The Seventies

Friendly Friday

Not the decade, but the temperature. We're just barely into March but have been treated with a few days with early morning temperatures around 70°F. For the moment at least riders have been coming out of the woodwork, and I'm not even sure where my arm-warmers are. Wednesday's WeMoRi had a good turnout, of course. As I was waiting for the group on Lakeshore Drive, I unexpectedly found Charles. He was on a borrowed bike (new bike build still a work in progress) and had been plagued by flats. He would eventually discover a tiny metal wire to have been the culprit. One of the Tulane riders has also had a flat, so a few of them had started late, but got back into the group out around Franklin Avenue where, but the way, they've got one lane blocked off and are doing some kind of road work that will undoubtedly turn otu to be a problem for us. Anyway, despite there being a lot of horsepower at the front of the group, it wasn't too hard to slip in as it went by. After the turn onto Wisner, however, it got really fast and someone rather unexpectedly blew up and let a gap open, effectively sealing the fate of everyone behind the front group of three or four - Steven, Jaden, Maurizio, and I think Rob. They were hammering hard enough to drop Steven on the overpass, so we eventually picked him up along Marconi. Anyway, it was a good workout.

Thursday's ride was also a summer kit ride and otherwise unremarkable. After the bulk of the group turned for home there were just four of us left for most of the out-and-back along the lake trail. I felt sorry for Big Rich since the other three included Matt and Jeff on their TT bikes and me, which means he probably wasn't getting any draft from the knees up. I think Charles was still having tire problems.

This morning it was around 72° with a moderate ESE breeze as I headed out to meet the 6 am group. This being the last week before we shift to DST, and back into morning darkness, it was nice to have a little light in the sky even if it was a bit overcast. As I expected, we had a good-sized Friendly Friday group on hand, and although it got a little fast here and there, I was a little surprised it wasn't faster. Afterward I made my way down Carrollton and met up with the Tulane group on the levee. Thanks to the warmer weather, they had a bigger group than they've had lately, which was nice. We stopped at the new coffee shop on Broadway afterward.

Tulane crew on the levee coffee ride

It looks like we may have an early northshore ride tomorrow. The TU group had originally been planning on doing that on Sunday, but the current forecast is for some rain that morning, so Saturday is looking like the better option. They are planning on going up to Georgia for Piedmont University's Northbeast Cycling Classic race weekend the following weekend. I am hoping to tag along for that so I can get my ass kicked by the 55 year old youngsters in the masters road race. I'll probably have to skip the criterium on Sunday since all of the collegiate races are early and nobody will want to hang around for an extra two or three hours ahead of the long drive back.

On the home front, I finally have all of my health insurance stuff set up, and I think the La Teachers Retirement stuff from when I was at LSUHSC is now all in the works, so that's good. We're still in the midst of rolling over what I can from TIAA retirement into a managed retirement account at my bank. That has proven to be extraordinarily complicated with RMD requrements and multiple accounts from 35 years of institutional changes, and we've gotten conflicting information about the process depending on who we talk to at TIAA, but I think we might be on the right track now.