Calling All NOLA Dino Riders

It's the 50th anniversary of the New Orleans Bicycle Club, and we're having a little post-Tour party over at Wrong Iron on the Greenway, right next-door to Bayou Bicycles, on June 23. In addition to all of our Tour de Louisiane sponsors, volunteers and NOBC club members we'd like to invite all of our NOBC alumni and other area cycling dinosaurs who raced back in the 70's, 80's and 90's when nobody complained about doing 80 mile unsupported road races in July while wearing leather-lined baggy wool shorts, jerseys with front pockets stinky leather gloves, questionable helmets, and cleats barely nailed onto flexy leather-soled shoes. Come on over and recount your highly embellished tales of cycling prowess and former glory. I'd email all of you, but I know those old .aol email IDs are probably just going to bounce anyway, I'm posting this here and asking that you pass it along to your old riding buddies by whatever means available. We have the outdoor, sheltered Smoky Mary room reserved.  Wrong Iron is 21 and up only.
https://www.wrongiron.com/

Tour de La - Triumphs and Tribulations

I was feeling pretty glum this time last week. The long-range weather forecast was calling for a miserable rainy weekend for the 48th annual Tour de Louisiane stage race, and after all of the work everybody had put into the event planning it was going to be really disappointing to have a super-low turnout, not to mention how far in the red the event finances would fall. With only two days left for pre-registration there were only about 40 people signed up. Riders who lived far away were asking me if the race would be cancelled, if there would be flooding, etc.  In my head, I was figuring out how we might combine and/or shorten races to accommodate what would be tiny field sizes on wet roads.

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy! 

And then the weather gods took notice and suddenly the rain chances started to drop with each passing hour. On Thursday, the last day that pre-registration was open, 68 riders registered, which would turn out to be slightly more than half of the entire race. By Friday morning it was clear that rain wasn't going to be a significant issue, and we all breathed signs of relief. Mignon had spent months making arrangements with the Northshore Humane Society for a little dog adoption event, along with face-painting for the kids, and had raised sponsorship from the local Subaru dealer who would drive ahead of the Cat. 1/2/3 field for the neutral lap. We had a ton of primes to give out, and just a couple of weeks earlier Chris Mogridge of Mercury Wheels had told Mike Lew over at Gray Cat Cycleworx that he would donate a set of carbon wheels and we'd decided to give every registered rider a chance to win them and also a chance to buy additional raffle tickets. We'd raised a bit over $6k in cash sponsorship, which would at least cover the $5k prizelist plus some cash primes and trophies and stuff. Even so, with the 129 or so riders who ultimately registered we would probably not quite break even after paying police for three different venues plus officiating and lodging. Anyway, by Friday I was feeling pretty good about things even though we had already lost two of the four moto-refs we'd been hoping to have for the road race. After giving Mignon the boxes of trophies and a bunch of traffic cones and the big caution signs, and giving Christian the water coolers and ice chests, I packed the Volvo up to the roof with everything else and around 4 pm headed across the lake to the Holiday Inn. That night a thunderstorm skirted just north of the area, but it looked like that would be the last of the rain.

A solo break in the criterium sealed the deal for 17 year old Logan

I was up at 5 am on Saturday for the 45 minute drive up to Stoney Point to set up the road race. We have this process down pretty well, so that all went smoothly as Fred drove around the course putting up the signage and Ricky set up the official's shelters and finish line cameras. Right across from the finish line is a family that raises quail, and they were setting up to sell pickled eggs, boiling crawfish, and selling other goodies that I wished I could try but really didn't have a chance to.

Erich and Kenny at the Criterium

That's about when someone drove up and said that the church hadn't been told about the race (we send them a $500 check every year). It turned out that our contact for the church isn't technically part of the church any more but had given us the OK and then forgotten to tell the pastor. Luckily there wasn't a funeral of something that morning!  The races went off on time under a sunny sky and everything went well except for one rider who was bitten by a dog during warm-up (the sheriff took care of that) and a minor crash about a mile before the finish of the Masters race (we eventually gave them all pack time). One of our two surviving moto-refs rolled in after the race with about 15 psi in his front tire.  Yeah, the moto-ref flatted!  It turned out he had multiple punctures, but luckily they were able to plug them so he could limp back home.  One of the other motos was doing finish line duty with us because his clutch had gone out a couple of days before and he was without his bike. We cleaned up the area and packed everything back into vehicles and I headed for the hotel to post results to the website, facebook, email, etc. and print them out to post at the 5:30 pm time trial. I had just enough time to wolf down a McDonald's hamburger before heading over to the TT course. As usual, the TT went smoothly and a few hours later I was back at the hotel with Ricky plugging finish times into the computer and again posting and printing results. Then Ricky, Mignon, Steve, Kenny and I walked over to Copeland's for dinner where I indulged in a big glass of wine.

The dogs had their own special bib numbers for
the Parade of Paws

Sunday morning the Covington criterium seemed a little more chaotic than usual. I had decided to move the finish line upstream a bit from prior years in order to be a little closer to the park where all the action, and the podium, was. We got the long USAC banners and a few sponsor banners set up along the finish area and then got word that the police down at the other end of the course were not going to close the road!  Huh?  We'd met with the city and the police a week or so earlier and everything seemed fine since we were doing exactly the same thing we'd done for a number of years prior, so everybody knew what to do and where the course went etc. Well, it turned out that someone must have bitched to the state police the year before and they in turn came down on the city police for closing the one block of state road that the course uses. Hence, they were refusing to barricade the street... for a criterium.  The compromise was that they would block the street with their cars during the races, but open the street in-between races (there were 15-minute gaps between races).

The dogs got to share the podium with the winners.

I sent Christian down there with a safety vest and flag because I wasn't comfortable with the whole thing and riders were freaking out thinking the road would be open to traffic. Randy H was already down at the restaurant where pedestrians have to cross the course to get to Sunday brunch.

There was champagne from Apolline Restaurant for the podium

Next year we'll have to get a permit from the state police for that one block of road, and I'd like to figure out how to get about 20 volunteers to serve as course marshals to keep cars off of the course because it is always a problem despite the signage and traffic cones and such. Although the city puts up no-parking signs there were at least four cars parked on the course. One was on the outside of a turn in the worst possible location, so we made arrangements to get a tow truck there after the women's race because the next race would have one of the largest fields of the day and would likely be going somewhat faster. So as we're getting ready to score the finish of the women, I see them come around the final turn, except that one or two of them seem to just go straight rather than turning.  Bad sign.  Someone had overlapped wheels and sent one of the women onto the sidewalk where she had fortunately missed the various poles and things but slammed into the side of a building with her head and left side. The Fire department is on site for medical emergencies, but we brought in an ambulance for that one. She turned out to be OK after getting checked out at the hospital. Anyway the rest of the races went great and with Erich serving up the tunes and Kenny delivering race commentary and announcing, and all of the cameras working well, it was really a pretty nice event. There was champagne for the winners on the podium under the oak trees, and the Parade of Paws was a big hit that hopefully generated some good exposure for the Humane Society. Stephanie Smith, who was racing in the Masters race, ended up in 4th.

Prior to the start of the Cat. 1/2/3 race we had the Parade of Paws where the dogs up for adoption got to walk the finish stretch while Kenny read a little bio on each. We got the riders lined up behind the Subaru lead car for the neutral lap and everything seemed under control ..... until we saw the field come around the last corner without the lead vehicle.  Turned out the police thought the car was just some car that had gotten on the course and they stopped it!  Sigh...  Anyway, the Cat. 1/2/3 race was won by 17-year-old Logan McLain, and there wasn't too much controversy after the leader of the Cat. 3/4 race skipped a pedal and dropped a chain during that race and the announcer told him to go take a free lap that wasn't technically legal, but once he went to the pit and stopped after being told to do so we couldn't really then tell him to chase since the pack was halfway around the course by then.

By the end we were all pretty exhausted, but I think it was a great race and everybody had a good time, so I guess it was worth it once again. I went home, unloaded the car again, published the results and poured myself a big glass of wine. Forty-eight years. There were only 20 riders who had even been born when the first Tour de La was held, and most of those were still in diapers then. Overall, I thought this was one of the best efforts we've made in recent years despite the unpredictable problems. Mignon really went above and beyond, handling the Parade of Paws, face painting, payments to all of the officials and police, organizing the podiums, awards, and primes. Pat and Christian, and Randy and especially Fred did a lot of the heavy lifting Saturday and Sunday, and on Saturday morning all of our follow car volunteers like Ty and Chip and Brandon were there and ready to go. With Ricky and Steve and Mark officiating, I was able to just concentrate on the results and handle the surprises like the road closure situation, the crash, the cars parked on the course, etc.  It was a good year. Perhaps if we can work around Tulsa Tough which always seems to schedule on the same weekend, we can get back to the larger field sizes we have had in the past.

Hammers in Hammond

2 of 3

Last weekend was the Hammerdal Classic in nearby Hammond Louisiana. The race is named after Peter av Hammerdal, a Swedish guy after whom the city was named after Anglicizing the poor guy's name to Hammond. This year, rather than the three criteriums they offered last year, they had a short road race up the road near Loranger on some of the roads we used to use for the Tour de Louisiane, which BTW will be next weekend. I was up at 5 am on Saturday to load up the car with most of the LAMBRA equipment and make the hour's drive to the road race venue. Turnout for this race was fairly good. There was no cash in the prizelist, but there were also low entry fees. I was signed up for the oldest of the old, as usual, and was mainly using the race for some much-needed intensity on the heels of the prior weekend's short race up in Tupelo. On the plus side, there were three officials on hand, so I was just helping to transport equipment and set up the start/finish.

The Masters 40+ group had a nice little field of about a dozen riders. The course was low rolling hills typical of the area - nothing dramatic, but providing occasional opportunities for those so inclined. Well, we weren't more than a couple of miles into the short 38 mile road race when the first attack happened, much to the dismay of those of us who need half an hour to get warmed up.  Within the first mile or two I was at 32 mph and 165 bpm and thinking how embarrassing it would be to get dropped before the first turn. Fortunately, things came back together which quite predictably and no doubt according to plan allowed Kevin Landry to launch off the front, solo, a few miles later. With a couple of teammates at the front and such a small field, there was essentially no effort to chase and his gap grew quickly to I guess around 45 seconds. By the end of the first of three laps he had close to a minute on the field, but I remember thinking that, considering our pace, I would have expected him to be much farther up the road by then. Well, a few miles into the second lap we see him standing on the side of the road holding up a wheel. He'd been riding on a soft tire for miles and it finally went completely flat and forced him wait for the wheel truck which was following us. At that point I thought his teammates would either try to slow the pace (most likely), or launch an attack. Surprisingly, neither happened. About halfway around on second lap his teammates were still on the front and there were a few strong surges, so I figured they had looked back and not seen Kevin chasing and figured he was out of the race. As it turned out, he'd been chasing his ass off wondering why his teammates were on the front.  Anyway, nothing got away on the last lap, so it came down to a sprint among the remaining riders. I was 5th behind Noel who came past me right at the line.

After that I packed up and headed over to Gray Cat Cycleworx to hang out and chat with Mike Lew who had just gotten me a deal on some new race wheels from Mercury Wheels that I needed to pay for. Mercury is owned by a friend of ours, Chris Mogridge, who started out in Mississippi but then moved out west to Ogden UT. I'm still a little uncertain how I'll like these modern, somewhat heavier, more aero carbon wheels, but I've been racing on my trusty Rolf Sestriere wheels that I also got from Mike when I got my steel Cervelo way, way back around 2000, and I figured that 18 or 19 years was about as long as I could expect those aluminum spoke nipples to survive. Anyway, in the process, Mike talked Chris into donating a set of carbon wheels to the Tour de Louisiane.  I think we will give every rider who enters a raffle ticket for those, and then sell additional tickets at the race to see if we can raise a few bucks for the Northshore Humane Society that the race is benefiting this year. I never did actually eat lunch, so I headed over to the nearby park for the evening criteriums fueled by a couple of granola bars and soft drinks. I spent an hour or so getting the crit start/finish set up with the barricades and USAC banners and all, plus the work lights that Dustin had brought since the last race would be finishing in the dark.

The Master's race was pretty predictable except for the rain. Shortly after the start the rain began, and although the road surface was pretty good, and there aren't any sharp turns on the loop, it still required a little more caution than usual. A couple of very early attacks to set up Kevin who was off the front by the time we were three or four laps into the 40-minute race, but was pulled back fairly quickly. Things were fairly steady for a while after that, but eventually he took off again to solo in for the win. I ended up 6th in that one, and was pretty happy with how I felt even though I had spent most of the time sitting in toward the back. The Cat. 1/2/3 race was last, and I was happy that the two sets of work lights shining on the finish line provided just enough light to make the finish line camera useful. I drove back home after that, posted the day's results to the website, and went to sleep around midnight with the alarm set for 5:15 am. Back in Hammond Sunday morning I did the Master's race, this time on the same course but in the opposite direction and without rain. Acadiana had at least one additional rider in the field for this one, and there were a few other riders who hadn't raced on Saturday, so that was nice. We were only about four laps into the race when an attack put three riders off the front. I was still toward the back waiting for my heart rate to figure out that I was racing, but couldn't help but say to whoever was listening, "Really? You had to know this was going to happen, right?" Anyway, I went to the front briefly, hoping to encourage a serious chase, but without much effect, so those three riders road away pretty easily as the group settled down, content to let Kevin's teammates soft-pedal at the front. Eventually the break lapped the field, of course. I was hoping that they would just blow through the pack and was primed to go with them, but that didn't happen and everything just stayed together for a kind of messy sprint through the curves that I started from way too far back. I ended up 8th in that one, which was a little disappointing I guess. In all, the second criterium was a little easier than the first had been, at least for me, probably because I spent most of it just sitting on the back as a spectator.

Way Up in Tupelo

Sunday's Renasant Criterium masters

It's a long way to Tupelo from New Orleans, but it promised two days of criteriums, one of which was the LAMBRA Criterium Championship, and besides, I had most of the LAMBRA equipment that would be needed. So early Saturday morning I loaded up the Volvo, clamped the bike to the roof, picked up coffee and Starbucks, and headed northeast to the far, far corner of Mississippi. I knew that the travel issue would limit the number of LAMBRA riders willing to make the trip, but on the other hand, I expected the race to draw riders from nearby cities in Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. That would at least make for an interesting mix. This was the race's second year, so I knew the race director would have all of the basics under control, and since the weather was looking to be dry all weekend I figured I'd easily be able to jump into at least one of the races. We had two officials lined up for the weekend, so I was basically just backup and someone to handle the finish line camera.

After an uneventful 5+ hour drive I arrived at the course nice and early since the first race wasn't scheduled to start until 2 pm. By the time we had things all set up at the finish line I was already hot and tired, so I decided I'd focus on officiating on Saturday and save the racing for Sunday. The last race of the day was the Cat. 1/2/3 race and since it was starting at 7:30 pm I knew it would be ending in the dark, which would complicate judging tremendously. The night before I had gone over to Lowe's and picked up a set of LED work lights that I planned to put right on the finish line. I knew that they would probably be just barely adequate, or inadequate, since the finish was pretty wide and even at 9,000 lumens the finish camera was going to be seriously challenged.

Getting the finish set up on Saturday

So as we're preparing for the start of the first race and riders are still doing warm-up laps, we get word that someone has crashed on turn #3 (the course on Saturday was a particularly short rectangle). That crash resulted in a broken collarbone and concussion, I think, so everything was delayed about ten minutes until the ambulance cleared the course. Later, there would be another crash, this time involving the Race Director himself. With the finish line pretty close to the first turn, it had been decided to tell the riders to go straight after the finish rather than taking turn #1. Unfortunately, in one of the races there was a rider who came across the finish line with one to go just a few seconds before the lead pack sprinted. When that rider got to the corner the leaders had caught up to him. They were going straight. He was turning left. I think that one resulted in another broken collarbone.

Anyway, over the course of the afternoon we got things back on track time-wise and started the rather large and very aggressive Cat. 1/2/3 race more or less on time. As the hour-long race progressed I watched the camera images get darker and darker, despite my adjustments to the capture rate. A few laps before the finish the camera's automatic motion detection stopped working which told me that it had gotten too dark, even with the lights, to expect much. Unfortunately it was also dark enough that it was hard to read the rider numbers by eye until they passed in front of the lights. Anyway, the camera has a "force" option for such situations and I recorded the finish. The other judges had only partial results since there was a pack sprint. After much squinting and a little detective work we pieced together the finish order fairly well, I think. Riders who had come across the line closer to the camera had readable numbers. Those that came across farther away didn't. Still, we were quite confident about the top 6 or so, which allowed for awards and podium photos. By the time we picked up, packed up, and checked into the hotel it was almost 10 pm. Robert and I walked over to the restaurant next to the hotel to find that they stopped serving dinner at 10 pm. It was about 10:05 when we arrived. Luckily, we spotted Adam Morris at a table with a bunch of other riders and friends and since Adam apparently knows everyone in Tupelo, including the server, they added our order to their table and we got something to eat, plus some bonus entertainment from both the server and the big table next to us where someone was having a birthday party involving lots of adult beverages.

GW and me finishing out the remaining laps

So on Sunday I went out to the course really early to set up the big USAC banners and finish line area. We had decided to move the finish upstream a bit for Sunday to avoid complications with turn #1 like we'd had on Saturday. I went over and registered for the Masters race, mainly just to get some riding in. Trying to help with officiating and setup and then jumping into a race never works for me, so the only question was whether I'd be dropped from the start or dropped halfway through (turned out to be the latter). At the start we had only six riders, which was pretty disappointing. However among those six were a number of riders I knew, including Hunter East, a Cat. 1 from Little Rock, who was the current Arkansas state champion and current national 55-59 Road and Criterium champion, and Emile Abraham, a 45 year old Cat. 1 from Atlanta who was 2nd at last year's masters nationals and winner of his masters race at Sunny King. We also had GW Wenzel, a 62 year old Cat. 1 from Auburn who's been racing since the dinosaurs roamed the earth, like me. Todd Hollingsworth from Alabama and Jeff Buse from the Tupelo area (also serving as stand-in race director after Matt's crash). Surprisingly the race started off smoothly, and for quite a few laps the whole little group just rode paceline. Then they announced a Prime and I knew my time was about over. Sure enough, the surge for the Prime opened gaps and the race was on at the front. That left GW and me together with Jeff dangling about twenty seconds up the road, and the rest way up ahead. This wasn't unexpected, of course, so GW and I quickly settled into a nice pace trading turns at the front and ultimately succeeding in not being lapped by the leaders (barely). I enjoyed the course which included a few more blocks and turns than the short Saturday course. The Cat. 1/2/3 race a little later was very fast and animated although marred by a crash at one point. With everything ending in the early afternoon I was all packed up and back on the road by 4 pm or so. The drive back was remarkably smooth with surprisingly little traffic. On the satellite radio I had temporary access to the Beatles Channel where they were playing every song the Beatles ever produced, in chronological order, with interesting stories about most of them. I guess I got to the late 60s by the time I got home.

Ready to ride at Stoney Point

The next morning, Memorial Day, I was up early again to drive across the lake to do a group reconnaissance ride on the Tour de La road course. We had maybe 12 or 15 riders and had a really nice ride. The first lap was fairly easy as I stopped before each intersection to freshen up some of the road markings. There were a lot of bad sections of road on the back side of the course - a couple of those smaller roads have been deteriorating for years. Most of it shouldn't be bad enough to cause a crash, although there are definitely a few spots that could result in a pinch flat for riders running lower tire pressures. Otherwise, though, the course looked fine and after we finished the first lap we stopped to regroup and so that I could get rid of the empty paint can and replace it with a full water bottle.

The bar at the Southern Hotel in Covington

The second and third laps were mostly at a pretty fast pace. On the second lap we ended up with Mike Lew and Brandon (?) off the front, chased by Steve Johnson and me. It was a good little workout. The second lap was just slightly slower but still fast enough to do some damage. By the time I got home I was good and exhausted. Then on Tuesday I left work early to drive across the lake again, this time with Mignon, to meet with Fred and the Covington police, fire, and mayor's office folks so we could finalize details for the Tour de Louisiane criterium June 9. Since we've done the criterium there for so many years, and since everything would be the same this year, that went smoothly. We stopped at the nearby Southern Hotel afterward to pick up a gift certificate they were donating as a Prime. As we were walking out I spotted this older gentleman sitting at the bar and had to stop and take a rather iconic candid photo. 

Next weekend will be two days over in Hammond for a road race and two criteriums. Then the following weekend will be the Tour de La. After that I think I'll be more than ready for a little break with just the Pontchartrain weekday series between then and the road championships at the beginning of August.

A Busy Few Weeks

We are gearing up for the 48th Tour de Louisiane stage race - June 8-9.

I was walking down the hall at work to get a cup of coffee a minute ago and thinking, "All this volunteer stuff is getting out of hand!" Actually, I'm sure it has been more of a timing issue where a lot of things seem to have been happening more or less on top of each other. Once we had put on the Westbank race, and then followed it up the following week by putting on the Time Trial Championship, we (and by that I mean about four of us) barely had time to breathe before getting back to the usual last-minute preparations for the upcoming 48th annual Tour de Louisiane stage race that is now just a couple of weeks away. To complicate things, it's been quite busy at work, and Danielle was in town to pick up her PhD at the LSUHSC graduation ceremonies.

Stretching the limits of my phone camera but not too bad a pic of Danielle after being hooded

Danielle and Shannon flew in from Olympia (well, actually Seattle) on the 14th. There were some pre-commencement things on the 15th over at LSUHSC, and then graduation ceremonies the morning of the 16th, followed by lunch over at Blue Crab and then a get-together for dinner at Catalino's Guatemalan restaurant on Maple Street. A couple of days later my niece Rachael Barnes picked up her MD degree up at Wake Forest. Early Friday morning Candy flew out to San Francisco, and Danielle and Shannon started loading up two big U-Haul moving containers with all of the stuff she's had down here since she started grad school a few years ago, plus the scooter, bikes, a dining room table and chairs, and anything else I could convince her to take. I'd been a little bit worried about the vulnerability of those things sitting out on the street, but fortunately U-Haul called and picked them up right away on Saturday.

The crit had a "misfit" class for
blue bikes, tandems, and other odd
bikes.

Shortly afterward I took Danielle and Shannon to the airport to fly back to the PNW, and went straight from there to the Federal City Criterium over in Algiers. I didn't bring the bike. I'd been so wrapped up in everything else going on that I knew I wouldn't be able to shift gears and jump into a criterium like that. As it turned out, I had more time than I'd expected and probably could have raced it but under the circumstances I rather enjoyed just hanging out at a small race and kind of winding down while helping to officiate a bit and then bringing all of the LAMBRA equipment back with me so I could then take it with me up to Tupelo this coming weekend. I was just happy that, with all of the complications, I'd only missed one day of riding.

Waiting for the start of the Beth's Friends Fondeaux

On Sunday I rode the BFF charity ride, which was connected to the Federal City criterium the day before. It started at Urban South brewery down on Tchoupitoulas Street and turned out to be kind of interesting. I decided to drive the car over there in the morning, and arrived a good hour early, which would have been nice except that I then couldn't find my wallet that I needed in order to pay the registration fee. After searching through my bag, I figured I must have left it at the house, so I got back int the car and rushed back home and still couldn't find it. I finally searched through my bag for, I think, the fourth time and found it hidden away down in the bottom of the bag. Then I had to rush back to Urban South and register.

Nice group for the BFF ride - mostly Giro/WeMoRi people

Luckily I got there with time to spare, which was good because Mignon had been planning on stashing some stuff in my car since she had ridden over from Jefferson. The whole time I was monitoring the weather because some heavy rain was heading our way and was looking to hit us around 11 am, which was just about when I figured we'd be finishing the ride. This ride goes over the Mississippi River bridge in the closed HOV lane, and then kind of wanders around the westbank on some nice out-and-back roads before crossing back over the bridge to the east bank. It's kind of loosely organized, but enjoyable and fast enough to qualify as training. A few riders took off early as we went over the bridge, but most of the front group that was composed mainly of Giro riders, stayed together. That kept the pace brisk but fairly civilized. As we approached the bridge on the way back I started getting tornado watch alerts on my Garmin via my phones Garmin Connect app. When we got back to Urban South I grabbed a cold Coke (it was beginning to feel like summer) and sat down for a few minutes.

Dennis and Reggie at Urban South post-ride

By then the weather was deteriorating rapidly and when I saw Mignon come in we went down to my car a couple of blocks away and stashed the bikes in there just as the first raindrops started falling. There was no way she was going to be able to ride back to her house with the weather like it was. A few minutes later all hell broke loose - lightning, thunder, hail, and wind. Luckily we were nice and comfortable inside drinking beer and eating jambalaya and pizza. A little later Reggie and Andrea showed up. They had been at the top of the bridge in the lightning and hail and everything. I'm sure a lot of riders had an unexpectedly exciting bridge crossing in the middle of that storm! I got to catch up with Wendy and a few other riders who I don't see that often, so it was all quite nice.

So tomorrow morning I'm heading up to Tupelo with a car full of race stuff for two criteriums, the latter of which is the LAMBRA criterium championship. It will be interesting to see who makes the long drive for that. It's almost six hours from New Orleans, so not exactly centrally located for most or our riders. I expect it will draw as many from Tennessee, Alabama and Florida as from LAMBRA. I'll be helping to officiate, but I plan to jump into one or both masters races if I can, just for the exercise. I haven't really raced all year unless you count the Auburn races earlier in the season, so I am not feeling confident about anything except my ability to get dropped in a criterium. The following weekend is the Hammerdal Classic nearby in Hammond that I'm hoping to race/officiate, and then the next weekend is the Tour.  So basically there will be no rest for the weary until the end of June. After the Tour there's a track race at the Baton Rouge Velodrome, and then the weekday Pontchartrain series starts.

The Race of Truth

Off to get the start line set up

The truth is, putting on a race, even a relatively basic one like a time trial, can be a lot of work depending on just how OCD you are. Last Sunday was the LAMBRA Time Trial Championship. On the face of it, putting on a time trial seems pretty straightforward. Line them up, write down the time when the started, write down the time when they finished, and subtract. Simple. Of course, reality is never quite that simple, at least nowadays when riders expect porta potties, police, start times, and correct results. I can remember when Candy and I would put on the whole Spring time trial series down across from Belle Chasse. On Saturday we'd swing by the bike shop and pick up a few trinkets to give as prizes. Sunday morning we'd jump into the MG or Triumph and drive over to the Scarsdale ferry landing with a clipboard, a stopwatch, and a pencil. The twenty or so riders would sign in, and if we were lucky we'd send a volunteer 12.5 miles down the river road to the Carlisle Sign with a traffic cone. After the finish we'd do the math in our heads. We'd take a sheet of paper with the results back home and then, maybe, in a few weeks or months, there was a chance they would be included in a newsletter that would be typed up on a typewriter and mailed out to club members. Things are a little different now. This year we had around 90 riders, which was similar to last year. They were all required to pre-register so that I could make up a start list, grouping age and skill categories together and seeding riders within them according to USAC time trial ranking points, which most riders probably don't even know exist. In order to do that, I print out all of the waivers from the online registration system. Then I download the list of registered riders and sort them according to class and category. From that I build a spreadsheet with groups organized by distance, age, and category. This year I used a rather complicated Excel formula/format so that I wouldn't have to input the colons when typing in the times. That turned out to be rather complicated and required a whole new formula to do the time calculations and rankings. Once I had all of the riders listed, I sub-sorted each group according to USAC ranking time. Then I assigned sequential bib numbers. Then I went through the stack of paper waiver forms and wrote the assigned bib number for each rider on his or her form. Then I went back through those forms and stapled the appropriate bib numbers to them. Then I sorted the waiver/bib numbers by last name. The whole process took at least four hours and was not without complications. For example, a number of riders, all from outside of LAMBRA, had registered for more than one class or category. In some states they allow this, so you do one ride and that time counts for all of the classes and categories your are eligible for. We don't do that. Unless you have chip timing, it delays the results tremendously and also would be rather difficult to deal with. Anyway, I had to contact those riders, find out which single class or category they wanted to enter, issue refunds for the duplicate entries, etc.

So on race day, I picked up Gavin at 5:45 or so, arriving at the TT location around 6:30. As our handful of volunteers started to arrive we got things set up at the registration location, and then at the start line, and then at the finish line, all of which were in separate places. They we tallied up our volunteers and of course didn't have quite enough to do things the way we wanted to. Luckily we were able to convince a few people to help out. With three different turn-arounds to marshal, and riders finishing well before most of the others had started, we need quite a few volunteers. At least three at the start, at least three or four at the finish, at least three at the turnarounds, and at least one at the registration desk to get waivers signed and numbers handed out. Somehow we managed it. I started all of the riders, then rushed back to the registration desk with the first batch of finish times. I think I made two typos that were of course noticed and corrected, but otherwise the results went smoothly. On the other hand, awarding medals was somewhat confusing since we skip over the non-LAMBRA riders to identify the top three LAMBRA riders in each class/category, but then we also duplicate medals for any non-LAMBRA riders who finish in the top three of their races. Luckily we had enough medals left over from last year because USAC didn't ship out the 2019 medals until Monday. I'm expecting them to arrive today.

Tulane riders Gavin, Kaitlyn, and Julia heading to Nationals in Augusta

So anyway, it was a long day, but there were some bright spots. For one, it didn't rain. That always complicates everything and lowers turnout. For another, despite a significant north wind, we had a new LAMBRA and course record of 51:12 set by Peter Reed. In all, there were 20 riders who went under an hour for the 40 km time trial that day. Also notable was that we had six 70+riders. Gavin Blair, one of the Tulane riders, posted a 58:40 in Merckx mode (no aero bars or disk wheels).

Gavin, Kaitlyn, and Julia took off for Augusta this morning with Dustin and Joey for Collegiate Road Nationals. I'm hoping they fare well. The road course up there is the same one on an Army base that I rode when I went to Masters Nationals way, way back in, for me at least, friction-shifting days. I would have placed very well in the road race had my chain not jammed between the freewheel and dropout when I made the final shift to start my sprint. I've never been quite that frustrated in my life. On the plus side, I placed 5th in the criterium there which I remember as being fairly technical and very fast and animated.

Westbank Speed - Eastbank Blood

Good turnout for the Westbank Speed Festival

It's been a few weeks since I've logged anything here, so I'll be doing a bit of catch-up ... in reverse. Some months ago Michelle Ginsburg and John Crosby called to see if the club might be interested in putting on a race at the NOLA Motorsports Park.

Michelle has raced on and off for at least a couple of decades and John races cars and is somehow connected with the Motorsports Park over on the westbank, which is what everyone in New Orleans calls the "other" side of the river, which is actually mainly to the south. So one day Mignon and I went over there to meet up with John and Michelle to see what might or might not be feasible. We had done a few informal training type races there a fairly long time ago, but they were done on weekday evenings and the traffic difficulties involved in getting over there after work proved to be their undoing. Since then, the park has been somewhat improved and better marketed, and seems to get a fair amount of use. It isn't just some small local track. This is a full-fledged multi-million dollar facility with multiple course options, the shortest of which is 1.8 miles.

So we checked out the facilities and talked it over, and I made up a rough budget that included the per-rider track fee, USAC insurance fee, LAMBRA per-rider fee, officiating costs, etc., and concluded that we might possibly break even if we could generate at least $1,500 in cash sponsorship. With a typical local-level entry fee of around $35, the club would net $9 per rider, not including reduced entries to club members, lower fees for a couple of categories, etc., to help cover a reasonable prizelist and related expenses.

Car Trophy!

Frankly, I thought we wouldn't be able to do it, but on the other hand we have a recently growing group of riders on the westbank, a number of whom own businesses there and have been sponsoring their own clubs. So we put the word out, and right away Joe Amadee offered to shake the bushes over there. By mid-February we had the necessary sponsorship in hand, all from westbank businesses, and the event was officially a "go" for April 27, the only day we could get the track because they don't run anything on it that day because of the nearby Zurich Golf Classic and the noise issue. Never mind that we were already scheduled to put on the LAMBRA Time Trial championship the following week, and had barely scratched the surface for sponsorship for the June Tour de Louisiane, and by "we" I mean Mignon, Pat, Christian, and me. Joe kicked in a couple hundred extra so that I could get ten big trophies with cars on top for the winners, and we started promoting the Westbank Speed Festival at NOLA Motorsports Park as best we could. By Wednesday of last week I knew we would have a good turnout. The weather was going to be great, riders were anxiously talking about it, and pre-registrations were starting to come in. By the time pre-reg closed on Friday night we had 80-something riders registered, with many of them signed up for more than one of the overlapping-category races.

We got out to the track on Sunday around 7 am to set up and were surprised to find that the track crew had already placed pylons marking off the course for us, which saved us a lot of time. We had a lot of race-day registrations too, so we ended up with 126 riders registered for 172 races. The first race was the Cat. 4/5 race with 58 riders on the line, which was probably the biggest field we've seen for anything in a while. Anyway, the races went off great despite a few crashes, and everyone really enjoyed the course and venue that included a restaurant, go-cart racing, and real bathrooms. John, Michelle, and Joe deserve a ton of credit because the race would not have happened without them. Mignon, Pat and Christian did a lot of legwork on race day and also spearheaded pre-race promotion. Ricky Dunn came down to officiate, and along with Michelle, and thanks to the long course that minimized lapped riders, results were fast and accurate and everything stayed right on schedule. I was pretty exhausted by the time I got home, unloaded everything, cleaned up and posted results, etc. I'd brought my bike to the race but the Masters race was immediately after the big Cat. 4/5 race and I probably wouldn't have had enough warm-up time, if any, anyway.

Matt hit hard on Wednesday morning

The WeMoRi the Wednesday prior to the race had a little excitement when Matt and a city bus tried to concurrently occupy the same space on Wisner Blvd. and Matt, who was on his TT bike, went down pretty hard when the bus closed the door on him and he ran out of road. As usual, I had ridden out to the WeMoRi and since I was running a couple of minutes early I turned right on Lakeshore Drive and went over the Bayou St. John bridge, planning to loop around the traffic circle. Coming over the top of the bridge I saw two riders, who turned out to be Matt and Rob, flying by the other way, so fearing that the pack was right on their heels I went around the traffic circle backwards and right back over the bridge, fully expecting to be swallowed up by the group at any moment. That moment, however, didn't come until I was nearly to Marconi. Matt and Rob must have been at least a minute ahead, maybe more. So anyway, I get into the group and suffer at the back for a while as I adjust to the abrupt increase in effort level as we make the right turn onto Wisner and the pace starts to ramp up again. We come through the light at Elysian Fields and there's Matt on the grass with his bike still in the street and Rob hovering over him. Most of the group stopped, of course, and someone took off to go get a car because it was clear that Matt wouldn't be riding home that day. He had gone right over the bars on his TT bike, whacked his helmeted forehead on the concrete enough to suffer a concussion, and landed on his right shoulder and back. Could've been worse, I guess, but he was obviously a little disoriented and definitely in a lot of pain. (He showed up on his bike the following Sunday during the Giro Ride cool-down.)

New Tatoo

My own injuries from the crash a few weeks ago are all pretty much healed up, and I never lost much riding time at all, although I now have a tatoo on my left kneecap from three teeth of Keith's chainring as I road-surfed on top of his bike. I never could get all of the grease out of the wounds without doing a lot of painful additional tissue damage. The knee still  hurts a little bit, but that seems to be improving, albeit slowly. Otherwise, it's been a lot of routine levee rides with Giro Rides on the weekend and the  usual commute to and from work. The next opportunity for me to race will be in a couple of weeks, again on the westbank, at the Federal City criterium. That may be complicated by some officiating duties and also the fact that Danielle's graduation ceremony is the week before and she will be leaving that afternoon and will definitely need a ride to the airport, so basically it's all a bit up in the air at the moment. Situation normal.....

The Chainring Massacre, Detective Work, and Defense

Mystery Canyon bike hit from behind on LSD

So last Tuesday evening we, and by "we" I mean the local cycling community, learned that a rider had been hit from behind on Lakeshore Drive, presumably in the right lane with the big bicycles painted on it and the signs that say "Bicycles may use full lane." The driver had stopped and said he'd been blinded by the sun, which wasn't unreasonable considering the time of day and direction, not that it was an excuse for continuing to drive without being able to see what was in front of his car. Strangely, in fact extremely strangely, nobody seemed to know who the rider was. A couple of riders had happened upon the scene as the police were about to leave, and all they knew was that (a) the rider had been taken away in an ambulance and was "stable," and (b) the police were going to leave what was left of the carbon fiber Canyon with carbon Mavic wheels and Garmin and Speedplay pedals on the side of the road like it was a piece of debris. Kristina, who arrived as the police were leaving, got Matt to come pick up the broken bike. Thus began a week-long detective story to identify the rider and get the bike back to him. Once word went out on FB, everyone with a Canyon bike was identified and contacted and none of them had been in a crash. The plot thickened. The Garmin was investigated to see where and when the mystery rider rode, and it turned out that most of the rides started downtown near Poydras, probably at a Condo. I searched Strava but couldn't turn up anything solid. That nobody in the competitive cycling community had a clue was rather shocking, since the bike wasn't exactly some department store junk, but a fairly legit racing bike.

Found him!

It wasn't until Monday that Matthew J got the Garmin files from Charlie T and tediously created short Strava segments along the route the mystery rider had taken until he finally got a name - Miguel Solano - who nobody seemed to know. Using resources that will remain confidential, I was able to track down the rider's contact information and ultimately his FB page. Surprisingly, we had three mutual friends, all in Texas, all cyclists. The phone number was called and by Monday afternoon he'd been contacted. He had been at University Medical Center with a fractured L1 vertebra, had surgery, and was recovering. I felt so relieved that we had finally solved the mystery. It had been bothering me for a week!

Danielle preparing for her presentation

On Friday Danielle did her dissertation defense, cleanly jumping the last major hurdle for her PhD in Epidemiology from LSUHSC. I sat in for the presentation but then had to run (almost literally) back to my office for an important conference call, then went to the LSU Dental School for their School of Public Health crawfish boil, the back to work for a meeting. Danielle will be heading back to Olympia at the end of the week, then returning for graduation for a few days. In the interim she will be starting a new job at the Washington State Department of Health in Tumwater, which is basically part of the Olympia metro area. We are very proud of her.

Fog and wet roads on Saturday, but a solid training ride anyway.

It was a Giro Ride weekend for me, which was good considering all of the other things going on. Saturday's Giro featured a lot of heavy fog for practically the entire ride, so when I went out on Sunday morning, thankfully in summer kit, I was glad to see that there was just a little bit of actual fog, even though it felt like I was riding in a light rain on the way to Starbucks. The ride itself had a good turnout and there were a few at the front keeping the pace high, so that was good. I was planning on going to Pontchatoula right after the Giro since a number of the Tulane riders needed a ride to a end-of-season crawfish boil over at Dustin's place. I was mostly hanging out in the draft and things went nicely out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles. There was a bit of a tailwind on the way back, and just as things were picking up, Matt flatted and everyone stopped. We got going again pretty quickly and of course the speed got fairly high heading back down Chef highway and onto that little stretch of I-510 before we turned onto Lake Forest Blvd. As I've probably mentioned before, Lake Forest Blvd. is a concrete road on top of swamp mud, so it's a minefield of cracks and sharp-edged holes. So naturally whoever was at the front decided it would be a good idea to go 27 mph there. So I'm sitting in this long thin line of riders when I see a little gap opening up a couple of riders ahead. Just then, Matt comes up on the left and Keith N moves over onto his wheel and I move over onto Keith's wheel as Matt starts closing the gap at 29 mph.

After the crash. Keith on the right trying to walk it off.

Things were going just great for a little while until suddenly I see Keith's bike sliding sideways in front of me, which washes out my front wheel and dumps me basically on top of his bike. It seemed like we slid for a really long time, and I had time to roll onto my back before grinding to a halt. I picked myself up and took a quick inventory. The bike, surprisingly, seemed fine. More surprisingly, I still had most of my skin. I could feel a light burn on my right hip, there was road rash on my right lower leg, and there was blood running down my left leg from my knee to my socks, but I hadn't hit my head and I hadn't broken any bones, so I was kind of excited about that.

Keith's hip. His arm and elbow were similar.

Keith, on the other hand, looked far worse, and I surmised that I had probably surfed on top of him and his bike for a little while before making contact with the concrete. He was missing patches of skin best measured in square feet. Remarkably, his bike was also fully functional since it had been a sliding type of crash with no real sudden impact. In fact, the "incident detection" on my Garmin hadn't even been triggered (I'd set it off by accident just the day before when I dropped the front wheel to the ground after hosing it off outside). So while most of the group continued on, six or seven of us rode back the rest of the way rather slowly. I could see some nice black impressions from Keith's chain on my arm, and on my left shorts, extending all the way to my kneecap, was the impression of a chainring. I had three good puncture wounds from the chainring on my kneecap, which had bled rather profusely for a couple of minutes. Back at home I took a quick and rather stinging shower, cleaned the wounds up as much as I could (I'm sure I will still end up with a grease tattoo on my kneecap, however), closed the skin with some would closures, and rushed off to pick up people for the crawfish boil. Fortunately the injuries weren't too painful, so everything was fine until I was back in New Orleans that evening and the knee started to hurt. I was a little swollen. On Monday I went for an easy short ride on the levee with Danielle, mostly just to keep the knee moving, and then headed to work after taking a 12-hour Aleve, which worked pretty well.

Relatively minor injuries for me - relatively

This morning I headed out to meet the Tuesday levee ride, not knowing if I'd be able to make the full ride or keep up. My knee was still hurting every time I put pressure on the pedals, so I wasn't very confident. After waiting for a train, I met up with the other riders who had delayed their start for a few minutes because of the train. I told them I'd be sitting on the back and possibly turning around early. We were about fifteen minutes into the ride when my knee started feeling better. I don't know if it was just that the pedaling had loosened it up, or that the Naproxin had kicked in, but by the time we were halfway out to Ormond I was able to start taking pulls. We weren't going super fast, so that certainly helped. We picked up a few riders along the way, and on the way back one of them basically attacked when his turn came at the front, just after Pat had pulled off. Pat had slowed the pace by one or two mph, so perhaps the guy felt like he should ramp it up again, but anyway he went way overboard. I heard Rich say something, and could hear Pat also saying something as he struggled to get back on. That pushed the speed up from the 23-24 mph we'd been going to around 29 mph, at which point the rider pulled off and asked "did I do something wrong?" as he dropped back. I think the result was that he had gapped off two riders, and ultimately himself as well. Anyway, by then my knee was feeling basically normal and I was not feeling any pain, so that was kind of a relief. I'd been wondering if I'd done more damage than I'd thought, but I now think it was just the inflammation and swelling.

A Lull

We've been in kind of a lull since the Red Bluff fondo a few weeks ago, so not much to blog about other than a lot of routine early morning rides in the dark, plus the weekend Giro Rides. It has been in the mid to low fifties in the morning all week, which to me feels rather cold and is practically impossible to dress for. As we approach April the training rides are starting to get a little faster for a little longer, but unfortunately we don't have any really nearby races on the calendar until the end of April when we'll be hosting the Westbank Speed Festival at the NOLA Motorsports Park. This should be a fun day with a full slate of races on the track, plus the opportunity to try out Karting. It's actually a really expensive venue for us to use. Even with $35 entry fees, the club will probably net about $5 per rider at best.

Fortunately the riders who live on the Westbank stepped up and raised enough sponsorship to cover a nice little prizelist. Then, the week after that race we will be hosting the Time Trial Championships. In addition, I'm just about to submit the Tour de Louisiane event permit for June 8-9. I'm probably going to go with BikeReg for online registration for that one. USAC has finally worked out a deal with them, and even though everything won't be ready for official roll-out until June 1, I think most of what I need should be in place now. It'll be a little more work to get that all set up since, at the moment, I can't duplicate a prior year online registration setup from USAC so that it will migrate to BikeReg, although that is one of the things they are currently working on. Another interesting development, and one that should be in place in time for the Time Trial, is a long-awaited deal between USAT and USAC on some kind of joint racing license or membership thing. Hopefully that will make it easier for USAT riders to come do our Time Trial. We'll see.

Saturday Giro Ride stopped for a flat (didn't stop for the next one, though!)

Last weekend we had a couple of nice Giro Rides. With the weather warming up and the road season rapidly approaching, the number of riders is increasing, as is the speed. Even so, the Tuesday/Thursday morning levee rides are still a bit inconsistent, attendance-wise. On Tuesday it was chilly and quite windy. I think there were like four of us, and a couple had plausible excuses for turning around early. Then, this morning (Thursday) we had a big turnout, which for this ride is about a dozen, that made for a much faster ride. By the way, the Mississippi River level has started to drop a bit and the Corps of Engineers has started closing off the Bonnet Carre Spillway, so maybe I won't have to move stuff from the basement to the main floor after all!

Thursday morning returning on the levee

As usual, I've been loafing around most of this year around Zone 2, which is to say I'm doing just enough riding to keep from getting much fatter but not really enough to keep from getting dropped in a real race.  Situation normal. February and March are never good for me, and I don't usually feel like I've hit my stride until around mid-June or July. On the plus side, there a good slate of LAMBRA races in May and June, followed by the usual lull in July into August, but that does at least open up the opportunity to travel. Maybe.

Danielle flew in from Washington a few days ago. We have my niece's wedding this weekend, so lots of family will be arriving today and tomorrow. I think we have a bunch of family kind of camping out at our house overnight before they can get into a short term rental down the street, and there's a crawfish boil at my sister's house tonight. I'm going to have to take tomorrow off from work, I'm afraid, lest I appear to be more antisocial than I really am. Then next week Danielle defends her dissertation at LSUHSC before flying back to Olympia where she already has a job lined up with the Department of Health. The only bad thing is that the Tulane Cycling team has Conference Championships over in Denton TX this coming weekend and neither Dustin nor I can go because of weddings, so that's a little disappointing since they are offering a couple of non-collegiate races. Masters Nationals this year is in Colorado Springs, which would be a nice place to go, and a terrible place for me to race. I mean, going from sea level to 6,000 feet and expecting to survive repeated high-intensity efforts, uphill, is just ludicrous. I still have vivid memories of the 1980 nationals in Bisbee, Arizona where it was only around 3,000 feet but on a course that was straight uphill in one direction and straight downhill in the other. I felt great climbing on the first lap, came flying down the mountain at 55 mph with the group, and completely imploded halfway up the next lap having still not recovered from the first lap's climb. Lesson learned for sure. Anyway, the Crossroads Cycling Classic and LAMBRA Road Championships just decided to move to that same weekend. This morning Steve was talking about going up to the Alabama Cycling Classic, aka Sunny King, April 13-14, which would be fun but kind of a heavy lift for me right now. We'll see.