Cracks and Crashes

The nicely lighted streetcar barn was a convenient place to fix my flat tire  

It turned out to be a complicated week for training. I hadn't been planning anything out of the ordinary - just the usual weekday morning routine. On Monday morning I did a nice solo ride on the levee as usual, with plans for a faster ride on Tuesday. I didn't go in to work on Monday because the air-conditioner had stopped working and I had to wait for the repair guys to show up. Fortunately, we keep a couple of window units down in the basement for just such an occasion. They also come in handy after hurricanes, assuming you can get hold of a generator. We lugged them upstairs and stuck them into the bedroom windows, so it was fine. When the repair guys arrived I explained the symptom, which was essentially that there was power to the shut-off, but apparently no power to the  unit. I'd looked inside but hadn't noticed the tiny little DC fuse. It took the guy about thirty seconds to pinpoint that problem. While he was there, I had him check the rest of the system and ended up having him clean the condenser unit which was pretty clogged up with dirt and gunk, but decided to hold off on re-charging the refrigerant which was just a bit low. I felt lucky to get off with a $250 bill.

This bypass around the pipes is a complete disaster

So on Tuesday I headed out to meet the group on the levee and, just as I rounded the turn from Carrollton onto Willow, heard air escaping rapidly from my rear tire. I rolled to a stop in front of the nicely lit streetcar barn (it was still a bit dark) and had to pull out my pocket knife to pull the packing staple out of the tire. Glancing at my watch, I knew I would miss the group. So once I got patched up and out onto the levee I settled into a nice steady pace, planning on meeting the group out near the turnaround. I figured I'd be about five minutes behind them, and since they take a little bit of a break out at Ormond, I wasn't expecting to miss out on more than a couple of miles at the worst. So I was surprised to see them coming toward me much earlier than I'd expected. Turns out the bike path was closed off at the grain elevator, apparently because they are removing the odd little crossover they had constructed about a year ago when they started building something out there. That evening as I was riding the commuter bike back home from work I again heard the sound of air rushing out of my rear tire. I was only a mile and a half from home, and it was hot, and I didn't feel like dealing with the dirt and fender and single speed and pannier, so I just leaned forward more and rode the rest of the way on the flat tire. Later that evening I pulled off the rear wheel and discovered that I'd worn completely through the tire in one place and then also worn completely through the Mr. Tuffy that I'd apparently been riding on for a while. Guess I got my money's worth anyway. I threw it all in the trash and ordered a replacement tire for the antique 27" wheel with 7-speed spacing that's crammed into a frame made for 26" 3-speed wheels. I pulled a tire off of my rain bike, which also sports old 27" wheels, to use in the meantime. On Wednesday Chris called to say he had a crew nearby and could come over to the house in the afternoon to do some badly needed tree-trimming that I'd gotten him to give me a price on a couple of weeks ago, so I rushed home just in time for a thunderstorm which of course cancelled any possibility of tree work for the day.

Crash precipitated by another sinkhole on the levee bike path

On Thursday I again met the group up on the levee for the long ride. There were some big clouds around but it looked like we had a good chance of missing the scattered thunderstorms that have been the routine around here lately. We carefully negotiated the broken-up asphalt bypass around the Jefferson Parish "pump to the river" pipes. That section was built no more than four months ago and is already a complete and utter disaster. The asphalt is cracking, the roadbed below it is sinking, there's always mud and water washing over it, and it's generally gotten really sketchy. It's a real marvel of bad engineering and sloppy work. A few miles past that we go around the pipes at Florida Street. My turn at the front came up right after that and I had my head down a bit as I pulled us back up to speed when I heard Rich, who was on my wheel, say "look out."

This one caused the crash on Thursday

I looked up and saw the other big section of sinking, broken-up asphalt right ahead of me and curved around it to the left. A moment later I heard Rich say something and realized there'd been a crash somewhere behind me. Apparently the group had gotten a little strung out going around the pipes, which always happens, and the guys toward the back were pushing it to close up the gap when someone hit the broken asphalt, or swerved to avoid it, or something like that. The result was three or four people hitting the ground pretty hard. David banged up his elbow pretty badly (ended up with a few stitches after a visit to the ER) and also broke his carbon seatpost. Tom, whose son Ben was on the ride, also went down pretty hard with a little gash above his eye, probably from his glasses. One rider tumbled down the concrete side of the levee and was pretty slow to get up. I think they all called for extraction, and after the JP police patrol guy showed up and started filling out paperwork, the rest of us continued on with a plan to turn around at The Dip. So I turn around and we're heading back and we see Ben standing on the side of the bike path. He'd broken a spoke on his carbon wheel - the kind that has maybe six spokes on the non-drive side. The tire was hitting the frame, the rim was hitting the brake, and it wasn't looking very promising. After much fiddling around, we finally got it seated in the dropout just off-center enough that the tire, after letting out a substantial amount of pressure, was barely clearing the chainstay. By now we were half an hour behind schedule, at least, so the rest of the group continued on while I rode back with Ben at an easy pace in case things got worse. Somehow it all held together and he made it all the way back.

The Sprint

Great weather and a good group for the July 4th Holiday Giro Ride

With most people off from work for July 4th, there was the usual Holiday Giro Ride last Tuesday. Initiated by a single email with a subject line of "Giro Tues" and a message reading simply "7 AM from Starbucks," the large accumulation of riders rolled out promptly just two days after what had been, at least for me, another weekend of back-to-back Giro Rides. With summer fully upon us down here in New Orleans, it promised to be a brisk and sweaty affair, of the sort that transfers a gallon of salty perspiration from skin to headsets and seatposts and gets you home with wet shoes and a soaked kit that has to be peeled off inside-out and hung out to dry. Being only the beginning of July, it could have been worse of course. We started with a temperature around 84F and ended with it at a relatively subtropical 95 about three hours later. That was just a taste of what's to come later this month and next, no doubt.

With almost no wind and a big holiday group containing a lot of people whose game plan didn't involve being in the front half, it was easy sailing for those who wanted it. The 18 or so miles from the overpasses out to Venetian Isles was completed at a nice brisk average speed of 25 mph, ramping up to 35 at the turnaround sprint for those so inclined. I backed off at about 34, myself. By then the heat was getting hot and the hot guys were getting toasted, which kept the speed on the return trip down Chef Menteur more in the 23-26 mph range, which was pretty casual with such a large group on such a windless day. After crossed under the interstate and got onto the service road I was near the back when Pat came riding up and said that Brian Bourgeois. had a mechanical. I looked back, but we were already around the bend and I couldn't see anyone, so I turned around to see if he needed help while the rest of the group continued on unaware. Shortly after I'd turned another rider came by and said that Brian had told him he was OK and to go on, so I turned around again. By then we were probably two minutes behind the group. We started a nice two person time trial at a moderate pace, knowing that the group had already dropped back down to holiday ride speed, and finally caught back up somewhere around the end of Bullard. Almost everybody who started was together all the way to Lakeshore Drive, which is kind of unusual for the Giro but really nice for a holiday ride.

Two people at a table for one

So I got home, peeled off the wet kit, and got onto NBC Gold to watch end of the Tour de France where things were setting up for a big classic pack sprint. It's the final 200 meters and I see Sagan and Cavendish in pretty good positions as the whole sprint starts drifting right. Sagan sees an opening to the right along the barricade. Cavendish is already trying to accelerate from behind into the same opening. I say out loud, "there's not enough room!" Cav tries to make some space for himself by, I can only assume, leaning onto Sagan, but it's like a little bird trying to push a tank out of the way. Sagan holds his line. Cav practically bounces off of Sagan and hits the barricade and goes down, sliding left right in front of two others who launch into and over him like it's a ski jump.

Lots of theories about that elbow

Sagan, completely unfazed by what's happening behind him, takes a close 2nd place. Cavendish eventually limps across the line with a bandaged hand and holding his arm in that classic "I've broken something" position across his chest. The officials relegate Sagan, presumably because he threw his elbow out and moved a bit to the right when Cavendish tried to squeeze through, and then they think about it more and decided to disqualify him completely. Cavendish has a broken scapula and is out, Sagan is out, fans start armchair officiating. From what I've seen, I can't find much fault with what Sagan did. Cavendish took a big risk trying to come through an opening that was already closing. Had it been anyone but Sagan in the way, he might have pushed his way through, or he might have caused an even bigger crash. Had the leading riders not drifted right, none of this would have happened in the first place, so I think there was a lot of blame to go around. From the officials' perspective, I think the key thing here was that they had earlier warned the sprinters that they would not be tolerating dangerous riding like they usually do, and I think Sagan's DQ was basically used as an example. Certainly we've seen much worse in prior years' sprints that didn't warrant disqualifications.

On Thursday we had a nice big group up on the levee for the long Thursday ride. The weather hadn't changed much except that there were some big clouds scattered around, and the pace was pretty good most of the time, depending on who happened to be at the front, and never got out of hand. On the return trip we averaged around 24 mph with perhaps a bit of an occasional tailwind that kept my heart rate at an average of only 138. As we neared the Huey P. Long bridge I figured that a few of the riders were going to sprint as usual, and after a few of them went by I got onto someone's wheel, but there was already a big gap so after a short effort I eased up. The next thing I know I see Brian Baum rolling down the grassy side of the levee as his bike flies through the air. Apparently he sprinted for the bridge, then eased up just as Matt, who he wasn't expecting, came flying past him to his left, causing him to crash. Unfortunately, he hit the asphalt first, taking a lot of skin off of his arm and leg. He got back on the bike right away and hurried back the last few miles home before the epinephrine could wear off.

Summer Doldrums

A room with a view

It was another weekend of back-to-back Giro Rides, and there was no doubt that summer was upon us. As often happens when it starts getting hot and miserable, I was feeling fine and spent more than usual in the wind, which isn't actually saying much. Saturday's Giro was kind of a series of flat tires - not mine. I turned back to help for the first one, along with a few others, as the rest of the group kept rolling. We made a really fast tire change and I was kind of looking forward to the team time trial that would be needed to get us back to the group. I figured they were not catchable, and was planning on taking the Bullard shortcut, but as is turned out they had been soft-pedaling and we caught them within a couple of miles. Then, right after turning onto Chef Highway, there was another flat. Fewer people stopped for that one, but it went quickly. We had just gotten going when we saw Judd off on the shoulder up ahead. I assumed he'd flatted, but in fact it was slightly more dramatic than that. Apparently Jaden had chucked a water bottle at him when he rolled through the red light at Michoud Blvd., and then there was some kind of confrontation about it that ended up with Judd going down or almost going down and dropping his chain. Anyway, we all got going again and rejoined the group when we saw it coming the other way, a couple of miles from the turnaround. Sunday's ride was relatively civilized. Both days I made a couple of efforts that got my heart rate up into the 178 bpm range, which would be around 92% of max, so I guess that's good. I felt strong sprinting up the overpasses, anyway. On the down side, I haven't been reaching into my pocket for my camera very much since it's been hot and humid and sweaty and in general there hasn't been anything very interesting to take pictures of.

In the middle of last week we finally got the office furniture installed, which basically involved a couple of days of disruption. I've still got a few boxes on the floor and haven't taken time to hang anything on the walls, but at least it's coming along. With today being the day before July 4, things are super quiet around here, not that I'm complaining.

So halfway through the year, I'm showing around 5,700 miles, which is pretty decent considering the low-mileage weeks after the collarbone incident. Since I've been using Strava I have four full years of data with annual mileage totals ranging from a low of 11,724 (another collarbone year) to 12,378, so I guess I'm on track for a normal year mileage-wise. I have to admit that I really use Strava mainly just to keep track of mileage, both mine and my equipment. For example, I know that the Campi group  that I bought used from Matt a few years ago has over 50,600 miles on it now, and the "new" Bianchi has over 30,000. Where it really comes in handy, though, is keeping track of specific equipment items. The current headset is at 18,200 mi., and the most recently installed chain is now at 2,100 miles, which means it's time to start looking for a replacement on sale. Surprisingly, I have over 25,000 miles on the Bont shoes, which are a little beat up from the crash into the car a while back but still serviceable. I really hate having to change shoes. The sizing is always inconsistent, the new models are never the same as the old ones, they're expensive, and the local bike shops never, ever, have the brand and size that I need in stock so I can try them on before buying them, so getting new shoes is always an expensive roll of the dice.

It's neat to kind of know someone in the Tour

The Tour de France started on Sunday, and it's kind of fun for a lot of the local guys knowing that Nate Brown, who won the 2011 Tour de Louisiane, is riding it with the Cannondale team. Even better, he was in the KOM jersey after stage 3. Meanwhile, the USAC National Road Championships were going on over the weekend. There were a number of LAMBRA riders there, but no outstanding results. I got to watch a few of the races on the live web stream via VeloNews, which was great. The commentary, however, was pretty lame. The Women's race had a big crash with five laps to go and they ended up stopping the race and re-starting it with six to go something like thirty minutes later. The two-person break that had been off the front survived, which must have been hard. I was sorry to see Debbie Milne go down hard in that crash. I wasn't sure it was she until today because the commentators never said which riders went off in the ambulances. Apparently she whacked her head, so they didn't want her to continue. Everybody else got to re-start, so in a way it was lucky for some of the riders.

Brings me back!

Anyway, I pretty much killed Sunday afternoon sitting in front of the computer watching the criteriums. I did, however, get rid of an old bike that I'd had sitting around in the basement since 2006. It was a French 10-speed from around 1971 or so that I'd gotten from a faculty member who was moving after Katrina. He'd also given me a really nice Peugeot mixte that I subsequently fixed up for Candy as her commuter. The "Olympique" bike, however, was in pretty rough shape and way too big for me anyway, so I hadn't done anything with it. About a year ago I kind of cleaned it up a bit, thinking I'd put it on Craigslist for $20 or something, but that never actually happened, so it was just kind of in the way for a long time. When Tim posted that he was looking for a frame to build up I told him about it and he came over and picked it up in exchange for a bottle of wine. I think I may have gotten the better end of that deal, but it will be interesting to see if he is able to fix the bike up. It's a solid old lugged steel frame with some vintage parts, so it does have some historical interest. It's exactly the kind of thing that was being sold around here during the 70s "bike boom" when I first started riding.

Giro and Genes

The Saturday Giro offered up a little surprise last week in the form of a random rain shower. I'd ridden out to Starbucks as usual, this time under particularly hazy skies and with a truly awesome humidity level. As the first riders started to filter in, one of them said that it was pouring rain out at the lakefront, barely half a mile away. I was rather surprised, but soon realized that the thick haze had been hiding the big black clouds off to the northwest. Looking at the radar, we had a good chance that we'd miss most of it by the time we hit Lakeshore Drive, and indeed we did. All we got was a brief and very light sprinkling of drizzle that was unfortunately greatly augmented by the still soaking wet streets and associated wheel spray. Otherwise, though, the ride was good -- and hot. Sunday was similar except that there was no rain and for some reason the group was a lot larger. As we were flying down Chef Menteur Highway, all strung out because someone at the front had boosted the speeed up to around 30 mph, I figured the line of riders was a good two city blocks long. On the return trip I found myself ahead of the group with Taco, mainly because neither of us likes to stop half a mile from the turnaround to stand around under the only shade tree in the area for five minutes of doing whatever those guys do when they're standing around under the tree. Anyway, it was clear that the group was lagging behind a bit. Normally, I'd expect to be caught by the group a few miles down the road, but on Sunday every time I looked back I couldn't even see them. Pretty soon Taco's speed started inching up. I was just sitting on his wheel think how much it was like being behind a motor and wondering when he would motion for me to come around and take a pull.  He never did, though. What had started as a leisurely 22 mph soon became a brisk 24 mph, and then for a long time stayed at like 25.5 mph before a final little push up to 30 over the last mile. All that time I was just glued to Taco's super-smooth wheel. Despite having never put my nose into the wind, it was a pretty decent workout for me.

So some time around Christmas, I think, my daughter had given me a 23andMe kit that I finally sent off for testing about a month ago and for which I got the reports last week. Having already seen Danielle's report, I wasn't too surprised with anything in mine. I'm apparently 98.4% European, with a lot of Irish and Iberian/Spanish and French, which is what I'd expect from what I know about recent ancestors. Like Danielle, I also had 301 Neanderthal variants, which is apparently more than 83% of those who have thus far been tested, so I guess some of my distant ancestors were, shall we say, open-minded about sexual partners. Most of the predicted traits consistent with mine - no bald spot, likes salty stuff, detached ear lobes, long ring finger, straight dark hair, predisposed to weigh less than average, lactose intolerant, not a deep sleeper, etc. It also suggested that my muscle composition would be "common in elite power athletes," which kind of calls into question the whole thing I guess. That's based on a ACTN3 gene variant that increases production of  a particular isoform of alpha-actinin. This is the most-highly specialized of the four mammalian alpha-actinins, with its expression restricted largely to fast glycolytic fibres in skeletal muscle. Theoretically, I think it would mean that my muscles contract particularly rapidly. Looks like I'm heterozygous for it, though, for whatever that's worth. The implication is that without that genotype I'd be better at endurance. Also, my weight is likely to be similar on diets high or low in saturated fat with the same number of total calories. That's related to the gene for apolipoprotein A-II, which I gather is normal. Anyway, it was kind of interesting.

Making the Best of It

Wet asphalt, worms and solitude on the levee this morning

It was a dark and stormy night.  Really.  It was.  What it wasn't, however, was the kind of life-threatening storm that the media had been hyping. Basically, there was a lot of intermittent rain and a fair amount of wind, but it was, in a way, disappointing. The power flickered once and that was about it. Still, the forecast was for nothing but rain and I saw no reason to doubt that part was accurate, so when the alarm went off at five-whatever in the morning and I could hear the cars on the wet streets outside, I shuffled off to the kitchen and made some coffee. Outside, it looked like the rain had practically stopped, at least temporarily. I drove The Wife over to the shuttle stop on campus around 6:15, and on the way looked up to see a little patch of blue sky through a gap in the thick cloud cover. I was already making plans as I drove home. I could probably get out the door around 6:45 on the rain bike so perhaps there was hope. A quick check of the radar confirmed that the city was in-between rain bands and would probably be that way for at least a couple of hours. I threw on some riding clothes, pumped up the Pennine's tires, stuffed a rain jacket into my pocket, pulled on shoe-covers, and headed for the levee. The streets were wet but whatever was falling from the sky was could hardly be called rain. I ended up getting in a perfectly fine twenty-two miles, thankful that I had a rain bike with full fenders as I rolled through puddles and over the stretched-out bodies of the hundreds of earthworms that covered parts of the levee bike path. It wasn't a hard workout or anything, but I was glad I'd made the best out of that little lull in the weather.

Soon after I got to work this morning -- yes, I took the car -- it started storming again, and later in the morning my phone lit up with a tornado warning. The sky is still dark and the streets still wet and the rain is still falling, but I got in a ride today when I'd have bet money I wouldn't have. The Volvo place still hasn't called about the tail light they were supposed to order, although I did have some fun on Monday when someone from the dealership called to check on how nicely I'd been treated and whether everything had been done to my satisfaction. It would be nice to have a right turn signal again, but I have to admit I'm not all that anxious to deal with the hassle of getting the car out to Metairie and all, so I'm good with waiting for now.

Keith emailed that the latest kit order had arrived. I had ordered a second pair of shorts and a second jersey, so now I'll just have to figure out how to get over to his office now that mine isn't so conveniently located any more. Unfortunately, the next reasonably nearby race isn't until August. I've been thinking about looking for something outside of LAMBRA next month, but it seems like promoters in the south are afraid to put on anything big in July because of the heat. There's a weekend of races in Crockett, TX. I had to look up the location on Google Maps to find out it's kind of halfway between Houston and Dallas, so around 6.5 hours drive time and no chance of winning enough to pay for lunch, and it's the weekend that Danielle comes in from Washington. There's something the following weekend up in TN but now we're talking about 9-hour drives.

An Early Start

Here we go again.....

It looks like the hurricane season is off to an early start around here. The threat of a tropical storm -- wait, I mean tropical "cyclone" as they are now calling them -- kept me off the bike this morning. That turned out to have been way overly cautious, though. Although the streets were wet at 5:30 am, there was never much rain. I could have easily gotten in a couple of hours on the levee without getting all that wet, especially if I'd taken the rain bike. I ended up driving the car to work almost two hours earlier than usual, still without hitting any significant rain. Even now, the radar isn't looking all that bad and is showing mostly just a huge area of light rain. Oh well. We'll see how it all works out later today, but I'm thinking that most of the dire weather predictions of last night will turn out to have been a little exaggerated.

Mid-week on the river levee

So anyway, last week was actually a pretty decent week, riding-wise, even though there weren't any races nearby. I did both the Saturday and Sunday Giro Rides, mainly because Sunday was father's day and I had to visit my father at noon, so a northshore ride was definitely not a possibility. Saturday's Giro was fairly fast and I made a point of making a few good efforts, especially for some of the sprint points. Those felt pretty good, actually.

Sunday's Giro was definitely slower and easier, and it included a couple of stops for flat tires, all of which were Scott's. The legs were feeling a little tired on Monday when I rolled out for a solo recovery ride on the river levee. I didn't feel like I needed a super-easy ride, just something smooth and steady. That turned out to be 22 miles at 17-20 mph in easy gears. At the moment I have no idea what the rest of the week is going to look like. The chance of rain doesn't drop below 75% until Wednesday night and they're still showing a 95% probability for the WeMoRi, but given the crazy weather right now you can't really trust any of that. I'd really hate to miss two days of riding right now, so I'll just have to play it by ear for a couple of days I guess.

Bob Perrin goes down in the Bastille Day race
back in 1976 - riding his Pennine, I think.

I rode with David Hughes for a while on Friday and he sent me a couple of scans of photos from the newspaper of the Bastille Day race back from July 11, 1976. The scans are pretty bad, but they always are when they come from an old newspaper.

Meanwhile, at the office I'm looking out the window at the low, ragged black clouds streaming in from the south and not feeling very optimistic. We're not expecting our actual furniture to arrive until the end of the month, so it will likely be June 29th or 30th before I have a real desk and file cabinet and can unpack the boxes that are currently lined up against the wall.

I took the car in for "scheduled maintenance" on Friday, which means they did an expensive oil change and ordered a new tail light assembly. The service rep is supposed to call me today about it, but I doubt I'll be able to get the car back there until tomorrow at best anyway. The windshield leak thing is basically my problem unless the extended warranty will cover it, which I haven't checked on yet. I'm pretty sure a tube of black silicone seal will solve the problem anyway, but we'll see.

XLVI

The 46th annual Tour de Louisiane stage race is in the books. This was an interesting year. Lots of grassroots events like ours have been struggling, if not dying out entirely, in recent years. There was a time not all that long ago when I was contemplating adding more classes and categories. Lots of races were doing that, and with field sizes rising consistently it seemed like a good plan. That all started to crumble about five years ago. It feels like we've kind of bottomed out the last couple of years, and it was time to scale back on a few things in order to scale the event to the expected participation. There were a few things that were clear, however. For one, we had some good venues that the riders really liked, even though the cost of securing them was getting pretty high. Also, although the field sizes were smaller than they had been at the peak, the level of competition was still as strong as ever. That didn't really leave us much room for scaling back. We reduced the prizelist a little bit, and didn't spend anything on free stuff to give to the riders, but what really made it work was raising enough cash to cover most of the venue and officiating costs.

The NOBC Cat. 4 team had a great weekend of racing

For a change, the weather forecast for the weekend was pretty good. Warm temperatures with no real chance of rain on Saturday, and a fairly low chance of rain on Sunday morning. We ended up with a hundred twenty something riders, which was pretty good by current standards, and I'm sure it would have been better if there hadn't been the conflict with Tulsa Tough that pulled away a number of riders and essentially all of the Texas riders. I can't remember another year when we didn't have a single Texas rider. The road races went quite well.  Sitting on the side of the highway for four or five hours can be pretty brutal when it's hot or cold or raining or windy or some combination of the above, but in this case it was actually quite pleasant.

Charles got some good shots on Saturday

The humidity on Saturday was fairly low and there was a nice breeze that kept us fairly comfortable all day. Even the 5:30 pm time trial that always involves me standing in the sun at the start line for a couple of hours wasn't too bad. Results went pretty smoothly, although I was surprised to find one Cat. 5 rider who didn't know he had to finish the prior stage of a stage race in order to ride in the next. He kind of begged for an exception, but I really couldn't allow it without opening up a whole can of worms. There were a number of riders who had DNF'd in the road race that morning and how would I explain letting someone who hadn't even started it go ahead and ride the Criterium?

Sunday's criterium was pretty fun. As usual Robin did a ton of work getting the course set up with the  Covington police and fire department and we got things started at 7:30 right on schedule. We kind of screwed up a little in a couple of the races when we didn't pull some riders soon enough and they ended up getting lapped. Pulling riders after they have been lapped rather than before creates all sorts of problems for stage race timing. We did finally pull them once they were again separated from the pack that had lapped them, and we calculated their times as if they had been pulled on the lap during which they had been lapped, which seemed to work out fine. We had both Erich and Kenny doing the announcing for the big races, which worked out really well. They made a great team with the microphone. We'll have to see if we can get a second mic next time, because I'd love to do that again. The results got posted quickly and by 1 pm or so I was on my way home via Starbucks where I stopped to email the results to the newspaper reporter who, just a little while later, texted me that he'd just had a blowout somewhere on the interstate between here and Atlanta and was going to miss the Sunday deadline. Hopefully we'll see something in a day or two. In the meantime there have been a lot of nice photos showing up that I've been sharing to the Tour de Louisiane facebook group and LAMBRA page. I got results up on the LAMBRA and NOBC websites before dinner, so just some loose ends to tie up over the next few days and I'll be ready to start thinking about the Deep South Dino Ride that Mike Lew and I have been kicking around for some time this fall.

A window and a view!

So this morning I rode to the new office on Poydras Street. Since they put in a bike lane on Tulane Avenue, a street that in the past I would never have considered taking, I had a nice twenty minute commute via the Jeff Davis overpass bike path, Tulane Avenue, and LaSalle Street, locking the bike up in the bike race in the building parking garage. This was fortunate because shortly after I got there it started storming and basically hasn't stopped all day. The offices are currently kind of a mess. We're using surplus furniture until the stuff we ordered arrives, presumably toward the end of the month, so there's no incentive to take anything more than necessary out of the boxes scattered about the floor. On the plus side, I have a nice view looking southwest between the Superdome across the street and Benson Tower. On the minus side, it's been freezing in here all day.  Most of this floor is empty, so it's pretty quiet, plus three of the people in our five-person office aren't here. Right now I'm about to ride home in the rain, which at the moment is merely moderate rather than severe like it's been most of today. I'm going to get wet, but the radar isn't offering much hope for the foreseeable future. I guess I used up all of my weather luck last weekend.

Movin' Out

Two days until our office is moved from the tranquility of University Square and its aging shopping mall buildings to the glass and steel and six lanes of Poydras Street. It will be a nice change, I think, on balance, although my commute will become a bit more stressful. Fortunately, the new bike lane on Tulane Avenue is fully operational now, so I think Jeff. Davis to Tulane Avenue to S. Johnston to Perdido should work out pretty well. It may be time to take a look at the old commuter bike and make sure it's up to the longer trip, however. The rear tire and the Mr. Tuffy's in both tires are pretty much at the end of their lives and need to be replaced, but I don't guess that's going to happen for a couple more weeks with the way things are going right now. It looks like we will essentially be camping out in our new office space for a week or two with temporary furniture, aka surplus tables, and that kind of thing, so I guess I'll be working out of boxes for a while.

The trusty old commuter. Hopefully it won't get stolen
downtown.

I picked up the old English frame from Louie Letterman some time in the 70s and built it up with whatever was lying around, either at home or at the local bike shop. The rear wheel came out of a shed behind the old Adams Bicycle World back when it was on Calhoun Street and since it was for probably a 7-speed or 8-speed bike, you have to force the dropouts on the frame apart to squeeze it in. The quick-release on that wheel is an old Simplex one from the 70s that used to come standard on the Peugeot PX-10. The front wheel was originally from my old Atala from 1971, but when that wheel finally quit due to rust and corrosion it was replaced with a nice old clincher wheel with a Campi Record hub from Billy Richards. The front is 700C, the rear is 27", the frame was designed for 26." The front center-pull brake was a prize from one of the Betat Extravaganza races some time back in the 70s or 80s. It barely works but at least will accommodate the short reach needed for a 700C wheel crammed into a 26" 3-speed frame. The fenders came from Gus Betat & Sons when they were on Broad Street and were routinely removing the painted, chromed steel fenders from Atala bikes in order to make them look more like the 10-speeds that Americans wanted at the time. Since the wheels just barely fit in the frame, especially with fenders, I use a 23 mm leftover training tire on the front and some kind of cheapie 1 1/4 inch tire on the back. Both have Mr. Tuffy tire liners in them. The rear rack is an aluminum Pletcher rack that was popular in the 70s, and since one of the rear fender stays broke off, the fender is partially held in place with zip ties attached to the rear rack.

So just to add more stress to everything, the dog seems to be kind of sick and I'm about to make an appointment with the Vet. Tomorrow I will hopefully pack up the last few things from the my office. In the meantime there's a new fire drill about proposed state budget cuts affecting teaching hospitals. At least I was able to make it out to the WeMoRi this morning.

Crunch Week

It never fails. The week before the Tour de La, or for that matter almost any other major weekend operation, something unexpected pops up to throw a monkey wrench into the works. It looks like this year will be no different. On the plus side, the weather forecast doesn't look disastrous, which sometimes happens. On the minus side, there are a lot of loose ends this year and I'm expecting a ton of things are going to have to happen between now and Friday. We're trying to slightly scale back some of the race's expenses to accommodate the smaller turnouts that have come to be normal over the past few years since the Lance bubble burst. We're all really missing those 50-rider Cat. 5 fields that used to provide a lot of the race revenue as well as a lot of the future Cat. 4s and Cat. 3s. Interestingly, the Cat. 1/2/3 fields don't seem to be suffering as much as some of the others. Anyway, I've definitely been thrown a curve ball this week.

Where we are now

For well over a year our office has been planning on moving from University Square near the uptown campus to the 1555 Poydras building downtown across from the Superdome. The process has been moving along at a glacial pace amid various considerations of timing, space, renovation costs, etc., especially since there hasn't been a huge sense of urgency about it. A couple of months ago, however, the renovations to the space at 1555 were underway and it finally looked like it was actually going to happen. Last week it was looking like the actual move was two or three weeks away because of a delay in getting the new furniture delivered. Things that have to do with space at a university, however, are never that simple.

Where we're going

At the end of last week we were basically given the order to pack up and be ready to go by the end of this week. Naturally, this is also the week before the Tour and the week in which I'm planning on taking Friday off so I can take care of all of the last-minute issues, print out waivers, load  up vehicles, and go across the lake in time for Friday night registration.

So after I finished up the 2017 Race Bible on Sunday, Candy and I went down to her office where they have a big copier and printed out and stapled 150 ten-page, front and back, full color, booklet format copies. At least that's out of the way! We are still desperately seeking follow cars and lead vehicles for the road races on Saturday morning, which sadly is the normal situation for this sort of thing. Despite having raised a lot of sponsorship dollars, we'll be lucky to break even given the relatively low turnouts for races over the past few years.

Covington always
makes a nice
poster for the crit.

I remember when we put on the Tour with about $300 in cash and a bunch of merchandise prizes from the bike shop and no police or toilets or parking or anything. Oh, how times have changed.  For the road race we have 10 police officers, five or six officials including motorefs, and a venue budget of well over $3,000. Sunday's criterium in Covington involves another $2,500 in police costs. The whole event, which might have 150 - 175 riders in a good year, costs around $14,000 to put on. Figure over $100 per racer with total net entry fee revenue of maybe $7,500. Ain't nobody gettin' rich here! Just last week I was looking at a plea from one of the big Florida promoters trying to get people to pre-register for one of the races there because he needs 200 riders pre-registered in order to no cancel. If we could get 200 riders around here most of our problems would go away and we might actually come out ahead. Anyway, hopefully we will muddle our way through the weekend, not screw up the results too badly, keep everyone out of the hospital, and wrap up a fun race for the 46th consecutive year, not a single one of which has been a "given."

Another unfortunate consequence of the Tour weekend is that I am off the bike and stressed out for two or three days. I was happy to have managed to get almost 250 miles in last week despite all the rain. This week is looking to be kind of rainy through Wednesday, but after that it should be nice until the rain starts moving back in some time on Sunday. Hopefully we'll be able to get through the criteriums before any of it hits, but it's way too early to tell at this point. At least there doesn't appear to be any threat of severe weather.

Our mayor's name is Mitch. He can mobilize resources
to remove statues like nobody's business.  Not so much
when it comes to routine city services or crime prevention.

Sunday's Giro was a little odd. Everything was pretty normal all the way out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles - moderate to fast pace but nothing severe. I was hanging out near the tail end of the paceline since my legs were feeling a little sore from Saturday. I was expecting to go harder on the way back. As usual, I didn't stop under the "turnaround tree" where a lot of the Giro likes to take a quick break and soon found myself with VJ, Taco and one other rider. We cruised down Chef Highway for a while expecting the pack to be swallowing us up, but then VJ went to the front on his TT bike and just towed us along at 24-25 mph for miles and miles. For some reason the rest of the group had decided to take it easy on the way back and we never saw them again. After we got back to Marconi I turned back and rode the other way until I finally saw the group coming over the Bayou St. John bridge. Sometimes these things happen on the Giro!

Flat Tire Weather

Scattered Giro riders waiting on the first flat of the day.

It's around 10 pm on Saturday and outside it's raining - again. I've been pretty lucky this week, having somehow avoided being caught in any heavy rain, but it's been impossible to avoid riding on wet roads. Twice this week I did my morning rides on the Rain Bike, and one day I had to skip riding altogether. On Wednesday evening a few of the NOBC officers got together over at Lakeview Brew to go over some things for the upcoming 46th Annual Tour de Louisiane. Of course it was raining. I went there via Canal Blvd. which has an underpass at the train tracks just before the Cafe' that often floods. There was a rushing waterfall of water pouring in from the right as I drove through about six inches of water. Fifteen minutes later it was at least six feet deep and the police were out there to keep people from trying to drive through it. I had to take the long way back to get home. On Friday I went out to the levee in the morning. It had rained earlier but the streets were dry enough that I took the Bianchi. That was fine until I got to the place where there is a bypass around the big pipes that Jefferson Parish installed to pump rainwater to the river. The whole thing is an engineering disaster. They obviously failed to pack down the mud on which they put that section of asphalt, and for the past few weeks the asphalt has been cracking under the weight of, I guess, the police cars that patrol the bike path.  Well, yesterday morning there was a big slab of asphalt sticking up in the air and the rest of the path there was covered with mud that had washed down the levee. I was lucky I saw it in time to slow down and kind of tiptoe through the mess without sliding out or crashing into the broken asphalt. Of course the bike was covered with mud. I ran into Steve Johnson, and then as we were turning around at the Little Dip we saw Woody, so I rode with him most of the way back. This morning I went out to the Giro only after checking the radar and deciding there was a reasonable chance of staying dry even though the street was still pretty wet. We kind of lucked out and got the whole ride in without getting rained on, so that was good, but of course there were flat tires to deal with.

There's never been any doubt that riding on wet roads results in more flat tires. In fact, it's probably the main reason, right behind having to clean the bike afterward, that a lot of riders won't go out when the streets are wet. What nobody ever seems to agree on, however, is just why there are so many more flats when it's wet. The most common theories are that the rain washes a lot of stuff onto the road, that the water causes stuff to stick to the tires, and that the water lubricates the sharp things making it easier for them to penetrate the rubber. I suppose it's probably safe assume that all three things are in play. Invariably, the flats seem to be caused by tiny little shards of rock or glass or whatever that gets embedded in the tire. Such was the case today when we had a flat no more than two miles from the start of the Giro. I count myself lucky this week since I survived five days of rides without flatting. Well, that's if you don't count my commuter which somehow developed a flat tire despite the Mr. Tuffy's. Anyway, the forecast isn't looking too optimistic until Wednesday, so I guess the wet rides aren't over quite yet. At least the hourly forecast is looking pretty good for tomorrow morning's Giro Ride time, not that I am putting a lot of faith in the forecasts lately.

No-Man's Land

no-man's-land: noun [ C usually sing ] /ˈnoʊ ˌmænz ˌlænd/  Disputed ground between the front lines or trenches of two opposing armies.

The really old geezers from the master's race

Ten miles into Sunday's 60 mile road race I lifted my head and looked up the road. Nothing. I looked behind me for the main pack.  Also nothing. Ahead, one of the motorefs had stopped on the shoulder. As I passed he shouted, "Two minutes to the break, two minutes to the field."  Ahh, I thought, the very definition of No-man's Land to a cyclist.

It had all started at the first turn, barely two miles from the start of the Feliciana Road Race Master's race. We'd been warned at the start that slightly downhill the turn was sketchy with rough asphalt and gravel. So naturally that's where Kevin Landry decided to launch the race's first attack. The pack, understandably, hesitated to react as he rode off the front and one rider took off in pursuit. The front riders were unconcerned and/or blocking, but a few riders behind them apparently didn't share their complacency. Soon I saw Rick way over in the left oncoming traffic lane passing the entire group. I thought, "Well that's clearly a penalty." The moto-ref thought so too and he was barely to the front of the field before I heard the engine rev up behind him, relegating him to a little time-out at the back of the pack. Kevin soon rode off into the distance as the pack just cruised. A minute later, a little attack went and two or three more, including Rick and Butch, separated themselves from the field. All of the teams, at least those with more than two riders like mine, seemed to be represented and the pace lagged even more except when VJ would move to the front and up the pace for a while.

Afraid that someone would see such a thing on Strava, I took a little dig, hoping to draw out a few riders and do a little damage control. That succeeded only in leaving me out there alone. I figured I was in this more for the training than whatever glory there might be in placing well in the old geezer category, so I just pushed on at a moderate speed. The field, of course, knew the same thing that I knew, which was that there was absolutely no chance of me time-trialing the next fifty-five miles faster than the field. After making the turn off of Highway 10, there were a few places where I could see the second break up ahead. I think that at one point I probably had the gap down to around 45-60 seconds, but they they seemed to just pull away. Not too long after that I couldn't see the break, but could definitely see the pack coming up behind me. Time to throw in the towel. I eased up for a mile or so and slotted back into the front half of the pack. I figured that, at best, we'd end up sprinting for 5th place or something. At worst, there'd be another attack, the field would split, and I'd get dropped like a rock. Somewhere along the way my teammate Adrian to a flat.

Flotsam and Jetsam on the swollen Mississippi

Surprisingly, we went up the "big" hills at the end of the second lap pretty smoothly. If there was an attack, it was a little anemic and didn't shed many, if any, riders. I think it was somewhere on the second lap that we started picking up casualties from the earlier breaks. It was also when a big thunderstorm moved over us and drenched us with pelting rain.  I still figured we'd  not be seeing Kevin and whoever he'd taken with him until after the finish. As more and more riders started showing up from the earlier breaks, the pace started ramping up. I think it was when Butch came back to the pack that the C-Spire team decided it was time to go to the front. As we started the last lap the sections that we'd done at 23 mph were now being done closer to 25 mph. When we turned onto Hwy 10, I was behind Bronson, one of Kevin's teammates, and heard him tell Alex, another of his teammates, his tire was going flat. They both stopped, hoping to be able to pace themselves back to the pack after the wheel change. It was particularly bad timing, though, because once we turned off of Hwy 10 and hit the smooth, mostly uphill, Hwy 421, the C-spire team could smell blood and most of them went to the front. Now the average speed was staying in the 25 mph range and we were closing in on the remaining escapees. I guess we were only five miles from the finish when Frank Moak took a last long pull to finally reel in Kevin, obviously with the idea of setting Woody up for the pack sprint. As he dropped back, I heard him say something to the effect of, "Well, my work is done for the day." As Kevin merged into the group, I could see him looking back for his teammates, Bronson and Alex, who he no doubt had been hoping were having an easy time sitting at the back while he'd been off the front. I told him they'd stopped because of a flat. His only remaining teammate was Troy, who was now very focused on staying near the front. With just a few miles remaining, I was surprised that the pace seemed to be slacking. We came down one hill to find the race crew dragging a fallen tree off the road, forcing us to go around in the oncoming lane. Good thing they were on top of it!  I heard later that the breakaway in one of the races ahead of us had to dismount and climb over it!

Fishing right off the levee

By that point, I'd been just following wheels for twenty miles and wasn't feeling too bad. Since it was looking like it would come down to a big pack sprint, I figured I may as well take a shot at it and started working to stay up near the front. There are two or three significant climbs within the final three miles on this circuit, and I never seem to know exactly which one I'm on, but regardless, I was fully expecting a brutal attack to come on one of them. Surprisingly, that didn't happen. We passed the 1 km to go sign all bunched up. I found myself just behind Woody, who had Troy right alongside him. I figured I'd just try to stay there until the fireworks started, so I waited, and waited, and waited. 500 meters came and went and I was still waiting. Normally, this would have been a setup for disaster. I was kind of boxed in behind Woody, who I knew had been sick for the past week, and we were now going slow enough to entice someone to launch a fly-by attack that I would definitely not be able to cover, much less come around, before the finish.

Wildlife on the river

We went up the last little incline and still nobody jumped. Finally we hit the 200 meter flag going about 22 mph when Woody jumped and the sprint was finally on. With Troy and Woody battling it out ahead, I went to Woody's left, dropped down another cog or two, and stood on the pedals. I was surprised nobody came around me. So I ended up finishing 3rd thanks to a whole series events among two or three teams in which I was more of an observer than instigator. Even so, I was more than pleased with my ride. For a change, I never felt like I was really on the ropes. If there's one thing that I know for sure, it's that the more frequently you race, the better you get at racing. It's almost independent of what you're doing the rest of the week.

Next up is the 46th Annual Tour de Louisiane, which of course I won't be riding since I'm the Race Director and an official, etc.

Since I had today, Memorial Day, off, and since it was raining early in the morning, I went out alone on the rain bike around 10 am for an easy sightseeing ride on the levee. The roads were still wet when I started, but soon the sun started breaking through the clouds. By the time I turned around out at the upriver Jefferson parish line, things were pretty dry. The river is still fairly high, which brings a lot of wildlife close to its base as the batture floods. I spent a lot of the time with my camera in my hand taking photos on the fly of wading birds, and a few people too. When I say it was an easy ride, I mean it. My max heart rate for the ride was 112 bpm.

A Little Rest

Old Man River is a little high lately.

After skipping Monday's ride, I was ready to get back to the routine Tuesday morning. The souvenir bedbug bites I'd picked up in Brookhaven were still bothering me and my right eyelid was pretty puffy from one of them, but otherwise I was good to go. That carried over to Wednesday, which was perhaps unfortunate. Wednesday morning it was windy hell, which made the WeMoRi ride harder than usual, even for me who gets there after they've already ridden seven miles on Lakeshore Drive. I rode pretty hard anyway, stopping at Starbucks for coffee before riding home. Although I hadn't taken any more Benadryl, I was feeling a little sub-par all day, but decided to do the Wednesday night training race anyway. On the way out I caught the light at Carrollton and Washington.  Since there are two lanes just past there that turn onto the interstate, I knew I'd have to get on the pedals fast when the light changed so I could claim the lane and not get chopped off on the right. The light changed. I hesitated for a moment as a car ran through the red light, the I jumped on the pedals only to find another car coming at me who  had also run the red light and was racing to cross the intersection before the cars, and I, go going. I hit the brakes and stopped. The car screeched to a stop. I stared at the driver, pointed at the light, and went.  No use arguing with someone like that. By that time of the evening it was even more windy than it had been in the morning and I knew the race would get blown away pretty quickly. Indeed, a couple of guys kind of rode off the front on the first lap, which was fine. Going over the levee just east of Elysian Fields I was behind a tall guy with fuzzy legs and some kind of bag hanging from his top tube. The wind had been blowing off the lake, so I was escheloned a bit to the left. When he hit the incline he eased up and drifted left right into my front wheel. Luckily I saved it. When I talked to him later I found out he didn't know which way to pull off, or why it would matter.  Learning opportunity. Anyway, the group was rapidly disintegrating and I soon found myself with a little 3-rider chase group. I use the term "chase" loosely here. We were riding pretty hard, though, so it was a good workout. Coming around the Seabrook loop on the second lap we were suddenly confronted with two cars basically stopped. I hit the brakes and went right, the other two guys went left. After having already had two near-death experiences that evening I decided I needed a little alone time, so I didn't try to close the gap that had opened and instead just rode solo down to the other end, turning around early to get back in with the other guys for the last lap. By the time I got home I was feeling pretty wasted. I guess it was the wind.

Thursday morning's ride on the levee was nice. There were some fast sections and some not so fast sections, which was good because I was still feeling kind of tired. I happily stopped at Z'otz on the way home for coffee and contemplation, taking a nice candid shot of an older woman with her head buried in the newspaper. She was busily talking politics with the barista. I think I overheard her say something like, "We haven't had a good republican president since Eisenhower." Anyway, by then I was feeling like Friday was going to have to be an easy day - really easy. So this morning I went out to the levee again, this time alone, and spun out an easy twenty miles or so. The weather was great thanks to the little cool front that had brought all of that wind on Wednesday, but I think that's all over now and we'll be quickly getting back to summertime temperatures. The Tour de La is rapidly approaching and I have a big long list of volunteers needed and things that must be done with lots of blank spaces in it right now. Putting on the race is always an exercise in compromise - and anxiety.

I posted to FB a photo of the bunch of old frames that's been at the Tulane Cycling headquarters since last summer. I had been hoping they could raise a little cash for the club, but that never really came to pass and they're just taking  up room, so now I'm trying to give them away. Whatever's left next week will probably go in the dumpster. I think a few of these were flooded during Katrina in the old Bicycle World shop on Calhoun, but a couple of them look like they could be built up in to nice bikes by someone willing to track down the right headsets, forks, seatposts, etc. If you had a big bunch of spare parts lying around you could probably make some of them rideable.

Danielle is still waiting to see an endocrinologist up in Washington. Meanwhile, Blue Cross is trying to weasel out of paying her hospital bills because she's covered under both that through LSUHSC and another policy under Shannon. Kenny's Bianchi is still missing thanks to UPS. It's been two weeks and according to the tracking information it never got any farther than Jackson Mississippi where it just disappeared. How does a big bike box just disappear?

Bugged Out in Brookhaven

Coming over the top of the climb in my
usual spot - probably the hot spot lap

The weather forecast was looking pretty dismal on Friday afternoon when I hit the road for Brookhaven, MS and the resurrected Mississippi Gran Prix stage race. Just in case the 50-90% chances of rain weren't enough disincentive, there were other complications. Candy had a conference in California, so I'd need to find someone to keep the dog alive until Monday. On the plus side, Christian had already reserved a room so at least I'd have a place to sleep Saturday night. Since I was going to be officiating the Cat. 1/2/3 criterium on Friday night, however, I needed to get to Brookhaven around 5 pm. Also, I had the generator, race clock, and radios that would be needed for the weekend. Although I was sure the Friday evening criterium would be over well before any rain showed up, I was already resigned to racing in the rain on Saturday and Sunday, and can't say I was much looking forward to that.

The Friday night crit went pretty well. The officials, including me, were staying at a guest house in back of someone's home near town, so we all headed over there to finish up and post the results. Considering the 50+ rider field and difficult camera lighting situation for a race finishing after dark, the results were pretty good, which is to say that there were only a few riders for whom we had no actual finish placings. I slept on a little couch that night, and we were up early the next morning to drive up to the road race course north of Brookhaven where I switched, at least temporarily, from official mode to bike racer mode. The masters field had only fifteen riders in it, but I wasn't expecting to be finishing ahead of most of them in this 60 mile road race. It's not the right way to be thinking when starting a race, obviously, but I was feeling kind of mentally and physically drained already. I'd ridden the road course a few times in prior years, so I knew there were a couple of significant uphill stretches on the back side. In my pessimism, I was fully expecting to get dropped on one of them. Well, that didn't take long to happen. On the first lap I was sitting at the back of the field as we started up one of the long climbs. The pace didn't seem very fast, so I wasn't really paying much attention since it was still early in the race. We were about halfway up when I finally got a look at the front of the group and realized there was already this big gap that had split the field right in half. It was kind of strange because back where I was there didn't seem to have been any acceleration at all. It was like someone on the middle of the paceline just let the gap open without even trying to stay with the riders ahead. Anyway, by the time we came over the top the gap was way too large to close alone. I ended up with three other riders - Rick, Brett, and VJ. VJ would take long pulls as usual, and we were working together fairly well, but nobody seemed willing to make the extra effort needed to catch, and for a long time we could see the front group about a minute up the road. Somewhere along the way we rode through a little rain shower, but it wasn't too bad and half of the course never saw any rain at all. I was feeling OK most of the time, but by then we were just riding in to finish. A few miles from the finish Brett took a hard pull that I guess is where we lost VJ, so we ended up with just three of us. At 200 meters Rick jumped and I started to go to stay with him, but didn't have any motivation to come around. By the time the TT was scheduled to start the weather was looking a lot worse. I arrived at the TT location in the rain with thunder rumbling in the distance. I really didn't even want to get on the bike. I rode the time trial with no motivation at all, just to finish so I could race the next day.

Saturday night I stayed at the local Comfort Inn with Christian and Rachel, arriving pretty late since I was helping with results and then went to eat at a local Mexican place with the other officials.

Nice shot (not mine) of the climb with the
200 meter flag in the background

The rain was supposed to be even worse on Sunday, and when I arrived at the circuit race course I had no reason to doubt that. It was raining and there was thunder and lightning all over the place. I  helped get the finish line set up as the riders for the first race started showing up. The officials postponed the first race for about twenty minutes so that most of the rain and lightning could move through. The Cat 4/5 women and Juniors raced pretty much in the rain, but by the time the next race started the sky was clear and the sun was starting to heat thing up a lot. The Masters race was mostly pretty slow. It was a 24 mile race on a 6 mile circuit that included a mile or two of really rough old asphalt bordering on gravel. Naturally, that was where someone would attack on every lap. At the end of the lap was a long uphill that, for some reason, we rode up at a smooth tempo except for the points hot spot on the second lap. On the last lap everything was still together until Butch launched just before the rough section. I was right there and went with him, but burned my last few matches to do so. When he eased up one of his teammates counter-attacked and next thing I knew I was off the back. I could see that the group had split.  I backed down a bit to recover and once I got off of the rough section I could see that the group had come back together and slowed down considerably. Wes, in the follow car, came around me and I got a little draft off of his van for a couple of minutes. When I re-joined the group it was going about 18 mph with the finish just about 2 k up the road. I was a little tired from the solo chase, so when the sprint started at the base of the climb I just rode tempo up to the top. It wasn't like I was in contention for anything. Even so, I felt like it was a good weekend for me and I was glad I'd gone. My race fitness has been really slow to come back, in no small part due to the fact that I haven't been doing much in the way of intensity on my training rides. Still, there were some times when I felt like I was going better than I had at the last race, so I guess that's some kind of progress.

I changed back into regular clothes and helped with the officiating a bit for the next couple of races.   That's when I started noticing the itchy insect bites on my neck. I could feel three bumps in a row and knew immediately what it probably was.  Bedbugs. I'd been bitten by bedbugs a few years earlier, also at a hotel in Brookhaven.  Amazingly, it never rained again. The Cat. 1/2/3 race looked fairly animated and thanks to the long uphill the results were pretty straightforward despite the fact that Ricky was having trouble with one of the finish line cameras. I stuck around for the Cat. 1/2/3 awards, and even got a small prize for my lackluster GC placing in the Masters race.  By the time I was on the road for home the bites on my neck were all swollen and itchy and I could feel more bites around my eye and on one  hand and arm. That all got pretty uncomfortable by evening despite copious amounts of hydrocortisone cream. I had planned on riding but was so uncomfortable I just made some coffee instead. I took some Benadryl this morning, but things are still pretty itchy and swollen so I'm about to take some more. I assume the groggy spacey feeling is from the Benadryl.

A Ride with Hector

I was reminded this morning that I'd never logged anything here about our ride with Hector Picard last week. I was surprised, but I guess with everything that was happening I never got past posting some photos to Facebook.

So it was a few weeks ago that I got an email, or Facebook message, or text, or something (it was all so much simpler when there were just phone calls and emails) from Hector. He was doing a tour (Tour to Inspire) of sorts, passing through a bunch of cities, and was asking about local group rides that he might get in on. People contact me all the time about that sort of thing, and I never really know what to tell them unless they let me know that they're a Cat. 2 or something. He was going to be in town on a Tuesday and was looking for a ride in the morning, so I told him about the regular early morning ride on the lakefront and lake trail bike path. As I often do, I sent him links to a recent Strava page for the ride so he could see the route and, more importantly, the speeds. A while later he replied and said he'd be there. Ordinarily, that wouldn't have caused me any concern, but it turns out that Hector lost all of one arm and most of the other in an accident, and so I naturally wondered about his ability to deal with a fast group ride on unfamiliar roads. Turns out he's the guy in the video that made the rounds a while back where he is shown changing a flat, arguably faster and better than a lot of riders I know. It also turns out he's done a bunch of triathlons, including Hawaii. So I rode out to meet the group early on that Tuesday and Hector's right there in the paceline without the slightest problem. He's a better bike-handler than some riders I know, and somehow manages being in a paceline at 28 mph, shifting with his chin and braking with his knee. I was worried about how he'd deal with the section where we have to ride in the grass, up the concrete levee apron, over a curb, underneath the Causeway bridge, and back down on the other side. I assumed he'd  have to stop and get off to do that.  He didn't.  Somebody else fell, but Hector rode it just like everyone else. I think we were all pretty impressed and humbled.

This weekend is the Mississippi Gran Prix stage race up in Brookhaven. Looking at the list of pre-registered riders for the Master 40+ race, I'm pretty sure I'll be getting my ass kicked pretty badly. I've apparently achieved that age where all those fast guys who you were avoiding by rider Masters are now old enough to be themselves avoiding all those even faster guys in the Cat. 1/2/3 race by riding Masters. So the age, and for that matter ability, gap for me is pretty much the same as it would have been if I'd been riding the Cat. 1/2/3 race a few years ago. I'm scheduled to officiate the Friday night Cat. 1/2/3 criterium, which should be interesting since there will be at least fifty riders in that one and it finishes in the dark. On the plus side, it probably won't be raining.  On the minus side, it probably will be raining Saturday and Sunday. The Weather Channel is showing 60% and 90% chance of rain for Saturday and Sunday respectively.