carrollton Avenue because it's shorter (but riskier), and went straight to Lakeshore Drive where I eventually found the group. Then, after most turned off for home and I continued out to the lake trail, I found one of the regular groups there. They had decided to change their route a bit that morning, so luckily I had a nice group for the ride out to the Casino. That ride featured some patches of fog that had my glasses going in and out of my pocket a couple of times.
On Friday I did the regular Friendly Friday ride. As usual there was a good sized group for that one, but the pace, while in no way slow, never got too much out of hand as it sometimes does. Afterward Charles and I rode down Carrollton to meet up with the Tulane coffee ride which was a nice conversational ride with a stop at French Truck on Maple Street at the end. Plans were already afoot for a group ride over in Waveland for Sunday.
Saturday's Giro had a decent enough turnout and provided a pretty good workout. A little bit of a southeast wind had me up to 36 mph between the bridges chasing down the front group that seems to always put the hammer down coming over the first overpass. It was a good workout even though I was being a little cautious about doing too much work since I was planning on a 70+ mile ride the next day over in Mississippi. I did a quick turnaround after I got home to make the Tulane - Army football game, which was surprisingly good. It wouldn't be until later that evening that I would hear about a crash on the northshore group ride that landed John Egan in the trauma unit at UMC with a broken pelvis. He had surgery the following day, which apparently went well. I texted him on Monday afternoon and he replied right away, so he seemed to be doing well under the circumstances, although dreading the extended recovery process he was about to start.
So on Sunday I was up before 5 am to head over to HQ to meet up with the Tulane group going to Waveland. Since I knew I'd need all three spots on my roof rack, and I only have two thru-axle adapters, I brought the Bianchi for this one. After a couple of weeks riding mostly the new Cervelo I can't say it's noticeably faster or anything, so it isn't much of a difference going from one bike to the other anyway.
We started on the beach in Waveland with a group of around 20, I think. A few would be doing a shorter route, but most would be doing the full 73 mile route. Despite not being familiar with the bridge between Waveland and Bay St. Louis, some of the Tulane riders took the lead right away and turned onto the bridge traffic lanes instead of the bike path, so everyone followed even though the traffic lanes are specifically marked as "no bikes." We survived anyway since it was 7:30 am on a Sunday. Of course, the early ride surge of adreneline split the group badly and I finally had to get everyone to stop for a couple of minutes so the rest could catch up. After that the pace stabilized a bit as the short-route riders dropped back. As usual on these rides I was kind of monitoring the group from the back.
Pretty soon someone flatted, so we stopped for that. The weather and route were about as good as it gets, and we had a nice double paceline going for a while. Pirmin, Jaden, and Kenny were on hand doling out advice. We were about 32 miles into the ride and coming down a little downhill into a gradual lefthand curve when one of the riders hit the rumble strip and ended up off the asphalt and on the sandy shoulder. The instinct to try to steer back toward the road washed out his front wheel and he did a beautiful flip, landing on his back along with one of the riders behind him. Charles rolled over the rear wheel of his bike that went flying across the road, bumping my own rear wheel as I went past. Fortunately both riders survived with just a lot of road rash mostly on their backs. The rear wheel, however, was badly out of true so it took a little while for Jaden and a multitool to make it a little less wobbly.
After a long store stop around 45 miles in, we got going again only to have another rider snap a rear spoke. We stopped again and wrapped the broken spoke around its neighbor so he could continue. Luckily another spoke didn't break. We were around ten miles from the end when the front of the group rather unexpectedly dropped the hammer. That split things up a lot and left me closing a bunch of gaps. Eventually five or six of us came together about 40 seconds behind the front group that itself eventually shed almost everyone except Pirmin and Josiah, I think. Anyway, that got me a little intensity, even though we never got anywhere close to closing the gap. Other than the crash and broken spoke it was a pretty good ride on a really nice day. After a stop for lunch I don't think I got home until around 3 pm.
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