Detoured

I had to check the thermometer twice just to be sure. It was actually in the mid-50s at 6 am Thursday morning.  I might have been tempted to go out with bare legs, but experience has taught me a thing or two about early mornings on the levee.  One of those things is that the ice cold river water does a great job of refrigerating the air in its vicinity.  So I pulled on the knee-warmers and left the shoe covers in place just to be on the safe side. This was going to be an unusual Thursday ride anyway.  The Huey P. bridge construction project was scheduled to shut down both the bike path and river road from Thursday through Sunday, and the only viable detour would involve merging into all of the morning auto traffic on Jefferson Highway.  I figured it was worth a try anyway.  We had a handful of riders for the usual start, so when we got to the road closure we headed down through a heavily industrial area toward Jefferson, waited at a couple of incredibly long red lights (why are the ones in Jefferson Parish so damned long?) and hit Jeff Highway en masse, taking over the right lane without incident, and finally rejoining the bike path near the Harahan PHI heliport.  Once we were on the other side of the closure we came up on a number of other riders who had all started over there rather than brave the traffic. After that, the pace picked up and it was business as usual for the long Thursday ride.  Because of the extra distance and delays involved in getting around the road closures, a number of us ended up turning around at the "big dip" instead of going all the way out to Ormond.  On the way back I managed to lead the group down two dead-end streets hoping to find a better route around the blockage, but we eventually found out way back to the downriver side of the problem.

Thursday evening we took in my mom's orphaned dog and luckily there was no canine bloodshed as he and our other rather neurotic dog got acquainted. We optimistically left them together when we took off for work this morning.


Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

So with the bike path still closed Friday morning, I figured I'd just play it by ear and go out for an easy spin.  The temperature was around 60F and the wind was calm, so naturally there was a pretty thick fog.  I figured I'd be by myself anyway, so I just left the blinky lights on, rode down to the road closure, and then headed back downriver for a couple of easy laps around Audubon Park before heading home.  The weekend weather is looking good so we may actually make it down to the Quarter for the Krewe du Vieux this year.  If, like me, you've always appreciated the beauty of the Fibonacci sequence and its relationship to biological architecture and nature, you'll love the Nature by Numbers video above!

Craziness

The weather was warmer on Tuesday, and I was glad to be able to get out to the levee for the regular morning ride.  When I arrived, however, I was surprised to find the meeting spot deserted.  I checked my watch. Since things have been so chaotic lately, I even checked the day of the week.  Could the group have left early?  Finally a few riders showed up, and as we headed out we could see another group coming our way.  For some reason everyone was just running a few minutes late that day.  With the warmer air had come a bit of fog, but it was really just enough to add a little interest to the background scenery.  The ride itself was fairly low-key.  Woody was still in recovery mode from last weekend's races in Austin and nobody else in the group seemed interested in anything more than a nice smooth training ride pace.  We were probably halfway out to Destrehan when I saw Woody drop quietly to the back with a soft rear tire, mentioning along the way that we should just go on without him and he'd catch us later.  On the way back, after he'd been back in the paceline for a while, the same tire went flat again, leaving him cursing his bad luck.  He'd recently bought that tire and it had been picking up every sharp object from the pavement for a week, causing a number of flats.  Sometimes the rubber on a new tire is just too "green" and seems to get shredded within the first couple hundred miles of use.

Yes, that's Crazy Guy gesturing to his
imaginary supporters.

Anyway, after we got back to the playground and most of the other riders went off on their merry ways, Tom and I continued on toward uptown.  We were near Ochsner when I heard Tom say, "Here comes Crazy Guy."  This particular psycho has had some kind of vendetta against cyclists on the bike path for years and will always walk right on the center line as we come past.  Basically, he's looking for a fight.  I was in front of Tom as we approached him, and as I went past I heard Tom yell something behind me.  As I was to learn later, Crazy Guy had thrown his shoulder into Tom as he was going by, nearly taking him right off his bike. I coasted for a bit and looked back when it was safe, only to see Tom making a U-turn. Since I didn't know at the time that Crazy Guy had assaulted him, I wondered why Tom seemed so incensed. Another rider, who had been coming the other way at the time had also stopped.  When I realized that Tom wasn't just going to let it go right away, I turned around myself, since this guy is, after all, crazy.  I pulled out my camera and got a couple of shots as they were yelling at each other, but by the time I got there Crazy Guy was already walking away and Tom was just shaking his head saying, "that guy's crazy."  No kidding?

Wednesday morning's ride was pretty tame by comparison.  The group of ten or so rotated smoothly in the 22 mph neighborhood, taking five minute long pulls.  Just what I needed after all of the craziness I've been through in the last few days.

End of the Road

It was once again in the low 30s on Friday and I was glad that David, a rider in town from NC, had agreed to meet me at my house for the morning ride.  I was pretty sure that we'd be the only ones out there, since Fridays are typically sparse and cold Fridays even more so.  Even better, he'd gotten his friend to come out as well. We'd ridden together on Thursday morning when the cold and wind had once again scared off everyone else, but by Friday the wind had died down a bit and there was at least a little hope for sunshine. 

We had a really nice easy ride out to the upriver end of Jefferson Parish.  On the way back David did a few moderate intensity intervals, but he let us know when he was about to ramp it up, so it was a simple matter to stay on his wheel and drop it down a cog or two for a few minutes at a time.  I was already looking forward to the Saturday Giro Ride, especially since I wasn't sure how things would work out on Sunday since I'd have family in town.  On the way back we ran into Vivian and after riding alongside her for a few minutes I heard my phone ring.  It's never a good thing when my phone rings before 8 am in the morning.  It was the sitter at my mother's place calling to tell me she's just called 911.  I dropped off the back and stopped, fumbling with my phone until I finally pulled off the double layer of gloves so I could call my sisters and my brother who was on his way from Orlando to New Orleans for a visit and so that his son could run the Mardi Gras Marathon.  I rushed home, changed clothes, and headed to the hospital.  The news was not good and by eleven o'clock my mother had passed away without ever regaining consciousness.

With most of the arrangements having been made on Saturday, and my nephew scheduled to run the MGM on Sunday, I was planning to ride the Giro and then see if I could find him when we returned.  It was a cold morning but the sky was clear and I knew the temperature would warm up by fifteen degrees by 9:30, so I headed out for Starbucks rather lightly dressed, at least by my standards.  There was a pretty good group for the ride, although a few of the regulars were testing their legs over in Texas at the Tour of New Braunfels race.  During the ride a few people commented on the Tulane riders who had come out to the Giro on Saturday.  They are all trying to get ready for their first Conference race on the 26th and 27th in Austin.  Although one or two of them were new to group training rides and a bit sketchy in the pack, they all handled the pace OK.  

Anyway, Sunday's ride was really good in that the pace was neither too slow nor too fast and the weather was practically perfect once the sun came over the horizon.  We arrived back at the corner of Marconi and Robert E. Lee about half an hour before my nephew came by at mile 20.  I'd been signed up to get text messages from the chip timing system when he crossed certain checkpoints during the race, so it was easy to figure out where he was and what pace he was running. Later, I made my way down to the finish line in City Park and met up with my brother and his family and Candy. After the finish they decided to go over to Whole Foods for lunch, so I had to hustle back home, change into my civilian clothes, and drive over to to Magazine Street.  I got there just a couple of minutes after they did, so it all worked out pretty well.  Tomorrow will be a busy day, of course, and by the time I get through that I'm sure I'll be looking forward to returning to work on Wednesday.

Shrinkage and Sunshine

It was in the low 30s when I arrived at Starbucks on Saturday and I could already tell that the shrinkage factor had taken its toll on the Giro Ride turnout, if not on certain aspects of male anatomy.  We rolled out under a grey sky with a skeleton crew of about a dozen and a tempting west wind.  It was the first time I'd been on the bike since Tuesday, and the cumulative effect of my drastically reduced training volume really started to hit home once the pace ramped up on Hayne Blvd.  There are a couple of things about group rides or, for that matter, road races, that don't always seem obvious at first but soon etch themselves into every rider's brain.  The first is that any ride feels harder with a small group, even if you stay off the front.  The second is that it's ofter harder to stay with a group or close a gap when there's a direct tailwind than when there's a direct headwind.  So there I was in our small group blasting down Hayne Blvd. with a direct tailwind as a small group started pulling away ahead of us. One thing about a Giro ride when it's cold and windy is that the riders who actually do show up are probably not the ones who are accustomed to sitting at the back chatting about the weather.  The result yesterday was a good fast ride all the way out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles. The ride back was another story.  The combination of a stiff headwind and a small group made the return trip a long one.  By the time we were back to City Park I felt like I'd been ridden hard and put up wet.  Don't you just love that feeling?

So family duties being what they are of late, I had to pass on a couple of good ride options today.  There was a long northshore ride that I would have liked to do, and there was also a joint Tulane/LSU ride up in St. Francisville.  Considering my current fitness level, the latter might have been the better choice, but since I had to be back home by 11 am I didn't have to make a decision anyway.  For me it would be another Giro Ride.  The ride out to Starbucks felt a lot like it had the day before except that there wasn't any wind.  We were also expecting a lot of sunshine, once the sun came up, so even though I wore one fewer layer I knew I'd be warm once the Giro got going.  Even so, those knee warmers under the tights and that nice NOBC winter jacket were well-appreciated as I made my way down Carrollton Avenue with around thirty-six degrees on the thermometer.  The ride itself had a somewhat larger turnout than the day before, and although there were a few fast stretches, it felt considerably smoother and easier than the prior day's Giro.  Oh, while I'm thinking about it, I'd like to thank the New Orleans Police Department for not ticketing half of the group when it rolled through a stop light on Chef right in front of one police car and right behind another.  If we'd been in Dallas I'd probably be writing this from the county jail.  I would have taken more pictures the last couple of days, but working the little buttons on the pocket camera while riding with two layers of gloves just wasn't worth it.

WEAKend Riding

After a good long levee ride on Thursday and a couple of relatively decent rides earlier in the week, I figured I could weather the temporary closure of the bike path (from Friday through Monday) without too much trouble. I knew my weekend was going to be cut short, training-wise, anyway because of the annual LAMBRA business meeting in Jackson on Sunday.  So Friday morning I figured I'd just do a little sightseeing spin.  I headed over to the levee just in case anyone was going to show up at the regular time (nobody did), and rode on down to the bridge where the Jefferson Parish police had dutifully parked a police car to ensure that none of those lawbreaking cyclists would slip by.  As I turned around I ran into Donald, and we rode down to Audubon Park where I rode an easy lap after Donald peeled off to play in the St. Charles Avenue traffic.

New Tulane Kit

It was still a little chilly Saturday morning, and although I knew it would warm up quickly I wore my NOBC winter jacket anyway, this time with just an old jersey underneath, to ride out to Starbucks for my traditional pre-Giro cup of java. There were already a number of people there when I arrived, including a couple of the Tulane cycling team riders decked out in their brand-new 2011 kits.  I'd been tempted to wear mine, but decided instead on the relative warmth and sponsor exposure of my jacket.  With the warmer weather came one of the larger Giro ride groups we've seen in a couple of weeks, and we rolled out at a nice conversational pace for a long time.  Somewhere on Hayne Blvd. I guess a few riders rolled off the front and soon the main group, or at least the dozen or so riders at the front of it, took up the chase.  I heard my computer beep as the speed went past 25 mph, and when I looked down a few seconds later it was reading 30.  It stayed that way all the way down Hayne.  In fact, I doubt we spend more than a few minutes below 28 mph all the way out to Venetian Isles.  There, Kenny and some other riders had planned to do some "structured training" on the way back, so the group kind of fragmented for a while as riders tried to figure out what was going on and with which group they wanted to stay.  I went ahead and went with the "unstructured" group for the return trip.  Although it had its moments, the pace on the return trip was relatively restrained, and I arrived back home with a feeling of satisfaction and 60 miles on the odometer.  After spending a three or four hours at the hospital that evening, it was around 11 pm by the time I sat down to really think about the next day's LAMBRA meeting, and although I didn't really accomplish much, I didn't hit the sack until well after 1 am.  After maybe five hours of sleep I was up and about again getting ready for Mark to pick me up at 7:00 for the drive up to Jackson, MS.  As we drove up I-55 under a cloudy and, eventually, rainy sky I couldn't help but take a little comfort in the fact that I was at least not missing one of those great sunny winter training rides that I love so much.

The meeting went nicely and the webcast actually worked, and for a change we adjourned without having made any controversial changes in the LCCS rules for 2011, focusing instead more on administrative issues and LAMBRA programs like the nationals travel grants, junior development, officiating, race equipment, etc.  By the time we left Jackson, around 3:30 pm, it was raining steadily, which made the long drive feel even longer.  Along the way I saw an email about a new Xtranormal animation about the Giro Ride.  I wonder which riders they used as models.  That night I reconfigured the old Pennine from poor-man's cyclocross bike to poor-man's rain bike, since I figured the streets would still be pretty wet by morning and there wouldn't be a group ride anyway because of the bike path closure.  When I woke up, though, what I found were not only wet streets but a thick fog that could only have been worse closer to the river.  It just didn't seem worth going out in that.  Unfortunately, it's looking like tomorrow's morning ride is going to come right about when then the weather goes from bad to worse ahead of an approaching cold front, so I guess I'll have to play that one by ear.  If the forecast changes by one or two hours one way or the other, it will make a big difference since the winds are predicted to be around 17-21 mph and the rain chance goes from 30% at 7 am to 90% at 11 am.  Might get to use the rain bike after all.

Morning Tardiness

I took Monday off this week.  I knew I shouldn't have done it.  It's like telling somebody that you haven't have a flat tire in a long time.  Well, sure enough, Tuesday morning the streets were wet and the rain bike is still set up in cyclocross mode, and I just couldn't summon up the motivation for an hour and a half with cold water spraying up my backside.  I set my sights on Wednesday.

I have one of those old clock-radios with the bright red digits and the single alarm setting.  I've been meaning to get something more versatile for the last fifteen years or so, but I never seem to get around to it.  Anyway, the alarm goes off at 5:45 am every day, which gives me just enough time to make it to the 6:15 am rides on Tuesday and Thursday.  On Wednesday's, though, I can indulge in the snooze button a couple of times before hitting the floor for the 6:40 am ride.  That is, assuming I actually hit the snooze button and don't switch the alarm off instead, which of course is exactly what I did this morning.  So I woke up again at 6:30, muttered some four-letter word under my breath, and got up with the knowledge that my tardiness would mean I'd be riding by myself for a while.  The weather wasn't too bad.  I guess it was in the 40s with a moderate wind, but the sky was clear and my legs were fresh, so the ride up the river was nice. 

Somewhere around the country club I spotted a bald eagle waiting at the highest point he could find for the sun to reach him.  I always seem to see eagles when I'm riding by myself.  This is not a surprise, since the rest of the time I'm more focused on the wheel in front of me than the scenery. I stopped a took a few photos with my little pocket camera, knowing that they would reveal, at best, a white-headed black blob that, with a little imagination, could be interpreted as a bald eagle.

I met up with the group shortly before Williams and rode back downriver in the paceline.  There's a big sign near the Huey P. Long bridge announcing the impending road and bike path closure, which as of today is scheduled for Jan. 28-30 and again for Feb. 10-13.  Looks like we'll be able to do the usual ride tomorrow!  I stopped in at Zotz on the way home for a cup of coffee and a chance to postpone, at least for a few minutes, the rest of my day, whilst pondering the quote by Jane Wagner, "Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it."  Sometimes I truly wish I was more out of touch with reality.  Really.

Cool Rides, Hot Coffee

I stood there in the dark bedroom in front of a pile of crumpled cycling outerwear considering my options.  The temperature outside was in the mid-30s, the sky was clear, there was hardly any wind, and the forecast wasn't offering much of a warm-up.  What would the Giro Ride serve up today?  A big group and fast ride would call for a completely different approach than a small group doing an relatively easy ride. When the temperature is in the 30s, the turnout is usually fairly light, so factoring that into my little mental multivariate analysis, I dressed for warmth rather than speed with knee-warmers underneath long tights and two layers under my jacket.  The ride out to Starbucks was nice.  There was virtually no wind, so the ride seemed smooth and comfortable. When I got there, I knew I'd guessed right.  When we rolled out to meet the others at Robert E. Lee there were probably only six or seven of us.  We waited at the corner for a few minutes as one or two riders joined us, but eventually we resigned ourselves to the fact that we were it. 

I guess the whole group never numbered more than fifteen today, and I suppose that was one of the factors that kept the speed down.  We made our way out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles in a nice smooth paceline with speeds that hovered around the 23 mph mark except for a few miles on Chef when we lifted it to 25 or so.  After the turnaround we never seemed to get that smoothness back again, though, and once we got to the service road the speed was down to the teens and everyone was in conversational mode. After getting fairly sweaty on the way out, the slow pace eventually started to take its toll on my core temperature, though, and by the time I got home I was really pretty chilled, but glad I'd decided to dress for warmth.

Later in the day, at 2 pm, I rode over to Tulane to meet some of the Tulane riders for an easy coffee shop ride.  The new team kits just arrived and so a couple of the guys were fully decked out in green and blue.  We decided to head down St. Charles and see how things looked at Cafe' du Monde.  When we hit Decatur and saw all the people out on the streets I was a little worried, but usually the little take-out window around back isn't too busy so we made our way past the break dancers to check it out.  Unfortunately, there was a pretty long line there, so we rode down toward Frenchman St. to look for an alternative.  Eventually we wound our way back into the Quarter and settled on a nice place on Decatur (Cafe' Envie) where we could sit outside.  I could have sat there all day, but it was starting to get cooler and so we headed back by way of Esplanade and Jeff. Davis.

Batture Mansion

I opened the door and just stood there for a moment as my groggy brain tried to access the section of the archive indexed under "riding in the fog."  The thick fog had caught me by surprise, and it took me a little while to make the decision to ride.  In fact, the fog wasn't quite thick enough to turn me back.  Besides, I was getting desperate for a ride and my options were limited.  So I headed out to the levee wondering if it would be even worse along the river.  Luckily, it wasn't much thicker out there, and surprisingly there were even a few other guys out there waiting.  I knew I didn't have enough time to do the whole ride, but at least I would be able to get in a solid seventy-five minutes or so. There was a little delay on the way out when Woody stopped to help someone in need of a tire iron, so I had to turn around about a mile before Williams Blvd. in order to get back home in time to shower, change, and ride out to the hospital for my morning visit.  Around 11:00 I headed back down the river to the office, stopping along the way to take a photo of what is definitely the fanciest batture house I've ever seen.  They've been working on this particular house for quite a long time, actually, but this was the first time I'd seen it in daylight in a couple of months.  The thing is practically a Batture Mansion.  Even better, it was already sporting its Mardi Gras decorations.

This morning found me back on the levee by 6:15 am trying once again to squeeze in an hour or so of riding, basically repeating my Tuesday ride, this time without the company of the early Tuesday group.  By the time I'd ridden  home, changed, ridden back out to Ochsner, and then back down to the office, it was 11:30.  Work today seemed like a series of frustrations until 3:30 when I got word that my mother was ready to be transferred from the CICU to a "skilled nursing" facility out at Elmwood.  I have to admit, I wondered who came up with the term "skilled nursing."  I mean, does that mean that the other nursing is unskilled?  One thing I've noticed over the past 24 days that my mother has been in the hospital is that the average size and mass of the nursing staff in the ICU is a whole lot lower than those of the staff in the skilled nursing facility.  I'm not sure why the difference, but I'm quite confident it would hold up to statistical scrutiny.  Anyway, this is a bit of progress.

So I got Issue 02 of Peloton magazine today.  I immediately recognized most of Jered's photos, both because they tend to include Ashley, and because of his tendency to fiddle with the color saturation.  I have to admit, I've started to do the latter myself from time to time.  This issue has a long article on Eddy Merckx that really made me feel kind of old.  There were photos of old bikes that looked way too familiar to me, along with a special page with a big title that read, "1972 - The Greatest Season Ever."  That year he had 127 race days.  It was the year that Atari released Pong.  The year Apollo 16 landed on the moon. The year Merckx won his 4th consecutive Tour de France.  It was also the year of the first Tour de Louisiane. I was there, too green and timid to actually enter, but I still drove out to Donaldsonville to watch John Howard crash, grab a bike from a spectator, and claw his way back to the pack, and then to the breakaway, back in the days before free laps when criteriums were measured in miles (in this case 50 of them) rather than minutes. This will the our little Tour's 40th year. Who would ever have believed that the oldest continuous stage race in the United States would be in New Orleans?

Once a Week Training Program

It had been around five days since I'd been on the bike, so I wasn't very surprised at the mental effort it took for me to get myself out the door this morning. By the time I clipped in I knew it was too late for a pre-Giro cup of coffee, so I just headed straight out to Robert E. Lee Blvd. to meet the group.  Although it was still on the chilly side, the weather has finally started to warm up around here.  Even better, the winds had likewise died down.  So even considering my recent once-a-week training regime, I figured I wouldn't have any trouble hanging in for the Saturday Giro Ride.  Of course, I had gone out significantly overdressed, as usual, but at least I was nice and warm as the group rolled eastward toward Hayne Blvd.  That road, by the way, is still quite a mess because of the ongoing levee construction, and the east bound Casino bridge was closed off today.  The lane nearest the levee is closed off with traffic barrels pretty much all the way to Paris Road, so although it isn't too much of a problem on the way out, coming back toward town is quite uncomfortable.  As a result, the Giro has recently been coming back on the I-10 service roads all the way down to Crowder in order to minimize the amount of time spent on Hayne.

Today the pace was pretty easy, by Giro standards at least. Since I was definitely feeling the effects of three weeks of minimal saddle time, this was perfect.  It was fast enough for a decent workout but easy enough to accommodate my once-a-week training program.  So things were going along nicely all the way out and most of the way back.  When we made the curve onto the service road I dropped back a bit and soon found myself almost at the end of the paceline. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something coming my way.  One of those thin plastic grocery bags was being blown across the road and was on an intercept course with my rear wheel.  I tried to make a quick course correction but before I knew it was all tangled up in my jockey wheels and cassette.  The crank wouldn't turn, so all I could do was coast to a stop as the rest of the group disappeared around the bend at Bullard Avenue.  Fortunately I was able to remove everything without too much drama (I almost had to pull out my pocket knife), and was back on the bike a couple of minutes later, just in time to meet up with a couple of riders who weren't with the Giro.  So at least I had someone to ride back with.  Back on Robert E. Lee I caught up with Vivian for a little while before I turned off at Marconi.  My then I could see the remnant of the group that was coasting back toward Harrison Avenue, so I decided I'd stop at the Starbucks to get that cup of coffee I'd missed.  Max joined me and we chatted for a while before I finally had to head back toward home and reality.

So my mother is out of the ICU now and in the CCU where she is asking for Scotch (the doctor actually said it would be OK to have a little!), complaining about the pureed food, and planning on having someone come in to fix her hair.  She was on Vent just a few days ago.

Third Monday

As I stood there looking out the 6th floor window of Ochsner's Intensive Care Unit this morning, it struck me that this was the third Monday in a row I'd done so.  It's a long story, and an off-topic one for this particular blog, but when Matt recently sent me an email entitled "Account for Yourself" I thought a brief explanation for my absence was in order.  As much as I would like to say that I had made an impulsive decision to spend a couple of weeks secretly training and eating tainted meat in northern Spain with the rest of the peloton, I was, indeed still am, spending my time mostly off the bike and rather stressed at the ICU watching my mother struggle to recover from a Christmas night 911 call prompted by respiratory failure and further complicated by age, arterial disease, a serious UTI, and who knows what else.  Fortunately I have two sisters in town, plus a couple of my mother's friends, and a visit by my brother to help share the load. It has been a long road thus far and we don't know how it will all play out, but we remain hopeful.

So as the situation at the hospital has permitted, I've managed to get in a few relatively short and uneventful rides over the past couple of weeks. I even made it out to the Giro a week ago on a day when things were looking particularly good. It reminds me a bit of those first few weeks after Katrina when I'd go out for rides that were aimed more at stress relief and maintenance (aka not getting too much fatter) than actual training.  This morning it was cold and windy, but since I hadn't been on the bike all weekend because of a complicated aortic valve balloon dilation and subsequent emergency vascular surgery to resolve some resulting peripheral arterial blockage, I figured I'd better get in whatever saddle time I could.  In this case it was a 6 am Monday morning ride on the levee, which was understandably deserted but for Erich who was out for a run and a couple of walkers.  In the meantime, a few of those little tasks that I normally take care of late at night, including LAMBRA stuff, blog updates, and routine work and personal email, have been falling through the cracks. So if you've been getting uncharacteristically curt and grammatically compromised emails from me lately, or if I just haven't replied at all, well, at least I have a good excuse.

The Ride Before Christmas

It was crisp, cool and clear as I rode out, quite overdressed, to meet the Friday morning levee ride.  Ordinarily I would have been expecting a nice easy ride by myself, but this particular Friday was the day before Christmas and since a lot of people were on holiday, the plan was to meet at the relatively civilized hour of 7 am.  Of course, being a creature of habit, I arrived at 6:40 anyway, so I rode down to the playground where I met up with a few more riders, and then we rode back to the usual starting spot.  Once we finally got going we had about a dozen, I guess.  Scott asked, "Want to ride all the way out to the end today?"  Mignon replied, "How about the 'real' end?"  And so it was decided.  The usual turnaround for the usual long ride is actually nearly two miles from the end of the asphalt since the bike path was extended early this year.

It was a good group today, and everyone was pretty much on the same page.  We took nice mile-long pulls at a comfortable 21-22 mph., for the most part.  With a light tailwind, it felt fairly easy, especially when sitting in the paceline enjoying the draft.  Way, way out near the end of the bike path the pace eased up.  Just then Mignon pointed excitedly toward the river.  "Eagles!"  I had to turn around before I could see them, but sure enough, there was a pair of bald eagles perched in the batture trees.  I stopped and fumbled with my camera, but before I could even turn it on they both took off up the river. Anyway, any ride where you spot an eagle around here is a good one.

So the ride back involved a bit more cross and tailwind, but in general things stayed smooth.  We had a couple of stops when Scott's tire went soft.  He tried shooting in some CO₂ at first to see if he could make it back but within a mile or two it was already going flat again, so we stopped for a proper tube change.  When we got back to the playground I followed Mark to his house to pick up my copy of  the Chasing Legends DVD (and a stray stopwatch that I think actually belongs to LAMBRA).  A few hours later I was at a family lunch, and from here on out the next 24 hours will be devoted mostly to eating pie and drinking wine, or mimosas, depending on the time of day.  Hope everyone has a merry little christmas!

No Draft for the Wheelsuckers

After a couple of warmish days, this morning's 40-something temperature felt positively cold as I rolled out in the dark to meet the 6:15 levee ride.  It wouldn't have been so bad were it not for the strong north wind that had brought in the cooler air.  There were just a few riders waiting when I arrived, but by the time we got to the playground the group numbered somewhere around twenty. I'd started out at the front and soon found myself alone as the group slowed down here and there to pick up various additional riders.  By the time they finally got organized I was starting to feel the effects of the increasing wind and knew it was going to be a difficult ride.  A strong north wind and a big group means just one thing on the levee bike path -- there would be no draft for the wheelsuckers like me today.  As Erich once said about crosswind rides, there's just a table for four on the levee.

Dropping all the way back to the end of the long string of riders I soon found myself fighting for the last three inches of asphalt in a nearly futile effort to salvage just a sliver of draft.  As the followed the bends in the river the wind constantly shifted from crosswind to headwind.  Somewhere up ahead of me the paceline had been short-circuited.  Nobody was dropping back to where I was and unless I wanted to get out into the wind and force my way into the rotation I was kind of stuck where I was. I wasn't really in a fighting mood, and besides, I figured I'd get a good enough workout anyway, under the circumstances.  Then, at the dip, there was a flat, so a few of us stopped to assist, eventually meeting the group on its way back.  Unfortunately, the return trip wasn't much better that the outgoing one, and by the time I got home with forty-something miles on the odometer I wasn't feeling particularly short-changed in the workout department anyway. 

At one point I pulled my camera out of my pocket, then had to battle my way back up the group. I rode there at the end of the paceline, three inches from the edge of the path, holding my camera and losing ground before I finally decided that the cost of taking a picture would be a very long ride home alone, so I shoved it all back into my jersey, almost getting dropped in the process.  There's this one long stretch just upriver of the parish line where a north wind results in a mile or so of direct crosswind.  The group often splits there, and indeed it did so today.  I was near the back and didn't notice the gap opening until Pat looked back and said something.  He then proceeded to pull me all the way across the gap.

So The Daughter is in for Christmas along with her two little dogs, Odin and Echo. Since I couldn't take any photos while riding, I guess the one up at the top will have to do for today.  I expect we'll have a pretty good group up on the levee tomorrow, maybe at 7 am instead of the usual 6:40?

Winter Group Rides

It was still dark as I stood there over my duffel bag considering what to bring for a long ride starting in the low 40s.  I finally just threw my hands up and said, "hell with it, I'll just bring everything and decide later."  "Later" would not come for over two hours because Saturday's group ride called for a drive up to St. Francisville to sample a little bit of the infamous Rouge-Roubaix course.  The first stop, though, was PJ's Coffee at Clearview Shopping Center where I was surprised at the number of riders on hand for the impromptu road trip. 

I drove up with Mignon and Mike, who was in town from Seattle.  The temperature was in the low 40s when we finally got on the bikes up at Bains Elementary, and although I figured it would warm up a bit during the ride, I didn't skimp on the clothes.  The plan was to put in around 80 miles, including a couple of the gravel road sections of the R-R course.  We probably hadn't gone five miles before we had the first flat, which was mine.  I dug a little piece of the levee bike path out of my rear tire and we were back on the road fairly quickly, but it would eventually turn out to have been just the first of five flats we'd have that day. When the group suddenly slowed down to make a turn onto the first dirt road, somebody hit somebody and Ed hit the asphalt.  He wasn't too happy about it, but he was at least relatively unharmed.

Half a mile down the dirt road the pace ramped up and I looked at the computer to see 28 mph.  I was hanging onto the trio Frank, Woody and Kenny as we flew down the nicely packed dirt and gravel and wondering how long I was going to be able to keep it up when we heard someone yelling from behind about another flat tire.  For the first forty miles or so I think we had a flat roughly every eight miles.  Anyway, we finally turned onto the R-R "2nd gravel road" with its infamous Block House Climb.  This time, though, the road was really easy to ride.  The gravel and dirt was pretty hard-packed and you could even get out of the saddle to climb up that long, steep hill.  I guess I've had to walk part of that hill about 40% of the times I've done it, but then usually it's in deep loose gravel.  This time didn't seem nearly as hard as usual.

With all of the stops for flats and crashes and such, we ended up cutting the ride short and skipping the last R-R dirt road, reducing our mileage to only 65 for the day. Although I was a little disappointed not to have been able to ride that last dirt road, it was still a pretty hard ride and around 4:30 pm by the time I finally got back home. 

The plan for Sunday was to ride out with the Giro Ride group, make the turnaround, and then catch the NOBC club ride, which was starting half an hour behind the Giro, on its way out.  It felt pretty cold as I rode out to Starbucks to meet the group at around 6:15.  The group was on the small side, and as we rode over the two bridges Tim and Woody rode off the front before the rest of the group even noticed.  I didn't realize they were out there until we were halfway down Hayne Blvd., and by then they were essentially out of sight.  The group wasn't really going all that hard, but once we got onto Chef Highway a nice rotating double paceline formed up, so that was nice.  I was behind Howard in the paceline as we shared the work into a moderate headwind.  The only problem was that Howard would pull off but not slow down, forcing me to accelerate.  I put up with it once or twice but eventually I just eased up and left him up there since the surges were threatening to dismantle the paceline. 

On the way back I found myself a bit off the front chasing with two of the guys on TT bikes.  We were going pretty fast with a bit of a tailwind, and by the time I spotted the NOBC group coming the other way we'd reached the part of Chef Highway that has a median, so it took me a while to actually turn around.  When I did, and that headwind hit me in the face, I figured there was no way I was going to catch them, but fortunately they had seen me and slowed down, sending a couple of riders off the back to help pace me back up.  That was nice. I'd left the house without taking anything to eat, so by the time I made the turnaround at Venetian Isles, for the second time that day, I was starting to feel a little bonky, but I decided to just go with it and see how long that cup of coffee would actually take me.  After a quick breakfast (well, it was more like brunch by then) at Kona I headed home with Steve who was putting in a long day and was going to pick up the levee bike path and ride all the way out to Ormond.  I ended the day with sore legs and 75 miles on the computer.  Shouldn't been much of a problem to take an easy day tomorrow, I think.

"Rest Day" (yeah, right)

As they always say, "If you don't like the weather in New Orleans, just stick around. It'll change."  Change it did indeed.  Thursday morning the temperature was back above 60.  Since I seem to have a hard time adjusting to these fluctuations, and knowing that all that water coming down the Mississippi was still just as cold as it had been on Tuesday, I pulled on the knee-warmers anyway.  Why risk a winter bout of tendonitis just for one freak ride in shorts?  The Thursday ride had a pretty good turnout, especially considering how low the turnouts have been lately, and as the group made its way up the river that little bit of tailwind kept nudging the pace higher and higher.  With Brady and Woody and a few others taking long pulls at the front, we had a nice fast ride out to the turnaround that was still manageable by everyone.  By then people were pretty warmed up and so there was a bit of a break for some "wardrobe adjustments."

The light headwind on the return trip kept things pretty much under control, so all-in-all it was a good training ride, as I rode with Brady back down Oak Street toward home he said something about Zotz as we went past, at which point my bike suddenly made a u-turn and, next thing I knew, I was enjoying a cup of dark roast.  As I sat there I indulged in a little guilt trip about the current status of my fitness and the blatantly obvious reasons for its recent decline.  It seems I've been taking an inordinate number of "rest days" lately, and that, combined with the usual holiday surplus of ad libitum chocolate, cookies and wine, are already taking a toll. It's just so damned easy to skip a ride this time of year, and it doesn't help that so many neo-coaches keep writing about how riders are always overtraining and need more recovery time.  I mean, really. Recovery from what?  Old age? At the level that most of us train this time of year, the risk of true overtraining is pretty damned low.  It sure makes for a good excuse, though.  In fact, I kind of employed it just this morning.

Today I awoke to grey skies, a temperature in the low 60s, and a disturbingly low level of motivation.  It would be a perfect day for yet another "recovery ride."  Somehow, though, I felt chilled from the get-go.  I got dressed, got on the bike, rode a few blocks, and said -- out loud -- "this is crazy."  It was just one of those days when I didn't want to ride.  I even convinced myself that my legs felt sore from Thursday.  I'm sure part of it was the depressing weather, and perhaps the lingering depressive effects from the shopping coma induced last night by an unwanted trip to Wal-Mart and Pier One and some other place like that. Whatever, I certainly can't blame overtraining for this one. Anyway, after aborting the morning ride I loaded up the bike with four bottles of wine (office Christmas gifts) and headed off to work a little earlier than usual by way of Starbucks.  As I rode cautiously down Lowerline, listening to the rattle of glass wine bottles in my bike's "grocery pannier." I suddenly noticed that the street below me was littered with those pretty bright yellow leaves of a Ginkgo tree.  There's nothing more spectacular than a Ginkgo tree in the fall, but those bright yellow leaves only last a little while. I looked up and just had to stop to take a picture.  I'll bet the big Ginkgo back on campus next to the Architecture building is pretty impressive right now.  When I got to work I saw that Mark had picked up the nice PA system that I'd found yesterday on Craigs List.  It looks like it was a really good deal for the club.  The last couple of years we'd been renting a PA system for our races.  This one should pay for itself after two events.  We can also rent it to other clubs in the area if they need it.

Worth a Try

It was some time early Monday when the local weatherpersons started sounding the alarms.  Warnings were issued, shelters were opened, the city braced for imminent disaster.  Yes, the temperature was going to dip below 32° F.  The prediction for the city went as low as 27, but I had my doubts about that. With all of the water around us here in New Orleans, and its attendant specific heat, along with the abundance of asphalt and concrete in the immediate vicinity of my own house, we rarely hit the predicted lows.  So when I woke up this morning and saw the thermometer reading around 32°, I wasn't too surprised.  I knew it would feel a couple of degrees colder up on the levee, but the wind was relatively light and had already started switching around to the East, so I layered up in winter gear, including my brand new Giordana NOBC jacket, slathered some chap stick on my cheekbones and nose, and set out for the levee.  It was definitely worth a try, even though I knew there was no way I was going to make it all the way out to Destrehan as we usually do on Tuesdays. Nor was I holding out a lot of hope that there would be anyone else out there, but at least I knew I could easily get in 25 miles or so without getting too uncomfortable.  These modern riding clothes are just awesome.  There was a time when this sort of weather would find me either sleeping in, or riding in wool tights with a scratchy leather chamois, a heavy wool and nylon jacket with newspaper stuffed underneath, and suffering immediately with cold hands and even colder feet.

To my surprise, there were two people waiting when I got to the levee (a couple of minutes late, of course), and so we headed up the river without delay.  Once we rounded the Ochsner bend the light wind, which seemed to be coming largely from the east, was more or less at our backs, keeping us relatively warm, or at least relatively less cold. Within a couple of miles I was already reaching for the zipper on my wind vest as I sat there in Woody's draft.  Of course, the bike path was particularly quiet this morning, so we pretty much had the whole thing to ourselves. Every now and then Woody would reluctantly drop back so we could each take brief pulls, but for the most part he was doing more than his fair share today.  We turned around at the parish line, knowing better than to gamble on extending the downwind leg on such a chilly day.  The return trip turned out to be mostly into a light headwind and as we made our way back toward town I could feel the cold starting to work its way through shoe-covers and gloves into my feet and hands.  Our timing was good and I got back home a bit cold but still a long way from miserable, feeling good that I'd made the decision to give it a try today. 

Warmup and Winter Winds

A nice little warm-up in the weather on Friday found me up on the levee looking for a little down-time.  The levee police must have been thinking the same thing, because they had the bike path closed underneath the Huey P. Long bridge.  I turned around and rode back down the river for a little spin around Audubon Park and an early return to the house. By Saturday morning it was a little cooler, but the more serious stuff was still eight hours away as I made my way out to meet the Giro Ride at Kona Cafe'.  It was going to be a complicated Saturday.  The plan was to ride out to the Giro, do part of the ride (out to Chef Highway), return to Kona (where they had free coffee for Giro riders), catch a ride to the northshore with Mark to help with the Junior Training Clinic, and finally return home to put up a few holiday decorations. 

The ride itself had been a little unusual.  Right when we started from Marconi someone apparently had a little mechanical problem that the front of the group, including I, didn't know about.  We were way out by Leon C. Simon when I finally looked back and said, "Where is everybody?"  So we slowed down even more until the group finally caught up somewhere near the Seabrook bridge.  A few riders went off the front on Hayne and the pace ramped up quickly until the gap was finally closed, but since I never saw the front it wasn't to hard from my perspective.  Out at Chef I turned back with Mark, Vivian and a few others.  The timing worked out nicely and we arrived at the training clinic right on time where we spent a couple of hours with Bob M. instructing a few of our junior riders on proper cornering technique.

The forecast for Sunday morning was a little harsh.  Temperature in the low 40s with an official high-wind advisory.  Regardless, we had about fifteen riders for the start of the northshore ride and we turned out of the parking lot directly into a 20 mph north wind.  I was wearing the clothes I'd normally wear for temperatures in the 30s.  Considering the wind, I thought we would have a fairly easy ride, but within the first few miles I knew it was not to be.  Despite the unrelenting wind the effort level, if not the actual ground speed, remained high, putting a few riders into difficulty almost from the start. By the time we reached Highway 10, a bit less than halfway through the day's 65 mile ride, a few riders had turned back and a few more had decided to take a shortcut back.  That left us with eight or nine for the remainder of the ride.  We finally got a decent tailwind as we turned east, but that just meant that the speed went from 21 mph to 29 mph, and I could finally take off one pair of gloves and start unzipping things. I guess we were about fifty miles into the ride when I really started feeling my legs.  After an absolutely brutal trip down Hwy. 1072 in a quartering headwind, I'd been hoping for a good tailwind for the return trip down Lee Road, but by then the wind had shifted a bit and the best we got was a crosswind and some protection from the roadside trees.

The last stretch, from Enon back to the Lee Road school, felt pretty hard.  I guess that was partly my own fault for refusing to drop back when things started to split up coming over the firetower climb.  So it's 4:30 pm right now and I'm sitting here with feet that are still cold, watching the Saints game on the TV and the USAC men's cyclocross championships on the computer.  Tomorrow's going to have to be an easy day.  Really easy.  Could be worse.  Up in Iowa City right now it's 10 F with winds gusting to 30 mph and a forecast low for tonight of -4.

Beginning to Feel Like Winter

The morning levee ride have been hit hard by the recent drop in morning temperatures.  Yesterday I was running a little late, and when I finally got to the levee bike path I ran across Woody and a couple of other guys going in the other direction. "We going to ride around Audubon Park," they said.  The only rider who had actually shown up at the usual time was Big Richard, so I went with the larger group and turned around.  I ended up with a nice hour's spin.

This morning the alarm went off at 5:45.  I reached out from under the covers and turned it off.  At 6:00 the alarm on my watch went off.  I shoved my hand underneath the pillow until it stopped.  At 6:10 it went off again.  This time I fumbled for a button to silence it, but still didn't actually get out of bed. It was nearly 6:30 by the time I actually got up. I still would have had enough time to make it to the ride except for the fact that I'd left practically all of my riding clothes in the dryer down in the basement. By the time I'd pulled out the gloves and shoe-covers and other essential cold-weather gear I knew I'd be late.  The sky was grey and so it was darker than usual when I finally hit the road, and when I arrived at the levee three minutes late I didn't even slow down. For the next half hour I just cruised at around 20 mph out to Williams Blvd., by which point I realized that there probably wasn't anybody else out there.  When I turned around I met up with Donald who said, "I was beginning to think you were avoiding me."  Apparently he had been chasing me the whole way out.  So we rode back together into a light headwind. Eventually I dropped back into his draft.  Sometimes riding with Donald is like riding with a diesel truck. He just keeps going and going and going.

It's been a busy week at work so far, but I sense that things will be winding down rather quickly over the next week or so. This little surge of activity is probably just people trying to wrap up some things before the holidays.  Speaking of holidays, I'm always surprised how early exams are at Tulane (and elsewhere).  I think most of the students will be finishing up their exams in the next day or two.  For our own office, it won't make much of a difference except that it will start getting hard to find some of the faculty.

Weathering Winter

Those  barriers seem higher than they look

It really feels like winter around here today, and that can mean only one thing.  I'll be complaining regularly about the cold weather despite my incongruous compulsion to ride in it anyway.  Just to get things started, let me complain about this very morning. I awoke to a temperature in the upper 30s, with a north wind to match, and thought long and hard about whether it was worth going out on the road for what was probably not going to be much of a recovery ride. I did it anyway, of course, and as usual it wasn't quite as bad as I'd imagined. After all, the upper 30s doesn't quite qualify as arctic.  It's all relative, though, and relatively speaking I was pretty cold.  I was also a bit sore from yesterday.

Sunday morning I had made the drive up to Baton Rouge for the second day of their 2-day CX-Palooza cyclocross race with the idea of helping out with the officiating and jumping into the "A" race for a few laps.  As it turned out, the weather was pretty much ideal for this sort of thing.  Well, at least it was ideal for somebody with 30mm tires and a complete lack of cyclocross skills.  So after scoring the "B" race, I quickly changed into riding clothes and sped off for a couple of practice laps on the Highland Park course.  Luckily for me the entire course, except for the two sections of barriers, was rideable, even on my road bike masquerading as a cyclocross bike. It was a nice long course with lap times for the faster guys of around 5 minutes and for the slower guys like me, 6 minutes.  I lined up pretty much DFL and for the most part maintained that slot throughout the 45 minute race.  It was actually a lot of fun even at my mediocre pace.  After a nice long and flat finish straight there was a sharp right turn up a hill, around a tree and back down the hill, another U-turn around a tree, and then the first set of double barriers.  My first couple of tries over those things were really ugly, but I started getting the hang of it eventually.  Another few twists and turns and then the course went across a little bridge and straight up a very steep washout. I was glad that my low gear of 44x26 proved adequate to keep my feet off the ground on that one.  That was followed by a few tight and swoopy turns and then a fast downhill with an off-camber right and quick crossing of a soft muddy spot where I was sure my front wheel would eventually dig in and send me over the bars (it never did, though).  Then a right up a little hill and a second set of barriers that I had a lot more trouble with than the first. Coming over the barriers the route continued uphill for a little bit, so you had to run a few steps before you had enough momentum to leap back onto the saddle and try to clip in.  The clipping-in part seemed to be a big problem for me, as I'm really not used to those old-style shimano mountain bike pedals and cleats.  After that there were a number of curves and some easy rolling terrain that was fairly fast, including a trip through a sand trap underneath a park swing set.  Then there was a final downhill with a sharp right turn back onto the finish straight. I felt like I got a good workout despite getting lapped twice by all of the leaders.

On the officiating side, I discovered that in order to be able to pick up rider data for everyone who has a cyclocross license I need to download both the USCF and the NORBA databases, since both types of licenses include cyclocross.  Unfortunately, for riders with only NORBA licenses there are no club or team listings. Rather inconvenient. I spent a lot of time Sunday night getting the results ready for posting and uploading, especially considering that there were only 23 riders!  Then, after wasting all of that time, I discovered a little link way down at the bottom of the USAC promoters download page that said, "CROSS all riders."  Crap.

Ninety and Knobbies

The weather around here has been changing faster than I can change clothes lately.  This morning I went out perfectly attired to meet the Giro Ride, but I knew my pockets would soon be stuffed with discarded clothes. My original plan of doing Saturday's Baton Rouge cyclocross race had been rearranged when I got a request to officiate Sunday's 'cross race.  I also needed to pick up The Wife from the Westin downtown in the afternoon, so I set my sights on Sundays cyclocross race and figured I'd do the NOBC club ride out to Fort Pike this morning.  After a quick stop for coffee I met the Giro Ride group at Robert E. Lee Blvd. and was surprised how many riders were there.  Since the NOBC group wasn't leaving for another fifteen minutes I decided to go ahead and ride with the Giro group out to Venetian Isles and then pick up the NOBC group when it came by later.  It was a good plan.  The Giro turned out to be pretty fast and so rather than sit around at Venetian Isles for twenty minutes or so, I started riding back down Chef Highway until I finally saw the group coming a few miles later. 

The NOBC group had a good paceline going and with a nice little tailwind we made pretty good time out to Fort Pike.  For a change, the view from the top of the bridge was great today. I was feeling pretty good, but by the time the odometer was reading 65 miles my legs were starting to feel the distance a bit.  Later, a few of us stopped at Kona Cafe to eat.  By the time I got home I had 90 miles on the computer and I had a feeling my legs were not going to be too happy about that cyclocross race on Sunday.

It'll be interesting to see if my bike holds together for Sunday's race.  My poor-man's retro cyclocross bike is a 1972 vintage English frame with 5-speed friction shifting. I finally broke down and bought a couple of 30mm cyclocross tires for it.  The problem was that the wheels on the bike were 27".  I had a nice pair of 700c 6-speed clinchers, so I figured I'd just swap the freewheel over to the those wheels and all would be good.  Unfortunately the old freewheel had welded itself to the hub and the removal notches were mangled, so I never could get it off.  Luckily the LBS actually had a 5-speed freewheel in stock. 

Then I just had to fix the loose headset, reposition the brake pads (which I hope I don't actually have to rely on), replace the missing bolt holding the cleat onto my mountain bike shoe, and replace both derailleur cables (the front one had gotten water inside the housing and was in pretty bad shape).  While I was at it I installed a "new" old-style Concor saddle that's been in a bag for the better part of twenty years.  Hopefully nothing will come loose because I didn't really have a chance to go out for a test ride.  Fortunately I won't have to worry about slowing anybody down tomorrow since that would require me to be in front of them and we all know that's not going to happen.

Long Tights and Blinky Lights

Heading back downriver into the morning sun

The days are growing shorter now and together with our most recent cold front it is beginning to feel a lot like winter. I stepped out the door this morning and looked up to see a beautiful bright crescent moon accompanied by the planet Venus.  It took a little while for the 40-degree air to penetrate my somewhat excessive early-winter layering, and as I rode slowly past houses already adorned with holiday lights, I thought to myself, "I'd better start getting used to this."  Indeed, it was the first morning here in New Orleans on which I felt the need for both long tights and blinky lights. That lower-40s temperature range, which we seem to get a lot of around here in the winter, is probably the hardest to dress for, particularly for morning rides.  It feels good and cold at first, but you know it's going to warm up significantly within an hour or so.  I usually tend to err on the side of warmth, which means making full use of zippers and pockets later in the ride.  I had started with long tights and shoe-covers, base layer, arm-warmers, heavy long-sleeved jersey and a wind vest. It felt about right for me. Wednesday's ride, for which only four of us showed up, had been nearly as cold, but the later start time had at least allowed me to leave the lights at home.  Today, however, a relatively large group had gathered up the courage, or become sufficiently desperate in an OCD sort of way, to show up for the long Thursday ride.

The northwest wind was relatively light, and the group started out at a moderate pace with riders taking surprisingly long pulls at the front. I myself wasn't feeling all that energetic, so I was keeping my time at the front down to fifty or sixty pedal strokes or so, preferring to wait until the return trip to see if I had anything to offer.  Most of the way out we were cruising along at a comfortable 22 mph, except when Howard would hit the front.  As usual, he would surge up to around 25 mph each time and I would let a little gap grow between the rider in front of me and myself, knowing that it wouldn't last too long and we'd soon be back to cruising speed.

The return trip was a little weird, though.  Right off the bat, Woody started rolling off on his own as the rest of the group was still getting re-assembled.  Then Howard took off with Mignon on his wheel and bridged up to him.  They didn't appear to be killing themselves, though, and the rest of the group could have easily closed the gap with ten minutes at about 24 mph.  Mignon sat up and waited for the group, but Donald was on the front and was holding a speed of around 22, which was just slow enough that the gap to Woody and Howard was ever so gradually increasing.  For a long time nobody wanted to come around him and he wasn't pulling off, so I watched from the back as Woody and Howard started getting smaller and smaller.  Eventually one of the guys got tired of sitting in the draft and surged past, so I went with him.  He was going a bit too hard to survive long enough to close the gap, which by then was probably around 45 seconds, but when he started to back off I came through anyway since I needed a little exercise anyway.  Next think I knew Donald came surging past and things got kind of messy, but the gap definitely started coming down for a while.  I think Scott took a pull, but in general the rest of the group didn't seem interested so things eventually settled back down with Donald again sitting on the front.  I went to the back and started taking occasional pseudo-pulls by moving out of the draft for a minute or two in order to get a little more exercise.