Thursday on the Levee

Regrouping after the turnaround

It felt pretty warm, but I knew it wasn't really summer because there wasn't sweat dripping off of Ray's shoes with every pedal stroke ... yet. We had a good-sized group on Thursday morning, unlike Tuesday that for some reason was practically just Rich and me. We are finally at that time of year when there are no wardrobe decisions to make. All that matters is how much water to bring and how far down your jersey zipper will go.

Today there was a west northwest breeze that seemed to be keeping the speed down a bit on the way out. Since I'm planning on racing on Saturday, and my legs have felt kind of achy all week, I'd already decided to take it easy this morning. That meant short pulls and careful drafting and low gears. I kind of worked, I guess. As we passed the playground on the way out I heard someone call out and, looking around, saw Keith down in the parking lot with his bike in pieces, changing a flat. He told us to just go on and he'd catch us later on the return trip. Woody and Jeff were doing most of the work keeping the pace up, although it would kind of sag a bit when one of them wasn't on the front. I was trying to maintain the speed, but was taking much shorter pulls. It was good to see that the part of the bike path around the green pipes that had been under re-construction recently was open this morning. That was nice, but I feel a little worried about how quickly it was done. I guess we'll know pretty soon if the road is going to crumble again.

After the turnaround we picked up a bit of a tailwind pretty much all the way back that had the speeds into the upper 20s, even at the same effort levels we'd had on the way out when we were going more like 22. I think the wind was increasing the whole ride. Anyway, we hadn't gotten very far from the turnaround when we came upon Keith standing on the side of the road with another flat. Someone gave him a tube and I gave him a CO2. He had a big slash in the tire that he booted with something like an energy bar wrapper and then put maybe 50 psi into the tube to keep it from blowing through. He made it all the way back, so that worked out pretty well.

We are starting to get things together for the Tour de La on June 9-10. We really need to find some sponsorship this year. At the moment, we don't have anything nailed down in that regard other than the team sponsorship from Apolline, and we're still having trouble getting a response from the church where we always have the road race. I have a meeting next week with Covington to get the criterium arrangements set up. That should be easy since we will be doing everything just like last year.

Cluster Flats and Time Trials

NOBC riders warming up for the Time Trial

Last weekend was the annual LAMBRA Time Trial Championship that the club hosted over near LaPlace. That particular road, La-51, has been used for time trials for 40 years or so since it's easy to get to, dead flat, offers some protection from the wind, has a fairly nice road surface, and can be essentially closed to traffic without causing much of a problem to anyone. As usual, online registrations for the TT, which are required, started sluggishly with most people waiting until the last 24 hours to finally pull the trigger. Situation normal. I think we ended up with slightly over 100 riders, which was similar to last year.

Cluster Flats on the Giro Ride Saturday

Since I knew I'd be officiating rather than riding on Sunday, I was glad to see a good-sized group for the Giro Ride on Saturday. The weather around here has been pretty stable lately, which is to say we haven't had any significant rain for a couple of weeks. The temperature has, naturally, been rising as we tilt toward the sun, and we've already nudged up against the low 90s. Fortunately, the early morning temperatures have remained relatively comfortable...so far. As I sat around outside Starbucks Saturday morning, chatting with the local riders and waiting for the 7 am roll-out, Phil mentioned that he'd already had a flat that morning as he was riding over the river on the Huey P. Long bridge.

Screwed on Chef Menteur

I didn't think any more about it until he had another flat on Hayne Blvd. A number of people stopped with him, so the front part of the group that I was in decided to go ahead and continue. We'd all regroup at the turnaround anyway. I was happy with that because I needed the exercise and knew I wouldn't be getting any on Sunday. So we had a good fast ride out to Venetian Isles where everyone came back together for the trip back. I guess we were about halfway back on Chef when Phil flatted again. This time I stopped as most of the group continued. I figured he was probably going to need a tube and CO2 since he'd already flatted once. Well, it was more than that. The first tube we put in failed immediately. There was a pretty good cut in the tire that we booted with a piece of candy wrapper or something we found on the side of the road. We went over that tire with a magnifying glass and couldn't find anything in it, so we tried again and finally got rolling. Well, that didn't last long. Since we'd already taken so long fixing flats, and the guys who had stopped, besides me, were all planning on riding back across the river with Phil, we decided to just take Chef Menteur back into town rather than head out to Lakeshore Drive. Sure enough, a few miles later Phil's tire went flat again. I think we went through four or five tubes and countless CO2 cartridges, blowing the O-ring out of my inflator along the way, before we got him going again. Another couple of miles along the debris-strewn bike lane and I start hearing the whap-whap-whap of something stuck in someone's tire. This time it was a sheetrock screw that had impaled Mike's tire and carbon rim. We unscrewed that and pulled out our last remaining tubes and CO2 cartridges and started up again. Moments later, Phil's tire went flat again. He ended up having to call for extraction somewhere around Dillard University. Not a good day for tires.

Three seconds.....

Sunday morning I was out the door before dawn to meet up with our awesome crew of volunteers for the Time Trial. The weather was pretty nice, although the moderate north wind would be making it hard for the riders on their way out to the turnaround. With 102 or so riders to start, and a couple of 5-minute gaps between the 10 km, 20 km, and 40 km groups, it was almost 10:00 before we sent the final rider out onto the course. By then all of the riders doing the shorter distances had finished, so I immediately began working on the results. Everything went pretty smoothly except for three of the earlier riders that had finished close together and through some miscommunication at the finish line, we didn't know which rider went with which finish time. It took a while to track them down, but thanks to their personal computers and the process of elimination we got those figured out.

Although we didn't have any new records for the Men, Stephanie Smith broke her own LAMBRA and course record and set a new Women's 40 km record of 56:44, which was pretty impressive and not done under ideal conditions, given the wind. So the Time Trial was a pretty good success all-around. I headed home and spend a couple of hours posting results and completing the post-event report, etc. and probably should have gotten on the bike for a ride but, well, I didn't.

This week the weather for riding has been nice. On Wednesday I went out to the WeMoRi a little early and got ahead of the group. I rode all the way down Lakeshore Drive to the Seabrook loop, and then all the way back to Marconi before they finally came up from behind. I put in a few good efforts on Wednesday, and perhaps that's why I felt pretty flat on Thursday morning for the long levee ride. The first time I went to the front to take a pull my legs loaded up after about 25 pedal strokes and I knew it wasn't going to be a good day. This morning I went out for a really slow recover ride, so I hope that gives my old legs enough time to get back to normal before the weekend.

Thursday morning on the levee

Tonight I'm hosting a little end-of-season party for the Tulane riders. There's at the end of exams right now and I guess a few will be missing, but we're expecting eight or nine. I went out after work yesterday and got some stuff to make hamburgers and pasta salad, so hopefully I'll be able to get home a little early this afternoon to get that all together.

Finally Like Summertime

I love Strava's Flyby animation. This is the end of this morning's WeMoRi.

Looks like the 50s are finally gone from the long-range forecast and soon enough I'll be lugging around two full water bottles instead of one. I might even drink most of the water. It's such a relief to get out of bed in the morning and not have to have the internal debate over base layers and arm-warmers and gloves and vests and socks. Just grab a pair of shorts and a jersey and go. Of course, it's not really hot yet, and the early morning rides right now start out cool and comfortable. Hope it lasts a little longer.

With nice weather and little wind, there were a lot of survivors at the end of the Saturday Giro Ride last week.

So the training rides for the past week or so have been pretty routine. The weather has been quite nice, there are more and more riders on the road, and a nice string of area races are rapidly approaching. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, they recently began tearing up the levee bike path where it goes around the green "pump to the lake" pipes. That little bypass was a pretty spectacular engineering fiasco (assuming there was actually any engineering involved at all, which is questionable). They created it in record time less maybe a year and a half ago and almost immediately it began to crumble under the weight of the police SUVs and whatever other "official" vehicles were driving up and down the path. Eventually they came and did some asphalt patchwork, which held up for practically no time at all.

About to tear up the asphalt and try again.

By spring there was a narrow 6" line that we'd navigate, in the dark, to avoid the holes and mud and broken asphalt. It was down to about 3" a week ago when we finally saw some signs that they were preparing to fix it, again. A couple of days ago they closed it off and completely removed the road surface. We can only hope that they think this through this time and put something there that will hold up. In the meantime it's not too difficult to drop down to River Road and then climb back up on the existing access roads, so it could be worse. The real question is whether the work will take two weeks or six months.

Last weekend I rode both the Saturday and Sunday Giro Rides. It's Jazz Fest season around here, so there are always a few people who don't show up or leave early. Priorities, you know. The group was a good size both days anyway, and I thought that Saturday's ride was particularly fast. We were back onto Lakeshore Drive before 9 am, so maybe five to ten minutes earlier than average. Sunday also had its moments, but like Saturday the wind was light so it was easy for people to stay with the group even when the pace heated up.

Lots of people, not a lot of staff.

Candy is leaving for a conference in New York on Friday morning and so yesterday she decided to go down to the local DMV to get her "Real ID" driver's license since hers expires about now. I figured I'd go with her and get mine at the same time. Mine doesn't expire until November, so this would just basically swap my existing license for the new version until I renew for real later in the year. So we collected up the required documentation - social security cards, birth certificates, two bills showing your name and home address, etc., and headed over there from work around 11:30 or so. There were over 100 people sitting in the room full of plastic chairs -- waiting. Of the 25 desks lining the periphery of the room, only three or four were staffed. Two long hours later, they finally called her number, followed immediately by mine. Well, they wouldn't give her the license because her social security card, which I would estimate to be 50-60 years old, had been laminated. Really? Luckily she has a valid passport, because she wouldn't be able to get on the airplane in New York without it. My own transaction went fine and I had a freshly minted driver's license with the little star in the corner within ten minutes.

This year we lost a couple of LAMBRA races, and I had been worried about the big mid-summer lull in the season, but fortunately the Semi-tough guys stepped up and will be putting on a 4-race weekday series on the Lakefront. Also, Dustin and 4D will be putting on a 3-criterium weekend in July right over in Hammond on a fairly non-technical course in the local park. Hopefully I'll be able to make most of those. In the meantime, though, I'm focused on putting on the Time Trial Championships this coming Sunday, and then the Tour de Louisiane a few weeks later. After that, we have the Vuelta over in Alexandria that is just a criterium this year, followed by the Feliciana Road Race the following weekend. There's supposed to be a road race in Jackson the next weekend but I haven't seen any details on that one yet.  It looks like the TT is in good shape. The weather forecast is good, a number of people have volunteered to help, and Eddie is providing enough sponsorship cash to pay for most of the police detail. I'll be spending some time Friday night and Saturday morning setting up the start list and preparing event waivers and bib numbers, and then once again packing a ton of stuff into the Volvo early Sunday morning for the short trip over to the Swamp Tour place near LaPlace. Hoping everything goes smoothly despite not having Robin or Mignon on hand this year.

Tag-along

A rainy and desolate TT start for the SCCCC championship weekend. This was actually better weather than I'd expected.

The weather when we headed out from New Orleans last Friday morning was beautiful. The forecast for Wichita Falls for Saturday was ugly. Situation normal for a collegiate race weekend, I guess. I drove the "early van" with Gavin and Kaitlyn, starting our 10-hour trip around 9:30 or so. I'd brought my bike in hopes of getting in some miles during the Sunday morning road races, on the assumption that the cold front would have moved through by then.

The drive went pretty smoothly, at least until Dallas where it never goes smoothly. Somewhere in the Interstate spaghetti that is the Dallas highway system we came to a halt. Waze had alerted us just moments before and had already plotted a somewhat circuitous bypass to get us around the traffic jam that I assume had been caused by a crash somewhere up the road. That was interesting, and pretty soon we were tooling down the interstate again at the speed limit, plus or minus 5 mph. We got to the hotel after dark - I guess around 7:30 or so - and ended up eating a rather unappetizing dinner at a Denny's near the hotel. The forecast for Saturday was looking no better than it had the day before.

Kaitlyn was off the front from the start despite the wet streets

Saturday morning I was up early looking at the radar, which was really unnecessary since a glance out the window at the rain told me everything I needed to know. It would be very wet for the morning time trial. We were out the door by 6:30 or so, headed for what used to be one of the local bike shops and was now just an empty used-to-be bike shop where they were doing registration. They had already sent out a preliminary start list but promised a complete one after registration. Arriving at the start location maybe 20 minutes before the start, we were practically alone. The only clue that something might be happening was a solitary yellow portable toilet sitting in the triangle formed by the intersecting roads. We sat in the car with the heater running and watched the light rain. I was actually looking better than I'd expected. Obviously the roads would be wet, but the rain was pretty light. Eventually the officials arrived. As seems to be standard practice at Texas time trials, the start list, if there had ever been one, got tossed out the window and one of the officials was basically calling for "anyone" to come to the start line. While this kind of random start list can work OK, it does tend to open the door to mistakes when compiling the results. On the plus side, it meant that our four riders would be able to start earlier rather than later, which would minimize the amount of time I'd be hanging around in the rain.

The second row was a bad place to start for Gavin

The criterium was scheduled for 4 pm, which was just about the time the rain was supposed to be ending. First up was the combined Men C, Women B race with Kaitlyn. They were using a shortened course on campus because of some construction and a baseball game, but at least the road surface was fairly good concrete. Nonetheless, the group rounded the first corner at almost walking speed. By the second lap Kaitlyn was already rolling off the front. She would stay out there in time trial mode for the rest of the race. There was a small chase group that hovered anywhere from ten to twenty seconds behind her, but somehow they never got it together enough to catch, so she won. Gavin was up next in the Men's B race where his relative inexperience had him starting a little too far back. There was already a break by the time they were halfway around the first lap and Gavin was stuck in the second group which was showing no signs at all of chasing. He eventually realized that he could ride solo faster than the group and rolled off the front, but it was too little, too late. In the Men's A race, Elliott, who had upgraded to Cat. A the week before, was off the back right away, and Grayson ended up off the back as well, so that was a little disappointing. On the plus side, by the time the A race was underway the roads were pretty dry except for some puddles on the corners (of course), and there were bits of blue sky showing up. I ended up helping our with video of the Prime and finish sprints, and handling the lap cards.

Grayson went for, and got, the hole shot in the crit, but blew up dramatically later on.

The weather Sunday morning for the road races was beautiful, but cold. It had dropped down into the upper 40s overnight, but with the clear sky I knew it would warm up nicely. As always, it was windy. They don't call it the Vuelta de Viento for nothing. I got the OK to tag along behind the Men's B / Women's A race, which was scheduled for two laps of the course. This is always a frustrating way to ride, but I figured it would be more interesting than riding solo in the wind with nothing to look at but the featureless Texas prairie. Somewhere up near the front of the pack was Gavin. The only opportunity on the whole loop for a breakaway was on the one significant hill, which also happened to be on a long headwind stretch. Sure enough, that's where the group split with Gavin and a few others going up the road, and then the main pack splitting again before the turn onto the crosswind stretch. I was tagging along on the back to make sure I didn't do anything to affect the race, so watching these splits and not doing anything about it was difficult. For most of the rest of that first lap the little group I was with made an effort, however disorganized, to chase. At one point it looked like there was a chance they would regain the main pack, but just as they got close the gap started to open again and all the wind went out of their sails. Anyway, once the gap became clearly insurmountable I took a couple of pulls to help out a bit. Gavin ended up coming in 3rd, so that was good, and Kaitlyn was 2nd in her race, although there were only two Women B riders. Since the weather was so nice, and I was so in need of some miles, I decided to do an additional lap when the B group split off from the main loop for the short spur back to the finish line. I figured there would be some A riders somewhere around, but as it turned out I never saw any and ended up as probably the last person back to the cars. Kaitlyn called me at one point to see where the hell I was. Both Grayson and Elliott had quit a lap early from the A race after being dropped, which was disappointing. At any rate, I was happy to have gotten in 60-something miles, even if they weren't quite at race pace.

Gavin ended up 3rd in a photo-finish. More photos from
Brooks Bixler at http://brooksbixler.zenfolio.com/f90425403

The nice thing about having all of the road races in the morning was that we were able to hit the road for home right after lunch, and got back to New Orleans around 10 pm. I think this was the first year where I never had to drive through a terrifying rainstorm and/or arrive back home after midnight. The Tulane team is pretty much done for the year now since classes end next week. Now I'm concentrating on the Time Trial Championship that the NOBC is hosting in a little over a week, plus the 47th Annual Tour de Louisiane that we're hosting the first week of June.

Meanwhile, I've been logging both commuting and training miles this month as part of the Bike Easy Challenge where I'm unintentionally leading the straight mileage individual ranking with Elliott right behind me and Grayson in 6th place. If Tulane would get its act together rather than spreading itself out among no fewer than 21 separate "organizations" they'd be blowing away all of the other "Organizations." As it is, the "Tulane University" organization that I created is in 4th place behind the "Tulane Graduate Students." If you add up all of the Tulane organizations, they have accumulated amost 50,000 points. The current leading large organization is Ochsner Baptist with only 13,816 points. The Tulane Library has over 11,000 points all by itself.

Another weekend forecast

Saturday morning in Wichita Falls

The past few days around here have been pretty nice with morning temperatures in the upper 50s or lower 60 and not too much wind. I wish it would last, but it won't. There was a chance I'd get lucky and sidestep it all since I'll be driving over to Wichita Falls on Friday with the Tulane team for their conference road championship at Midwestern State. No such luck, though. The current forecast is calling for it to start raining before sunrise and to continue until early afternoon, at best. The silver lining to that cloud, though, is that the first event is the time trial and the criterium isn't until 4:00 pm. So while there's currently zero chance that it won't be raining for the time trial, there's at least some hope that it will be over by the time the criteriums start. The other good thing is that it should be clear and dry for the long 10-hour drive over there. Sunday, it should be better, which is to say it will be dry, cold,and as it always is in Wichita Falls, windy as hell. Hence the race title, "Vuelta de Viento." If the only rain is for the time trial, I'll be thrilled.

Meanwhile, back on the home front, the same line of rain that will be in Wichita Falls on Saturday morning is scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on Sunday morning during the Harbor Master Criterium. Hopefully the event won't be essentially rained out due to the weather or low participation or both. Ordinarily, I'd be planning on racing and officiating there. This year Ricky won't be able to make it down from Monroe to officiate, so we've assembled an officiating crew of three that will hopefully be able to pull it off. It was really messy last year because of big fields and some finish camera issues. This year there will be just the one linescan camera that we used for the Tulane race, and if it's dark and overcast, it might not be particularly helpful since it really struggles when it's dark. The other night I decided to set it up with the LAMBRA laptop at home so I could write up detailed step-by-step instructions for the officials. That went fine until it didn't. The LAMBRA laptop is almost never connected to the internet. It runs Windows 7 and probably hasn't seen an update in a few years. A couple of years ago I had it at home and connected it in order to download some software for the radios. Well, while I was writing up the setup instructions, it prompted me to update the RapidCam software that runs the camera, so I did. Of course, something went south in that process and then the software wouldn't run at all. I eventually found an earlier install of the software buried in the downloads archive folder (who knew there was such a thing). Luckily, that worked. At least I hope it worked. It's hard to really tell until you actually set it up on the side of the road with enough light for the camera. Guess they'll find out on Sunday. A couple of people are coming over to the house tonight for a quick lesson on setting it up, because the process of creating a new race with the software is anything but intuitive, not to mention the three adjustments that have to be made on the camera itself to account for ambient light, focus, and zoom. I'm hoping I can get up really early tomorrow in order to get in a short ride before picking up the van at 9 am and hitting the road. I guess I'll bring the bike and hope for a chance to do some riding around the road course on Sunday while the races are going on.

Hanging out at Z'otz after an easy Monday morning recovery ride. Could be worse.

Anyway, as I was saying earlier, it hasn't been a bad week for riding, and for the most part I've been feeling pretty good on the morning group rides. Yesterday I woke up a little early for the WeMoRi and got to Lakeshore Drive well ahead of the group. I decided to ride in the same direction the group goes, on the assumption I'd be caught fairly quickly, but as it turned out I was still about a mile ahead of them going around the Seabrook loop at the east end of Lakeshore Drive and didn't get caught until I was off of Lakeshore Drive and onto Marconi. For a change, there wasn't a break off the front, so I got a chance to ease my heart rate up into training ride territory relatively gradually. I was all set to contest the sprint to the top of the Wisner Overpass when, just as we came up to Harrison Avenue, where we had a red light, someone yelled "car." Naturally, half the group then sprinted across the intersection. I was behind Brian Baum who grabbed two full handfulls of brake, however, and was lucky not to crash into him. Later, I heard there was also a police car at the intersection. Only in New Orleans can a group of cyclists race around stopped cars to run a red light right in front of a police car and suffer no consequences. Anyway, I was feeling pretty good on Wednesday and got on to the NOBC leadout train at the end as Chris, who unfortunately is moving to Baton Rouge, took a long fast pull to launch Andrew across the finish.

This morning we had a fairly big group for the Thursday levee ride. It seemed like the wind was picking up the whole time, though, and since it had a pretty substantial crosswind component there wasn't much draft at the back. Fortunately we had a steady paceline going, so you were at the back for only a few minutes before you moved up far enough to get a little draft. The temperature was in the low 60s, though, so it was actually fairly nice. I am getting kind of tired of dodging all of the long-neglected roadwork problems on my little two-mile ride back home, though. There are two places along Carrollton where there's water leaking out of the asphalt from some broken pipe. I usually try to go around those in the traffic lane, since the bike lane there is now a big wet mess. Then, right after turning onto Spruce, I have to negotiate the gaping and ever-deepening hole that's been there for over two weeks since they repaired a water leak that had been there for months. I guess they think that putting a traffic cone in the middle of the road solves the problem.

Weird Weather Pattern

Thursday morning was pretty nice along the river

This irritating weather pattern continues. It seems we're stuck in some kind of "Groundhog Day" infinite weather loop where the weather gets nice around mid-week, then a cold front comes through on Saturday and it rains buckets, and then it gets unseasonably cold by Sunday morning. I mean, really, it's freaking April 16 and I rode this morning in knickers and long-sleeve jersey with base layer and a wind vest on top and I was still pretty chilly for the first 45 minutes or so.

On Thursday we had a good turnout for the 6 am morning levee ride. There's still a lot of water covering the batture, but it's considerably lower than it was a few weeks ago. The forecast for Saturday wasn't looking too good, though. They were showing a 100% chance of rain for Saturday.

That time again. I try not to go
more than 3k miles on a chain.

By Friday the city was issuing weather alerts about the approaching cold front that was expected to include heavy winds, lots of rain, and tornadoes. They cancelled all of the Saturday French Quarter Fest activities. The TV weather people were practically in a frenzy. Situation normal. So Thursday evening I decided it was time to replace my chain, since I'd gotten my 2,500 mile alert from Garmin Connect a couple of weeks earlier. This is normally a pretty quick process that I've done a LOT of times, even though I use Campi chains that require a bit of finesse with quality chain tools. Well, perhaps I was rushing, but when I went to push in the connecting pin with my trusty Park chain tool, the pin on the chain tool broke, and in the process broke the connecting pin. Crap! Nobody was going to have a spare connecting pin for an 11-speed campi chain on hand locally, and they certainly wouldn't have a replacement pin for the chain tool either. So at lunchtime on Friday I rode over to Bayou Bicycles and picked up a $22 SRAM chain to get me by until the replacement stuff arrived. Yes, I know the SRAM chains work just fine and cost less than half of what the Campi chains do. I just like the Campi chains for purely esoteric reasons. So now, it was just a matter of precisely when that cold front would be coming through on Saturday. A couple of hours one way or the other would make all the difference. Meanwhile, up in Fayetteville, the front was plowing through the middle of the Joe Martin Stage Race and would be dropping temperatures up there down into the 30s for the weekend. In the meantime, the Pro and Elite riders were treated to two days of cold and/or rain on Thursday and Friday. I was glad I wasn't there this time.

Hanging out on the riverfront listening to the music

Saturday morning I awoke early and stared at the radar and hourly forecast. It looked like we were in luck, but just barely. It would be windy, but if I could be back home before 10 am it looked like there was a reasonable chance I'd stay dry. I rode out to Starbucks wondering how many others would come to the same conclusion. Apparently many did, and we had a really good Giro Ride. By the time we were coming back down Lakeshore Drive, the western sky was getting darker and darker. Right on schedule, the rain started around 10:30 or so.

Monday's eagle

Unfortunately, the cold front kind of stalled shortly after it came through, so we had thunderstorms and rain for the rest of the day and most of Saturday night. By Sunday morning, though, the streets were dry, the air was cold, and the wind was blowing out of the WNW at 15-25 mph. Besides the Giro, there was another ride planned from the Scarsdale side of the Belle Chasse ferry landing down to Pointe a la Hache. I'd have liked to have done that one, but I was scheduled to head down to the French Quarter Fest after the Giro, and I figured that the Belle Chasse ride was going to involve a couple more hours than that. As expected, turnout for the Giro was a little thin, but not really all that bad. The wind, of course, made for a hard ride, but I was quite happy with it anyway, even if my legs were a little sore from Saturday's efforts.

Looking down from the Westin at part of the French Quarter Fest crowd

After the Giro I headed downtown where Candy had been working a conference since Thursday at the Westin. The weather was nice, but of course it was still very windy and a bit chilly. It never did really warm up much on Saturday. We hung around with Kenny and Candy and Sofia and listened to the music for a while before heading back home around mid-afternoon.

This morning the temperature was around 52, but at least the wind had died down a bit. I did my usual solo recovery ride on the levee, where I got a few photos of an eagle. I saw him again later in the ride, but he took off just as I stopped to pull out my camera. Whenever it's a chilly and clear morning you can be sure to spot eagles perched up high enjoying the sunrise. The forecast for this coming weekend?  You guessed it.  Cold front coming through on Saturday with rain. This time, though, I'll be way over in Wichita Falls with the Tulane riders for the conference championship at Midwestern State University where 15-25 mph winds are considered normal.

The Tulane Race

Last weekend was the Green Wave Classic, the collegiate race that the Tulane club has put on almost every year since around 2012. As often happens, people procrastinated, bureaucracy stalled, and things fell through cracks. To complicate matters, Spring Break ended just five days before the race, which meant that not a whole lot got done during that time. By Monday I was feeling pretty nervous about things. I didn't know if all of the follow cars had been lined up. I didn't know how much cash we were going to need to pay the police for the Time Trial. I was pretty sure we still didn't have official approval from Lakeshore High to use the campus for the TT parking and the criterium on Sunday. Even worse, the weather forecast for Saturday was showing a 100% chance of thunderstorms ahead of a cold front. I can't say I was looking forward to a weekend of officiating in the rain, but the worst case scenario was that between weather and the school availability, the entire event might have to be cancelled at the last minute. So on Monday I started rattling the cages. Pretty soon I got word that there was a problem with the school. They needed a form/waiver signed in order to get approval from the school board. The form wasn't ready until Monday. Unfortunately, all of the schools on the northshore were on spring break that week, which is to say that nobody was there and nobody was answering the phone. They wouldn't be back until the following Monday. What to do?

When I found out about the problem I called the school board office in Covington and was glad that someone answered the phone. That person gave me the cell phone number of the principal, so I relayed that to the student who was handling it and hoped for the best. Well, that kind of worked, and the principal forwarded the forms and insurance certificate to the school board for approval. A couple more days went by with no word. The principal stopped answering the phone calls from the student. By Friday, we still didn't have approval. I started trying to think of another course we could use, but it was just impossible on such short notice. Then I remembered that I'd worked with the Asst. Principal in the past for the Tour de La time trial, and I had his cell phone number in my contact list. I gave him a call and left a message. A couple of hours later he called back and basically said, "Don't worry about it, I'll unlock the gates for you." That was about an hour before I started cramming a truckload of race equipment into the Volvo.

Although I had originally planned to just drive back and forth across the Causeway on Saturday and Sunday, after looking at the weather forecast I decided to shell out the $200+ for a hotel room so I wouldn't be trying to load up the car at 5 am in a pouring thunderstorm. That's just not a good way to start a full weekend of officiating. Since I had a room, Gavin would be coming with me because he needed a ride, and Quentin would be meeting us over there later since he'd be working the race rather than riding it. At that point there were just two things I was worried about - the rain, and the turnout. Pre-registrations had been really low. I guess a lot of the Texas riders decided to skip this race. The MSU team, however, was actually driving even farther in order to ride the Sunny King races in Alabama rather than our race. Anyway, I loaded up the car with the new generator I'd bought (since the LAMBRA generator was up in Shreveport for a conflicting race), podium, P/A system, traffic cones, two tables, two chairs, two pop-up tents, two computers, finish line camera, race clock, traffic cones, megaphones, extension cords, medals, first aid kit, fence posts, clothes, etc. and headed out to pick up Gavin and his bike around 7 pm.

So early Saturday morning, sitting on the edge of the hotel room bed in the dark, I studied the radar. It was already raining outside and there was a line of heavy rain coming our way. The timing was critical, though. The races were scheduled to start at 9:00, which was right around when the worst of it would be moving through, but it was moving fast, and it looked like things would be a lot better by 9:30. I called Dustin and told him to tell the police to push things back by half an hour. As it turned out, this was the right call. We arrived at the RR venue around 7:30 with only a very light rain, and by the time the races started the street was almost dry and the rain had stopped. I'd been fully expecting to spend the day in pouring rain, so this was really a spectacular bit of luck. We set up the tents and generator, fired up the computer and race camera, handed out radios, logged in to Zello, put down the finish line tape and flag, put up the signage around the course, and started registering riders.

As usual there were a couple who had registered online and since they already had "permanent" SCCCC bib numbers, didn't stop by registration to let us know they were actually there and didn't sign the waiver. Damn I hate the whole "permanent number" concept. It only works when riders never upgrade and need new numbers and when riders never lose their numbers and when riders get new numbers at a different race and you don't know about it, etc.

Unfortunately, race-day registrations didn't do much to bump up the numbers and we ended up with an all-time low of 37 riders spread over five classes and categories. Really rather pitiful. On the plus side, everyone who raced scored big conference points. The road race went super smoothly. All of the follow cars showed up, nobody crashed, and with the tiny fields it was super easy to pick places, especially with three officials on hand.

That evening was the Time Trial. Naturally, a light rain started falling as we got ready to start. Fortunately, it never got any heavier, and with only 37 riders we were done at the start line in less than 20 minutes. We crammed everything back into the Volvo and headed back to the hotel to post the TT and omnium results and then found a nice Mexican restaurant for dinner. Officiating is pretty easy when there are so few riders.

Sunday's criterium also went really smoothly, although I was freezing for the first couple of hours because the temperature had dropped down into the 40s by morning. For once, there wasn't anything happening on the baseball field behind the course, so we didn't have any problems with cars or anything. The finish line camera worked fine and everything was wrapped up by 2:00 or so. All-in-all, I was amazed that we made it through the whole weekend without any significant rain. I got home, unloaded the car, posted the final results, updated the SCCCC spreadsheet and sent it off to Ben Davis, formatted and uploaded results to USAC, completed the USAC post-event report, created the officials' invoices, and poured myself a very big glass of wine.

Fifteen Percent Chance

"Wasn't expecting it to start raining this early," I said as the three of us were approaching Williams Blvd. in the dark. "The guys who didn't show up must have better radar than we do," remarked Jeff as the raindrops got larger and more frequent. Indeed, the forecast had been calling for nothing more than a 15% chance of rain until at least 9 am, and the 5:30 am radar had seemed to support that. Yet, there was no denying that the three of us, Jeff, Darren and I, were about to get good and wet anyway.

We continued on, water spraying in our faces, straining to see through cloudy glasses, and soon I could feel the water level in my shoes beginning to rise. I knew it couldn't be the larger line of rain ahead of the approaching cold front, since that was still way to the west of the city, so these had to be some scattered showers popping up ahead of the front. It was still just as wet, but at least it wasn't too cold.

We turned back at The Dip, which has become standard protocol whenever the turnout is low and the weather sketchy. With the levee bike path now soaked with water, it was sometimes hard to tell if it was still raining since there was a steady stream of wheel spray from the rider ahead anyway. It didn't matter. We were already soaked, so it was no longer a question of how wet we'd get. There was just one thing that might mess up what was left of the ride.

It went flat pretty fast. We were only eight or so miles from home, and it wasn't really raining at the time. I stopped and spun the wheel, brushing my un-gloved hand over the tire to feel for whatever might still be embedded in the tread. "Ouch!" This time it wasn't just a little shard of rock or glass. It was a tiny piece of metal, and it took a while to pry it out of the tire even with the help of my pocket knife. I pulled out the CO2 inflator and filled the tire, only to have it freeze onto the skin of my hand. It was the one day when I'd forgotten to put on my gloves, and now I had what amounted to freezer burn on my hand. Soon enough we were back up to speed, which in this case was 22-23 mph, and we even came upon a section of road near the city that was still dry. "Great," I thought, "I may dry out a little bit by the time I get home." 

No such luck. As I made my way down Oak Street the sky opened up again and I rode the last couple of miles through Carrollton in the rain. I was glad I'd made it out, since the rest of the day was definitely going to be wet, but as I stood there in the basement dripping water and wiping down the bike I couldn't help but think, "Fifteen percent chance of rain, my ass."

Omnibus Blog Post

Sundown over the swollen Mississippi at Baton Rouge

Like our Congress, which hasn't managed to pass our country's appropriations bills on time ever since they threw their only bargaining chip, the earmark, out the window, I've been pretty sluggish about updating my blog lately. And so it seemed only appropriate that I should wrap the entire past few weeks up into a nice long Omnibus web post. Fortunately for you, it won't take me 2,200 pages to do so like it did for the actual Omnibus Bill. Also fortunately for you, it won't be necessary for you to read 2,200 pages within 48 hours, which we all know is impossible since you would have to read non-stop at one page every 1.3 minutes for two days without sleeping in order to do so - a rate you probably haven't achieved since you were cramming for your English literature final exam in college. So anyway, looking back at the past few weeks, and realizing that between my advanced age and declining mental faculties I can barely remember who I rode with last Saturday, I figured I'd just start with last week and take it from there.

Last week wasn't too bad. The weather down here has been pretty good for riding, despite the early morning darkness, and although Tuesday's ride got cut a bit short due to there being only two of us, the other regular rides were pretty good. I logged 286 miles, which was, I suppose, satisfactory.

Nice turnout for Tulane Day at the Capitol

On Tuesday I had to drive up to Baton Rouge in the afternoon for our annual "Tulane Day" legislative event. This year, rather than standing around in the Capitol rotunda for hours, we decided to have an actual reception. Even better, we were able to hold it at the new Center for Coastal and Deltaic Solutions, which is basically a really fancy high-class, glass and steel fishing pier along the Mississippi just below the Baton Rouge I-10 bridge. The building is brand new and really nice. We had been pushing for weeks to get some good attendance for the event, and that effort was fairly successful, I think. We had a lot of Tulane alumni, along with the Tulane president and a few key legislators in attendance. The best part, though, was that because it was in the evening, and I wasn't involved in the various meetings that filled the rest of the day, I was able to ride in the morning. Unfortunately, that was also the morning we turned around early. The river had hit flood stage in New Orleans on Monday.

Flood Stage

So on Wednesday I headed out in the dark to do the WeMoRi. Out on Lakeshore Drive looking for the group of headlights, I saw just a single light with nothing behind it and figured it was just some solo rider unconnected with the ride. Well, moments later two riders go flashing past me at about 30 mph and I realize I missed the break. I look back and the pack is easily a minute back already. Oh well. So I jump into the group when it comes by and all is well, but there's no way we're catching the break, even after one of the riders, Rob, splits off early to head home. It ended up being a relatively easy WeMoRi for me. On Friday Jerry was leading the Tulane coffee ride, which meant we rode less and drank coffee more, so it was shorter than usual. By then, I had pretty much decided to drive up to Independence for Dustin's 80 mile birthday ride where I was expecting to get pretty well crushed.

Saturday up in Tangipahoa Parish

We had ten riders for the Independence ride, which turned out to be considerably less harsh than I'd been expecting it to be. Actually, we had only eight for about half of it. Logan crashed at an intersection going about 2 mph and kind of ripped up the palm of his hand. He and Jerry decided to split off a while later at a store to pick up some bandages and then ride backwards around the course to meet us. Otherwise, though, this was a nice ride - great weather, mostly double paceline, moderate pace except for occasional and random short accelerations.

Logan explaining how he crashed, I think.

Sunday morning I was feeling no worse for the wear and headed off for the usual Sunday Giro. That ride started out fairly fast, but after a while it seemed like only a few people were interested in pulling and things settled down quite a bit. A few riders just kind of rode away off the front on the way back without eliciting any sort of effort to chase. All-in-all, the past week was enjoyable but a little bit lacking in the intensity area, especially since it's already the end of March.

Last night I helped Charlotte change out cables, and install a new crankset and shifters. That took longer than I expected, partly due to my lack of familiarity with Shimano components, and partly because I cut one of the brake cable housings to short and ended up un-taping and re-taping he handlebar in order to replace it with a longer one. We were also lacking the special little tool to tighten the plastic thingy that basically holds the crankset in place, but I improvised and I think it will be fine. Anyway, I don't think I finally went to sleep until nearly midnight, which made getting up at 5:20 am this morning a bit of a challenge.

Rafal and Steve battling the headwind on the levee 

The wind this morning was impressive. I guess it was 10-15 mph from the southeast. I rode out to the levee fully expecting to be the only one to show up, but as it turned out there were four, one of which was visiting from the Chicago area and had ridden with us on Sunday. With a cross-tailwind at the start, I think we dropped one rider almost immediately even though we were going only about 22-23 mph. Then one of the remaining riders turned around at the pipes, so we were down to just me and Rafal. He's way taller than I, so I knew he would be suffering on the way back. Anyway, we did ease up a bit, eventually picking up Steve and David out by Destrehan. The return trip was mostly head and crosswind, and there were times when 18 mph was a struggle. After a while I dropped back and was surprised to find Rafal missing. He'd really blown up. David dropped off around that time as well. I knew that Steve would be turning back at the Pipes, so I continued trading pulls with him to that point and then turned back to find Rafal who was a couple of minutes back trying to recover. We rode back the rest of the way pretty easy. I told him to come with me down the ramp onto Oak Street and we'd stop for coffee. Well, he followed me down onto River Road but there was a car between us. I looked back and saw him, so I continued down Oak Street at an easy pace, waiting for him to catch up. When I finally looked back again he was nowhere to be found. I still don't know where he went! Perhaps he lost sight of me and ended up on River Road, or maybe he flatted?? Guess I'll find out eventually.

You Never Can Tell

There are lots of group rides around. I typically do some or all of a group ride four or five times a week. One thing about group rides I've learned is that you never can tell who's going to show up. Lots of things influence the turnout, especially the chance of rain and the certainty of strong wind. But every now and then the stars align in just such a way that nobody can come up with a credible excuse for staying in bed. And so it was for yesterday's Giro. It was supposed to be Rouge-Roubaix race weekend, so some riders were in decent early season shape. The wind was light. The morning temperature, which had been rather cold all week, was up to the mid-50s. It was the last day before we set clocks ahead and would be back to riding in the dark. Rain was predicted to start an hour after the Giro ended. A couple of riders were in town, one from Texas, another from Australia. The Tulane riders were planning to ride. So by the time we rolled out from Starbucks I guess there were 35 or 40 riders, and it was pretty clear we were in for a fast one.

Indeed, as soon as we came down the bridge onto Hayne Blvd. the speed went straight up to about 30 mph and mostly stayed in the 25 - 32 mph range all the way out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles. My Garmin said our average speed for the way out was something like 26.5 mph. Unfortunately, just as I put some power to the pedals on Hayne one of the old aluminum spoke nipples on my rear wheel broke. It wasn't quite bad enough to start hitting the chainstay, so I just kept going, being careful to avoid the bumps, and sprints. The latter was particularly frustrating because I would definitely have liked to have done some of them.

The whole way out on Chef Highway I was looking at 28-31 mph, but with such a big group it was relatively easy to stay in the pack. When there would be a little lull and the speed would drop down to 27, it felt like I was coasting. The return trip was definitely slower, but finally got going toward the end of Chef and was looking to stay that way until Brian flatted on the service road. About ten of us stopped and the rest continued, so I was thinking we'd just have an easy ride back. Well when we went around the curve there was Woody and a few more riders fixing another flat. Up the road, the rest of the group was waiting at the gas station at Bullard, so we ended up with practically everyone coming in together. Definitely the best Giro Ride this year. Even better, I made it home with my rear wheel still in one piece. So after I got back I rummaged around and found a brass spoke nipple that was threaded right, ran over to the bike shop to pick up a new rim strip, and had everything back in action half an hour later. I think that's the fifth spoke nipple I've replaced on that wheel - so far. Basically I'm rebuilding the wheel one spoke nipple at a time.

Wind and Water and Winter Again

A windy morning on the Lakefront

I guess that easy ride I did on Monday morning shouldn't have been so easy because Tuesday morning was rained out entirely, and while I can pretend that old guys like me need more recovery and skipping days must be good, I know better. The value of recovery days depends heavily on one thing - something from which to recover. Tuesday's rain, of course, ushered in a cold front and by Wednesday morning the temperature was down to the mid-50s, which is probably more or less normal for this time of year, but which was substantially lower than we've had for the past couple of weeks. So that morning I dug out the thermal knickers and long-sleeve jersey and headed off in the darkness for the lakefront battling a gusty and unrelenting north wind. Out on the unprotected Lakeshore Drive the wind was a bit worse with waves occasionally crashing over the seawall. I rode eastward over the bridge and across the London Avenue Canal looking for headlights. All I saw were four, and they were coming at me pretty damned fast, so I made a quick u-turn, accelerated up to speed, and latched onto the quartet as it approached the Bayou St. John bridge. Someone surged for the bridge KOM just as Emily, who was at the back, opened up a gap to let me in. I barely caught the draft, but I think she dropped off at that point. Up ahead was Rob, inexplicably on his track bike on such a windy day. Despite the wind and his fixed gear, he was killing us. Brian and Woody were there too, and for the next mile or two all I could do was let them rotate in front of me as I tried to catch my breath. When we turned onto Wisner and picked up a tailwind the speed surged up to 26 or 27 as Rob and Brian pounded the pedals. Woody was clearly suffering, as was I. We came down the overpass at 35 mph, turned onto City Park Avenue, and then the pace eased. Rob pulled off the front and headed home as the rest of us turned back into the headwind onto Marconi. I think we were down to 19 mph for a while. The rest of the WeMoRi was nowhere to be seen. In fact, we didn't see the remnant of the wind-shattered group until we were already past the Bayou St. John bridge and on our way back. Anyway, that was a pretty good workout, and I was glad I had a tailwind on the way home.

So much water

Thursday morning it was even colder and I pulled on the long tights for the first time in probably three weeks. It was somewhere in the 49-50 degree range, but with the wind it felt colder, especially once I got up to the levee. As often happens when it's cold and windy, only Richard and Scott showed up. We rode out to the big dip and turned around there, picking up David from Ormond for a while before he had to turn back. The river has been rising steadily, and will continue to do so for at least the next week. The water is just barely reaching the base of the levee now, but even so the Corps opened up some of the bays at the Spillway this morning to keep things under control.

Straggling

My little group of stragglers in the road race, probably starting the second lap

It was another long road trip last weekend. This time up to Fayetteville for the University of Arkansas collegiate (and some non-collegiate) races. My sore throat seemed to be on the mend and I wasn't yet showing signs of pneumonia, so why not drive 10 hours to race in some nice cold, dry air after what was essentially five days off the bike? As fate would have it, we ended up with only one collegiate rider, Gavin, plus Dustin and me. Gavin was thus assured of redundant and/or contradictory coaching advice plus lots of crit photos. This year's Arkansas Classic used entirely different courses from prior years. The road race, which was the only one I'd be doing, was on a nice rolling 12-mile loop with one short but steep climb and one longer but not so steep climb. It was considerably more forgiving than the course used in prior years, although apparently not quite forgiving enough for me.

Probably 1 lap to go.

The road races didn't start until late morning, after the time trial, with Dustin and I doing the "Open A" aka Cat. 1/2/3 race first, followed by Gavin in the collegiate Cat. C race a few hours later. Although I was feeling a little apprehensive about my pulmonary status, I can't say I was feeling all that bad as we rolled out for the neutral 3 or 4 miles to start the first of four laps of the race loop. By the time we started the temperature was close to 60, the sky was clear, and the wind was blowing at probably 10 mph with little but a few scattered leafless little trees to block the it as it blew across the cow pastures. It was scenic, for sure, but I knew the crosswind section was going to take its toll on the field of around 30 riders. With the very first section of the loop being essentially a direct crosswind, I made sure I was up near the front as soon as we turned onto it. That worked out pretty well for a while, but then Dustin attacked maybe five miles into it and right away there was a split with six riders off the front. Over the next few miles a few more took off on the tailwind section and I think most of them made the bridge. I think there was some team strategy, aka blocking, going on in what was left of the field, so there wasn't any sort of concerted effort to chase. Even so, the gap was growing pretty slowly at first. Then we came around a sandy right-hand corner and were immediately confronted by the big climb of the day, for which I was totally unprepared. It was maybe half a kilometer but also maybe 10%, and naturally I came around the corner still in my big ring near the back of the field. Someone up front attacked the hill. I didn't, and got really bogged down in too big of a gear coming over the top. A few of us stragglers came together and kind of sort of started to chase, but the effort was inconsistent and we never made contact. In retrospect, I probably should have just put my head down and made the bridge by myself. Anyway, we had a nice little group of five or six. One or two were just sitting on the back. I was taking fairly good long pulls, and this big guy was doing the same, and soon the one woman in our group started taking some pulls too, but although the group ahead remained in sight for over a lap, it was clear that we lacked the necessary combined horsepower, or willpower, or both, to actually close the deal. Even so, I felt fine climbing the "big" climb on the succeeding laps, so I guess I just got caught off-guard on that first lap and wasn't willing to dig deeply enough. Anyway, but then I was just focused on getting a good workout and unfortunately my pulls were causing some collateral damage behind me. The big guy was struggling on the climbs even though I thought I was going up them nice and smoothly. At one point I came off the front and dropped back to find only Ali, the woman from Arkansas, left. I said, 'What happened to that big diesel engine we had?" She replied something like, "Well you kept pushing the pace too much. You training for Kona or something?"  Oops.  Anyway, I think we were down three when we caught a rider who'd been shelled from the original break, and then dropped from whatever was left of the disintegrating field. He stayed with us for a while but eventually dropped off. By the end there were just three of us and we spend the last half of the last lap doing more chatting than racing. Turned out all three of us were 40+.

Meanwhile, up at the front, Dustin had spent half a lap solo and then gone back to the break. He ended up in 3rd place. After finishing I just kept on riding and did a nice cool-down lap. I mean, it was such a nice day I wasn't going to waste it, especially after driving 10 hours to get there! I stopped at the start/finish and waited for the Cat. C race to come through for their 4-lap race. Naturally Gavin was already off the front less than two miles into the loop. Later he attacked again and ended up in a 2-rider break that made it all the way to the finish. He finished 2nd, but was very pleased with his result, remarking later that it had been the hardest ride he'd ever done. Anyway, when he came through the start/finish for his second lap he motioned that he needed water, so I filled up one of my bottles and Dustin and I started riding backwards around to course to get to the feed zone that was practically on the opposite side. He got there before us, so I had to wait until the next lap to make the hand-up. Meanwhile, Dustin was so wiped out from his earlier effort that he was starting to get cold and got a ride back to the start/finish while I rode back a bit later. We waited for Gavin's finish then rode back into town as the sun was setting. By then the temperature had really started to drop and I was freezing.

Sunday morning the weather was much different. There were a few scattered showers around and it was cloudy, but at least it wasn't too cold. Gavin's race was one of the earlier ones and once again it was his early attack that created the winning break. There were originally two of them, but the gap was hovering around 9 seconds so a couple more bridged up before they put their heads down and really got to work. Eventually that 4-rider break established a safe lead, though. The finish was probably only 100 meters from the last corner, and Gavin came into it 3rd wheel. Rider in front of him almost overshot the turn, though, and Gavin hesitated and changed his line a bit, losing enough momentum for the rider behind him to slip past, so he ended up 4th. Even so, he had accumulated enough prime points that together with his 4th place time trial, he was 2nd in the Cat. C Omnium competition. It started raining right after his race, so as soon as they did the podium and he collected his medal we jumped into the van and hit the road. That got us home at the entirely satisfactory hour of 9:30 pm, which was way better than the usual 12:30 am! Links to photos and, eventually results, are on the cycling.tulane.edu results page.