Cumulus

Sunday Tulane Long Ride

I started last week with an aborted morning ride of less than a mile. It's happened before. The minute I walk out the door I feel a few little droplets of rain. I head out anyway, hoping it will pass. It doesn't. Instead the sky opens up and despite having been outdoors for less than five minutes I arrive back home soaked to the skin. Fortunately things improved and I headed out again a bit before 8 am, heading for the levee. That went nicely until I was about ten miles the end of a 40 mile ride. Yeah, I got rained on again. Getting rained on at the end of a ride would turn out to be a pattern for the week.

There's a rainbow in there somewhere - Monday on the levee

Tuesday morning it was only Mike (in town again from WA) and me for the lake trail stretch. We saw the Metairie group going the other way, so when we turned around at Williams Blvd. we rode easy for a couple of miles and then turned around with them for their regular route out to "the wall" and back. That adds just 5 miles or so, but it's nice to have a bit of a group.

On Wednesday I once again got out to the lakefront early and headed east waiting for the group to catch me. It turned out to be a pretty fast one, averaging just under 25 mph, and more to the point 145 BPM, which constitutes a significant effort for me. Coffee at The Bean Gallery again with the Tulane riders afterwards.

Thursday would have been a repeat of Tuesday except that I flatted somewhere along the lake, so I sent the rest ahead and changed it, meeting back up with them on the way back. It was the second mysterious flat I'd had that week. By "mysterious" I mean that I didn't find anything in the tire that might have caused the flat. Turns out that not finding something doesn't necessarily mean something isn't there. Anyway, in the process I managed to lose the thin little M20 x 12 x 0.2 washer that goes on the thru-axle. I knew I'd lose one of those one day. It is there just to protect the carbon dropout, which isn't really a dropout nowadays.

That tiny wire caused 3 flats

Then on Friday I went out to meet the 6 am group at City Park and arrived just in time to see everyone heading back home because the weather radar looked especially grim. Once again I didn't make it all the way back home before I got drenched. A few hours later the weather improved and I was able to put in 40 miles on the levee. Later that day I discovered my rear tire was flat again. By then I knew it had to be a piece of metal wire. After completely removing the tire I eventually found the 2 mm long culprit barely protruding into the inside of the tire, and completely undetectable from the outside. I had to go get Candy's tweezers to pull it out. That Continental GP 5000 tire currently has over 6,000 miles on it, and has numerous cuts in the tread, some of which are fortified with duct tape on the inside, so I bit the bullet and ordered a replacement. I just registered for Six Gap at the end of this month, and figured it might be a good idea to do that with some relatively fresh rubber.

Friday eagles out by Destrehan

On Saturday we had a very small group heading out at 7 am, and by the time we were halfway down Hayne Blvd (aka Lincoln Beach Blvd.) we knew we'd be turning around when we saw the SaMoRi group. Behind us the sky was quickly getting darker and darker. So it was a shorter ride than usual, and of course we got completely soaked once again on the way back. All the rain was along the lake, so back at home the streets were completely dry.

On Sunday there was a Tulane long ride out of Abita Springs. We had 9 at the start, and then two turned back at Isabel to do a shorter route, as planned. This was very much a steady Zone 2 kind of ride since it would be one rider's longest ever ride. The plan was to start the 74 mile ride at 7 am, but we didn't actually get rolling until 7:30. With the easy pace and a couple of store stops, it was about noon by the time we got back. Everyone was hungry so most stayed for lunch at the Brewpub, which by that time was packed. That meant a wait of around half an hour before we got a table, so basically it was a much longer day than planned, but that's just how it goes sometimes. For some reason my neck was killing me the whole ride.

Today is Labor Day, so we stacked a holiday Giro on top of the usual Mellow Monday ride. I met the 6 am group but turned back at the lake so I could have a cup of coffee at Starbucks before the Giro. Being a "holiday" Giro, the pace was brisk but not super fast or anything. It was a smaller group than I would have expected, but still big enough to provide some shelter when needed. We almost made it back to the lakefront before getting rained on, then by the time I was halfway home the streets were dry, then as I got to the house it started raining again. At least it wasn't quite enough rain to fill up my shoes this time. At Starbucks I mentioned to VJ how I couldn't find exactly the right shim washer for the Cervelo thru axle. It's supposed to be 0.2 mm thick with an OD of 21.5 mm and an ID of 12.5 mm. The best I could find had an ID of 12 mm and OD of 18, and of course shipping was twice as much as the washers. VJ said he might have something, and indeed he had some of the latter ones. The thru axle diameter is supposed to be 12 mm, so I wasn't sure if the washer would slide on, but it did so easily. Hopefully the slightly smaller outside diameter won't be a problem. It was also new chain day, so after fitting the new shim washer I went ahead and changed out the chain for another new KMC wax SL12. The old one was at about 3,200 miles and although I could probably have gotten another thousand miles out of it before it, I just feel better keeping my chains as new as I can to help preserve the cassette and chainrings.

I went ahead and registered for Six Gap again today. It's up to around $132 with the processing fee, and today was the last day before the price goes up another ten dollars. Sometimes I kind of can't believe I actually pay money to do this to myself. It definitely gets a little harder every year.

With the levee path finally fully paved now, I'd like to see if we can move our Tuesday/Thursday rides back there soon. Of course, change is hard so it may take another week or so. We'll see.