Da Wind in da Parish

Tour da Parish

It was still nice and warm as I rode in the dark out to NOMA to meet up with the Friendly Friday group. Still, in comparison with the prior couple of months, the 75° air felt just a little bit chilly. The forecast was calling for a cold front moving through in the afternoon, and I was already wondering just how windy and chilly it was going to be for Saturday's annual Tour da Parish ride.

We rolled out of NOMA as usual and half a mile later as we made out way through the I-610 underpass, there was a loud explosion. For a moment I wondered if something bad had happened above us on the interstate, but quickly realized that Wes' rear tire had suddenly blown right off the rim. It was quite a mess. He must have had half a gallon of sealant in there because the bike was covered with it. We had barely even started the ride, and most of the group continued on with the usual warmup, but a few of us stopped to assist. I knew that the following day would probably be a hard one, so I didn't feel bad about missing most of the ride. Besides, I was planning on riding down to the river afterward to meet up with the Tulane coffee ride where I needed to hand off a BikeReg check to the treasurer. So Wes quickly pulled out an inner tube, removed the valve stem from the rim, and despite everything being covered in slime got everything back together started pumping the tire up with his electronic pump. The pump buzzed but the tube didn't inflate. It must have been bad or pinched. So someone offered another tube, and he tried again, unfortunately with the same result. Finally, on the third tube and with borrowed CO2, we got it inflated enough for him to limp back home as a couple of us headed to the lake to meet back up with the group on its way back. After regrouping at NOMA I headed off for the levee, but didn't get past Orleans before my own rear tire went flat. I rolled up to the coffee shop and, with my one remaining CO2 cartridge, got it fixed. Of course by then I was running a little late, but did eventually meet up with the coffee ride group. The rest of the day I was obsessively checking the hourly forecast for Saturday morning, which was not offering any better news. We'd be starting out at 7 am with a sub-60 degree NE wind blowing at 20-25 mph. A lot of the people who usually do this ride were already on the fence and leaning heavily to the other side.

The Thursday Levee Ride

So Saturday morning I got up early so I could get to the ride around an hour ahead of the start, which would ensure a nice parking spot and ample time to pick up my packet and generally get my act together. It was a good thing I'd planned to get there early because things started going downhill right away. As I was getting ready to leave, I grabbed the pump so I could top off the front tire that has a latex tube that always loses exactly five pump strokes per day. When I pulled the pump off of the valve stem, something in the valve broke and the whole thing came apart. It took a few minutes to put in another tube, pump it up, and finally get out the door. Although I was still somewhat ahead of schedule, I was starting to feel a bit rushed, and somehow managed to leave my phone at home. The biggest problem with that was that I had been planning on calling Catherine when I arrived so I could lend her my backup Garmin that she wanted to use. Of course, I never found her, but fortunately the route is pretty well marked and it wasn't an issue. It was still dark when I arrived, and after parking I walked over to the registration area and picked up my packet along with a welcome cup of hot coffee. Back at the car I went to open the back hatch, which has been troublesome for quite some time, and it absolutely would not click open. By then time was getting a little short. I ended up removing the front wheel while the bike was still in the car so I could get it out through one of the rear doors. At that point I noticed the front tire, the one I'd just fixed, seemed pretty low. I decided to go ahead and risk it on the assumption that it had just lost some pressure when I'd removed the pump earlier that morning, since it was almost time to start. (When I checked it back at home later that day it had about 50 psi.)

So the ride started right on time at 7 am with a smaller crowd than usual. I think a lot of people skipped the ride after seeing the predicted wind speeds. At the front, though, were Connor, Ben, Liam, etc., so I knew there would be a fast group. The first segment of the route heads generally east, so that meant a crosswind from the left. I was already expecting an early split since the road isn't wide enough for a big group in a crosswind, and I didn't want to die a self-inflicted death. Right away a group of maybe 20 or so split off the front with me and a few others hanging onto the back. As the speed ramped up the back of the group, as expected, started to get strung out along the right edge of the road. Although it wasn't super fast, I was getting pretty uncomfortable riding the tightrope, and finally decided that staying with the front group wasn't quite worth dying for. 

Pretty soon a nice little second group came by and I jumped into it as we made the turn to the south down to Delacroix. That was a nice mostly tailwind stretch, so if was fairly fast despite being entirely disorganized. Once we made the U-turn, which due to some complication was a few hundred meters early, we hit the headwind. The front group, of course, was long gone by then. Our group got semi-organized for a while with a rotating, if uneven, paceline, and after a while I could see MJ and Joe Paul up ahead. They must have dropped off from the front group. Knowing that both of them would work, I pulled our group up to them once we got close, so at that point we had a nice group of maybe eight or ten. We made the right turn onto the road to Hopedale and kept up a fairly nice paceline with a strong crosswind and significant headwind. 

After the second U-turn I pulled off the front and as I dropped back Joe Paul said, "you dropped them." I hadn't really, but I think one of the riders in the paceline blew up and opened a big gap that nobody closed. So the rest of the way it was just a nice steady 3-man time trial with MJ, who was more in race mode than Joe Paul and me, pushed the pace a bit. It was a nice workout, although most of the intensity was in the form of trying to keep the front wheel pointed in the right direction. I don't think I touched either of my water bottles, and I consumed on gel mostly because it was tasty rather than because I needed the carbs.

Meanwhile, Connor predictably ended up solo off the front, followed by Ben, who was also solo, and then what was left of the front group with Liam finishing third. Granted there's no finish line and no actual results, but it was a good ride for them anyway.

This morning it was still windy as hell but we had a decent sized group for the Giro. My legs were just a little bit worse for the wear, so I was limiting my relatively rare pulls. Otherwise it was a good ride. Like Saturday, I had a base layer and arm-warmers on, which was perfect.