Instant Winter

I didn't ride today. I could have, of course, but instead I chose to take the day off from riding, not because I wanted to, but because some days it's just not such a good idea. Today was one of those days. After the spectacular Fall weather we had last Sunday for the Varsity to Varsity ride, Tuesday morning was a bit of a punch in the face. This was the first really cold front of the season. Of course, I still woke up at 5:25 and checked the weather. The forecast had been for cold, rain, and wind, which is never a good combination when you're on the bike, and I'd been fully expecting it to be raining. It wasn't. I sat there staring at the weather radar that was showing some light rain approaching (which never actually arrived) and briefly contemplated breaking out the rain bike. Then I noticed the wind. 33 mph steady with gusts at 41. Temperature at 43 degrees. Relative humidity at 82%. Overcast with a 50% chance of rain. Yesterday I got both influenza and pneumonia vaccines, the latter of which left me with a pretty sore deltoid. So many reasons not to ride! Tomorrow will be even colder with a predicted low at WeMoRi time of 32 and a 10 mph north wind, but at least there is zero chance of rain. I have the clothes to handle that, assuming I can find them. Will I ride? 

The suspense is killing me......

Long Flat Day along the River

Somewhere past the Spillway with Julia and Dustin

Sunday was the 9th almost-annual Varsity to Varsity ride for the LSU and Tulane cycling clubs. This year there were only four Tulane riders doing the whole thing, so I was spared the complication of driving people to Baton Rouge, driving back to NOLA, and then riding upriver to meet the group. That provided a couple of nice benefits. For one, it was probably fifteen degrees warmer by the time I rolled out of the house at 8:08 am wearing just my sunscreen arm-warmers and a wind-front base layer that ended up in my pocket for the return trip. For another, I didn't need to get up at 5:30 am and could actually eat something for breakfast. Joining me for the out-and-back version of V2V this year would be Dustin and Julia who I planned to meet somewhere along the levee bike path.

Rest stop where we met up

I ended up leaving home a bit earlier than I'd planned since I basically didn't know what to do with myself on a nice sunny Sunday morning when I'd normally have been on the bike by 6:10 am. Dustin and Julia were planning on leaving from Headquarters at 200 Broadway at 8:30. I rode easy out to the levee and then rode a mile or two upriver to the Corps of Engineers building before turning around and starting upriver, which put me just a few minutes ahead of them. None of us was in a hurry, so I was all the way to St. Rose before they came up on me. We had a clear blue sky and a slight tailwind, so it was easy going at a steady conversational pace of around 18 mph.

The group scattered along the spillway road on the way back because of the off-road sections - some rode, some walked

There were a few places along the Spillway road, which was technically closed, that had been washed out when the spillway was open earlier in the year, so we didn't really know what to expect when we rode around the barricades. As it turned out, there were just a couple of places where the asphalt was completely washed out, but in both cases vehicles had created a somewhat sandy bypass around them - basically just a bit of off-road dirt riding - that wasn't too bad except for a couple of spots where the sand was deep. Once back on River Road, upriver of the spillway, we continued on, looking for a place where we could get onto the levee bike path three miles later. That got us a nice 7 miles or so on the bike path and through the LaPlace area before it ended and we were back on River Road.

Back on the levee path

I was glad I'd brought my bright rear blinky light for the next stretch because, even though it was a Sunday morning, there was a bit of traffic and there are no shoulders on River Road. The generally east wind had started to pick up a bit, so our speed did as well along here as we cruised under the Gramercy bridge, past Lutcher, and then, a few miles later, found the group at one of their planned rest stops - the one where there used to be a bunch of Beagles in a big enclosure. Amazingly, this was exactly the same place where I'd met the group a couple of years ago - 52 miles upriver from Audubon Park.

Pizza!

After a banana, a couple of chocolate-chip cookies, and a handful of gummy bears, the group headed out downriver and we re-traced our ride. The wind, which had been practically non-existent when we started, had started to pick up a little bit, but it never got to be very bad. As always seems to happen, once we were past the spillway and back onto the levee bike path, a few riders were starting to feel the miles, which led to some gaps and a couple of slow-downs to regroup. Fortunately we were able to keep everyone together all the way to the end this year, including the guy who rode the entire thing in Vans shoes, flat pedals, and gym shorts. I'm thinking he had some kind of riding short underneath because I didn't see any blood flowing down his legs at the end.

At Varsity Sports in NOLA

At Varsity Sports on Magazine Street we had the traditional pizza, and eventually took a group photo on the front porch before everyone headed back to wherever they'd come from. It was a long but enjoyable 115 mile day for me. Since the pace was always quite civilized, my legs were none the worse for wear. I couldn't say the same about my neck, back and crotch. Sometimes, going slowly for a long time can hurt just as much as going fast for a shorter time - just in different places.

Colder Air and Long Shadows

It was a very busy night on Neron Place

Well last week was a total write-off for me. Wednesday and Thursday mornings were rainy, and then on Friday I had to be over at the uptown campus early for some Homecoming volunteer assignments. By the time I left there in the early afternoon I was feeling kind of bad. My stomach had been very unhappy all morning, and I felt like I might be running a low-grade fever, so I just headed home.

We'd had a busy Halloween night on Thursday but I couldn't really attribute how I was feeling to that. Candy  had been home all day Friday (over-)preparing for our annual Halloween party for the neighbors, cooking gumbo, making cookies and cupcakes, picking up stuff from Whole Foods catering, etc., so although I would have liked to have climbed under the covers under the circumstances, there was still much to do. For one thing, the car was showing low air pressure in one of the tires, and just that morning one of the headlights had burned out. So I checked all of the tires, all of which were at least 5 psi low, got them all up to spec, then ran over to the auto parts store for a couple of new headlight bulbs, installed those, topped up the coolant that was just a bit low, and foolishly thought I might be able to lie down for a while to see if I'd recover. That's when she asked me to pick up ice for the drinks. When I got home from that we discovered that two of our ice chests were missing, so I had to go out and buy another one to fill with ice and Rogue Dead Guy Ale.

Reggie, Andrea, and Dennis at Swamp Otter on Sunday

By the time it was party time I was not feeling well at all. I made a few brief appearances but ended up in bed with an ache in my upper right abdomen, a little nausea, and I think a mild fever. I hadn't eaten much of anything all day.

By Saturday morning I was starting to wonder if it was something serious, so we made a trip over to the ER for a "calculus of gallbladder without cholecystitis without obstruction" diagnosis with otherwise normal ultrasound and x-ray and blood work, and referral to an internal medicine doctor and general surgeon. To be more specific, the pathologist said cholelithiasis without evidence of cholecystitis with three tiny nonmobile echogenic foci at the gallbladder neck and a single mobile 0.6 cm stone. Fortunately, by then I was feeling considerably better in general. Later that afternoon I walked over to Tulane Stadium to watch the second half of the Homecoming football game where Tulane pulled off a victory despite at least a hundred yards of penalties that included two called-back touchdowns.

Sunday we finally, at long last, set the clocks back to standard time, which made it so very much better when I had to load up the car and head over to Chalmette to officiate the Swamp Otter cyclocross race. The weather was pretty nice - a little chilly and windy, but with a nice blue sky. The races went pretty well since field sizes were generally small and manageable, so I was back home by 3:30 or 4:00. I might have tried to get out for a late afternoon ride, but figured I'd wait until Monday under the circumstances.

Nice to see the sun in the morning again!

Monday morning the temperature was around 50F, and since I was planning on a nice easy ride, I dug out a pair of knickers and a long-sleeve jersey and wind vest for the first time this Fall. I was definitely not willing to be cold for my first ride in five days. The legs felt fresh, of course, so it was a nice ride. I turned around with a few of the Tulane riders and got a few bonus miles before heading back down Oak Street through the remnants of Sunday's Po-Boy Festival. It was great to be able to go out to ride at 6 am without it being pitch dark for another hour. As it was, I used my lights just to get from home to the levee. By then the sun was almost over the horizon. Looking forward, we have the Varsity to Varsity ride scheduled for Sunday and I expect I'll do what I usually do for that, which is to shuttle riders up to Baton Rouge, and then ride from New Orleans upriver until I run into them on their way back. The only complication this year will be the Spillway road which is still closed and showing no signs of being repaired any time soon. I think we can get through there anyway with a little walking where the asphalt is washed out, but there's always the option of taking the Airline bridge if necessary.

So it's late afternoon right now and feeling even later with the sun already pretty low in the sky. I put the old headlight on the commuter this morning before riding in to work. It will probably be a few more weeks before it's really essential for the ride home, but what the heck. It's looking like morning temperatures in the mid-upper 50s with maybe a morning or two dipping down to the upper 40s for the next week or two. Probably won't need to pull out the full tights and winter jacket for a while.

Punctures and Precip

It had been so long since I'd flatted that I was wondering if my CO2 cartridges had expiration dates. I'd just left the house a couple of minutes earlier on very dark Monday morning, looking forward to an easy twenty miles on the levee. The bike lane along Carrollton was littered with Oak tree debris from Olga, the surprise tropical depression that had hit with winds easily twice what the weather service had predicted. My headlight was helping, but with the occasional car driving past me I had little choice but to ride through the mess and hope there wasn't something big enough to bring me down. I wasn't even to Willow Street when I felt the rear tire suddenly go flat. Up ahead I could see the bright light of the GNO Cyclery sign, so I limped a couple of blocks more and pulled into the parking lot. There was no sign of anything left in the tire that might have caused the puncture, so I put in a new (ok, all my spare tubes are patched, so not technically "new") inner tube, inflated the tire and continued. All was well for the rest of the ride, although it did get me to wondering just many miles that tire had on it.

This morning I was greeted with damp roads from an earlier shower and a weather radar image that looked like it would be OK for the next hour or two before the predicted three-days of rain would start. I was running about five minutes early, which was fortunate because as soon as I got up to the meeting spot on the levee, a train came by that would have otherwise stopped me in my tracks. At 6 am there were four of us, I think, and we knew that a couple of the regulars weren't planning on riding that day, so we went ahead, hoping we hadn't left anyone stranded on the other side of the train tracks.

There was a bit of wind, but nothing too severe, and once we got warmed up the pace was nice and steady. I have no idea what the speed was since it was too dark to read the computer, but probably around 23, with is fairly typical. By the time we were upriver of Jefferson Parish, though, it was just Rich and me. I always feel sorry for him when this happens since I know I don't offer much draft, even to normal people, and Rich is a fair bit taller than normal. Anyway, we kept up a pretty steady pace out to The Dip where we planned to turn back. Naturally, as soon as we got there, at the farthest point from home, we started to feel a few raindrops. That kind of kept us pushing the pace a bit on the way back, but fortunately we never got anything heavy enough to qualify as "rain" until the last few miles. We were just getting to the Jefferson Playground when my rear tire suddenly went flat. I immediately wondered if I'd missed something embedded in the tread the day before, but when I checked it I quickly discovered a piece of metal, like a staple, sticking out of it. I did a quick inner tube change and we continued on. I was thinking I'd get back home just before it started to really rain. Then the tire went flat again just as I was turning off of the bike path and going down to River Road which was at a standstill because of another train. So I rode up to the tracks and immediately found another metal staple sticking out of the tire. The train cleared, so Rich headed home after making sure I had another tube and CO2. By the time I got the tire fixed there was a steady stream of cars filled with frustrated drivers going both ways, so rather than try and cross the tracks right there, I instead rode in the opposite direction to Monticello and from there to Willow, since I'd have been there forever trying to get across both lanes. So if flats come in 3s, I guess I should be good for a while now!

By the time I got home it was raining, so I did end up getting somewhat wet. I had to get the dog to the Vet for a $600 checkup, and drop The Wife off for her own doctor's appointment, and then go back home to drop off the dog and then back to Baptist to pick up Candy to drive in to work, all in the rain of course. On the plus side, everything went quickly and I was at work just a bit after 10 am.

Winter Creeps Closer

A view of the Spillway road, currently closed to traffic, from my Saturday ride.

Well, we survived the unexpectedly strong winds and rains last Friday night that caused some power outages and took down some trees and power poles during the night. I had already written off the Saturday Giro Ride, so I slept an extra hour or so, which was harder than it might seem given my regular routine. When I did finally get up and make coffee and look out the window I was a little surprised to see that the bad weather, which was another little cold front, had gone through more quickly than predicted and the roads were already starting to dry out. Granted, there was still the matter of a 15 mph wind, but the temperature wasn't supposed to start dropping until afternoon, so by 9:00 I decided to head out for a 50 mile solo ride to the Spillway and back along the levee bike path. Although the sun was starting to peek out through the breaks in the clouds when I started, most of the ride was under a fairly overcast grey sky. The wind was mostly westerly, so the whole way out was more headwind than anything else, but fortunately the trees along the batture were blocking much of the crosswind component. Along the way I saw three places where River Road was closed because of power lines that had come down. In one case a pole with a transformer had just snapped off. The others were poles that had been pushed over enough that the power lines were too low to make it safe for vehicles to pass under them. Anyway, it was a nice kind of relaxed ride despite the wind. I checked out the Spillway road since we may be taking it for the Varsity to Varsity ride in a couple of weeks. They have it barricaded with those big cement barricades, and I know it's washed out in a place or two, but otherwise it looks rideable. Hopefully nobody will have a problem with us riding/walking it so we don't have to ride on the antique bridge that was designed for Model T Ford car widths.

The Sunday Giro had a good group that seemed to be
happy with a more moderate pace than usual.

Sunday was fairly chilly, and as I rode out to the Giro Ride I was wishing I'd worn a light vest. Of course once the group got going on Hayne the temperature was no longer an issue. It turned out to be a fairly moderate Giro Ride for some reason. The work along Chef highway seems to be progressing, and for a couple of miles on the way out we had nice fresh asphalt in the right lane rather than the washboard that is left when the scrape off the old surface. Perhaps by next week the whole right lane on the way out will be smooth. Wishful thinking. Next Saturday is the annual Tour da Parish ride that attracts most of the Giro Ride group, so I guess I'll be doing that. I also guess I'll be missing a day or two of riding mid-week as yet another cold front pushes through Tuesday through Thursday. With Saturday's low temperature currently predicted to be 47 with a 13 mph wind, it's going to be tough to decide what to wear. It'll probably be 60 by the end, so shorts or knickers, arm-warmers or long sleeves, vest or no vest. Most likely I'll opt to freeze for the first half hour in order to be more comfortable later. Complicating things a bit is the fact that we are having our Halloween party the day after Halloween, aka Dia de los Muertos, which may make getting up early on Saturday a little harder than usual. Then on Sunday I'm scheduled to officiate the Swamplocross cyclocross race on the Westbank when it will at least be slightly warmer. I'll probably freeze anyway since I'll mostly be just standing there trying to keep track of lapped riders all morning.

Looking kind of sketchy until Friday, then significantly cooler

Anyway, it's looking like winter is creeping closer and closer with the cold fronts getting more frequent. This will be the first weekend with low temperatures predicted to be in the upper 40s, which may or may not actually happen in the city itself where we get a little extra warmth from the lake water. Even so, it's getting to be time to look for the base layers and arm warmers and vests and gloves that haven't seen the light of day since last March. On the plus side, we switch back to standard time on Sunday, so at least it won't be so dark on the morning rides.

More Rain

Friday afternoon in New Orleans - view from the westbank looking toward downtown

Fall weather can be irritatingly inconsistent around here, especially now that we are starting to see the cold fronts making it all the way to New Orleans, one after the other. With the Gulf of Mexico still relatively warm, the city seems to be nicely positioned where the cold fronts run smack into the warm Gulf air. The predictably  unpredictable result, of course, is rain and more rain, until there's no more rain and the winds turn to the north and the sky turns blue and the temperature plummets, which in New Orleans means it drops into the 50s, accompanied by a day or two of 15 mph winds. At the moment we have a Tropical Depression named TD #17 (they apparently don't merit more colorful names if they don't spin up to the correct wind speeds) drifting toward us from the southeast, while at the same time a cold front is inching its way down from the northwest. It's been raining since about 2 am this morning, and probably won't stop raining until some time on Saturday when the northwest winds start to overwhelm the southwest winds. This would all be well and good if I'd been training and racing hard for a couple of weeks and could benefit from a day or two off the bike. This morning I turned off the alarm at 5:25 am and didn't even get out of bed until almost 7:00. The wife has some kind of stomach thing hanging on from yesterday so she wasn't going to go to work. On the plus side, that meant I could take the car, even though parking at the Tidewater garage meant I'd still have a four block walk in the rain to my building on Poydras. As luck would have it, however, when I tried to turn off of Canal Street onto LaSalle, where the entrance to the garage is, I found the street completely flooded, which seems to happen with alarming regularity lately. I decided to park in the garage at my office, which will cost something like $10, and then turned on the wrong block and ended up parking in the garage across the street from my building. Oh well. Closer than four blocks anyway. So I'm pretty sure I won't be riding tomorrow morning and somewhat doubtful I'll be riding tomorrow afternoon. Sunday should be nice if you don't mind the mid-50s temperature. Remarkably, the wind is supposed to be only 3 mph by then.

Nashville to New Orleans

Yesterday on the levee ride it was dark all the way out to Ormond. We still have another week or so until the time change, and I'm not all that comfortable on the bike path in the dark where we often run up on un-reflectorized pedestrians quite suddenly. Yesterday, on the way back, we came up on a couple of cyclo-tourists from Nashville TN who were on the last leg of their trip to New Orleans. Lucky for them that today wasn't their last day, because it would have been miserable!

This weekend there are cyclocross races up in Jackson/Ridgeland. I'm quite grateful that I'm not scheduled to officiate those. I suppose that turnout tomorrow will be on the low side despite the 88 entries since I suspect Saturday will be a bit of a sloppy mess that might be fun if you're riding but could be kind of miserable if you're officiating for five hours with eight race groups and twenty-one different age and skill categories. Also, 49 of those entries are Juniors since Rolando runs a popular kids' cyclocross series there.

Right now it's Friday afternoon and I'm waiting on a call from someone in Capital Projects who has been successfully dodging me for over a week despite three emails and a text message, so that I can start work on a $1M state capital outlay request that is due in a week.

Weekend at the Oval

The group at the velodrome last Sunday. Should be some nice photos from Leadingham Photography soon.

Last weekend we had the annual LAMBRA track championship at the Baton Rouge Velodrome. As usual, this was a very low-key affair, made even lower by the lackluster 10-rider turnout, which was inexplicably lower than most of the weeknight series races. Even more inexplicable was the fact that of those ten (well technically 11 since two raced only one day each), only two were from Baton Rouge. The weather was great, the races were fun, and things went smoothly thanks to Dustin and Will and the guy from BREC whose name I have of course already forgotten. I was there missing a weekend of riding in order to be the official, which is just as time-consuming if there are forty riders or ten. Saturday morning I was up at 5:45 and left home a bit before 6:30 am after loading a table, the finish camera, and various other officiating items into the car. I also threw the track bike on top of it all so I could ride around in little ovals in-between the morning and afternoon sessions. I guess I got back home that night around 9 or 9:30. Fortunately, Sunday had only a morning session, so I was back in New Orleans a lot sooner. It was a shame that the turnout was so low, but there's hope. We met with a couple of people from BREC who help manage the park there and they were fairly encouraging about the possibility of setting up an MOU with the Baton Rouge Velodrome Association (once we get it re-instated with the Louisiana Secretary of State since nobody sent in the required annual reports for the past couple of  years). Technically, if you charge an entry fee for anything at the park, and it's not something that is being run by BREC itself, there's a big rental fee you're supposed to pay, not that anyone has ever collected a fee for any of the track events we've put on for the past 35 years or so. We are hopeful we can work out an MOU where the events are BREC events that the Velodrome Association puts on under USAC event permits. Where the money goes isn't really an issue as long as the USAC insurance and permit fees, and maybe even the officials, get paid. Should be interesting.

Pre-dawn Fall rides are sometimes lonely

So Monday morning I headed out the door earlier than usual for a Monday, which is to say before 6 am, in the dark, because a cold front was headed our way and it was supposed to be raining all day. That worked out OK and I got in a nice enough solo ride, basically before the sun came up. It did indeed rain most of the day. The front came through overnight leaving us with a windy and somewhat cooler morning today, if you call 65F cool. I was running a bit late in the morning and rushed over to the levee for the 6 am ride only to find it deserted. I guess the 15 mph wind scared everyone away?  I had a pretty nice ride anyway, and the wind wasn't much of a problem since I was going mostly 19 mph and the wind was mostly crosswind. One thing about these early morning rides a few weeks before we set our clocks back is that we get to see some nice sunrises. Tomorrow morning is supposed to be 58 or 59 degrees at WeMoRi time, so it may perhaps be the first time this fall I'll indulge in a base layer and actual arm-warmers. There are cyclocross races up in Jackson/Ridgeland this weekend. Hopefully Ricky has enough help lined up for those and I can stay in town and actually ride my bike a bit. At work I'm in 'hurry up and wait' mode, fully expecting a fire drill, mostly on my part, for the last week of the month in order to get a capital outlay request ready before Nov. 1.

The next USAC Local Associations conference call has been postponed twice, so I assume USAC hasn't quite finished working out what their plan for the Local Associations is going to be for next year. I'm expecting there will be some drama there, although for LAMBRA it probably won't be as critical as it might be for some larger associations that have larger budgets. We're just now starting to collect 2020 race dates for the planning calendar, and some events have already submitted their USAC 2020 event permit requests, although none of those have been approved yet because USAC hasn't finalized the fee structure. USAC has a new president/CEO this year, so things could change. Over in Covington where we do the Tour de Louisiane's criterium, there's a new Mayor, so hopefully we won't run into any problems holding the race there in June. Right now we're (as in the NOBC) planning on doing the NOLA Motorsports Park race again, plus the Tour de La. We could do the Time Trial as well but I don't want to "claim" that event if someone else really, really wants to promote it. At the moment, we don't know where the LAMBRA championship events will be - road, time trial, criterium, cyclocross, track, time trial, team time trial. Hopefully we can get some of that worked out over the next month or so in order to put at least a preliminary calendar out there.

Change in the Air

Bald Eagles in Kenner along the river levee bike path.

We felt the first raindrops at precisely 6:45 am as Christian, Judd and I were doing a little cool-down after the 5:45 am WeMoRi. It had been a fairly easy WeMoRi for some reason, so I'd only had a few brief bits of intensity (OK, yeah, I never really tried to go to the front) except for the last couple of miles when Jeff sat on the front for a long time just hammering before Judd came around with me on his wheel. Then, about 200 meters before the finish, Judd unexpectedly sat up just when I thought he was about to go for it. Turned out he had misjudged where the finish was. It was still rather dark because of cloud cover and, well, the fact that the sun wasn't up yet. When I'd looked at the radar before leaving home, I thought I'd be able to do the ride and get back home before the nasty-looking line of rain ahead of the cold front got here. It was now clear that my estimate had been a bit optimistic. I turned around quickly and rushed down Marconi as the occasional raindrops turned into a light rain, checking my tail light periodically because it has been known to turn itself off when it gets really wet.

Not a fan of this setup

The city started tearing up part of Marconi near City Park Avenue a couple of days ago, and although that would have been my shortest route home, I decided it would be a lot safer to go through City Park and head down Jeff. Davis instead. I'm not a huge fan of what they plan on doing on that section of Marconi because it's going to be a problem for group rides unless you're OK with 25 people going 30 mph down a two-way bike lane where they're trapped between parked cars, plastic road furniture, and the curb (no idea how the RTA bus is supposed to cross over all of that to pick up passengers). We'll probably end up riding in the one remaining car lane and pissing off the drivers. At least there should finally be some nice smooth asphalt along there. Fortunately the heavy rainstorms that had shown up on radar earlier had evolved into just some light to moderate rain, so I arrived back home twenty minutes later quite wet but not fully soaked. This was our second cool front in a couple of weeks, so it's now looking like Fall is inevitable. The low tomorrow morning is supposed to be around 62F, which qualifies as pretty cool around here although perhaps not quite cool enough to mount a full-on search for last year's misplaced arm-warmers.

No, that's not how it works.

We broke down and bought a new washer and dryer set last week at Lowes. Pretty standard stuff despite costing over $1,000, but the dryer has this "steam" cycle that requires a water line, and since the washer and dryer down in the basement are separated by a big old cracked and leaky cement double sink, the hose wasn't long enough. Just as well, though, because the guys from Lowes who showed up to install the stuff didn't have a clue what they were doing (I had to read him the instructions at one point). After they left I discovered that they hadn't bothered to level either machine and had, in fact, left the feet for the dryer sitting on top of the dryer. That was lucky, I guess, because when I pulled it out to install the feet I immediately noticed that they hadn't put the cable clamp on the power supply. That would have eventually rubbed through the insulation and shorted out, electrocuted someone, and/or burned down the house. Worse, they'd apparently taken the clamp with them, so I had to go find one and install it, re-install the vent pipe that hadn't been installed correctly in the first place, and then spend quite a while on the floor leveling the washer and dryer, after which I ordered a 12 foot water supply hose since they had none at the store. It would have been a lot easier if I'd just had them take the washer and dryer out of the boxes and leave them in the basement for me to install.

A few minutes at Zotz before heading home

Last Friday I went out for a solo recovery ride along the levee (it was Fall Break at Tulane so no regular coffee ride that week) and saw two sets of bald eagles along the way. I don't know where they hide during the summer, but I always start to see them along the river this time of year. Naturally I stopped and tried to get a photo or two. Seeing them is a sure sign that the weather is starting to change. Don't get me wrong, though. We probably won't have anything that qualifies as "Cold" for another month or more, but at least the early mornings should be noticeably cooler. I just wish the switch back to standard time came earlier because right now it's pretty dark for most of my morning rides, and I am never comfortable in a paceline on the levee bike path in the dark even though I leave an extra bike length or two ahead of me. Even with the super-bright headlights that most of us have now, un-lit pedestrians and bikes still catch us by surprise sometimes.

This was clearly an engineering disaster that never should have happened. How do you take down those
cranes and demolish the building in the middle of downtown?

Last weekend I rode back-to-back Giro Rides and crawled around under the shrubbery in front of the house putting up Halloween decorations. Not too exciting, although lots of stuff has been going on around here. For one, we had the collapse of a new hotel they were building on Canal Street just a couple of blocks down from Tulane's Tidewater building. Three people were killed - they're still looking for one of them - and they haven't figured out yet what to do with the building and the two big cranes that are now both damaged and unsupported. A big area around the site has been evacuated, and numerous streets are closed, in case more of it collapses or one of the cranes comes crashing down.

New plumbing to replace the blown-out section
of 110-year-old water pipe under Spruce Street.

Meanwhile, a few blocks from home on Spruce Street, a big 48" water main exploded, flooding streets and resulting in a boil water advisory for a couple of days for a huge swatch of uptown New Orleans.

There was a whole blow-up at the cyclocross race over in Lafayette last weekend. I was kind of glad I hadn't gone. An invisible grass-covered hole just after the start took Kenneth down and apparently he got up and started cursing at the race director and such, which put the race director on the defensive, which just made things worse, and I guess they argued about who should have known about the hole and who should get his money back and that kind of thing. Not that unusual, really, but I guess it went on longer than normal and maybe started to escalate. With all of that going on, the woman from ULL who was there because it was being held on university property inexplicably freaked out and called campus police, which made everything ten times worse and I guess must have freaked Kenneth out, being one of only a couple of black guys there, with an unknown white police officer and all. His team stepped up to defend him against some sort of fear of racist actions that, as far as I can tell, didn't actually materialize, but I guess it's easy to jump to conclusions nowadays when there's a white police officer questioning a black man, and they all left which left only one or two riders for the Cat. 1/2/3 race, which was then cancelled. They then posted something on FB calling the promoter's behavior racist, which I think was a bit of a stretch, if not flat-out libel, under the circumstances (I called him on Monday to find out what the hell happened) since he apparently wasn't the one who called the police or asked Kenneth to leave, and I have to assume he isn't entirely insensitive to the issues involved since his girlfriend is mixed race. Anyway, after a LAMBRA conference call Townsend posted kind of long reminder on the LAMBRA page about course design and proper conduct at races that was kind of a sensitivity training reminder at the end, which I read but didn't comment on and which predictably led to a lot of back-and-forth commenting as always happens on social media. I decided to stay out of it on Facebook since I wasn't there and really, it would have been pointless. The area racing community for the most part, and certainly in New Orleans, has always been welcoming to anyone interested in racing, going back at least 30 or 35 years when Carl Cook and Kendrick Perry and Eddie Padilla were racing here. I lost track of Carl and his son a long time ago. I suspect they moved because of work. Anyway, the whole thing reminds me a bit of the Mike William incident back in the 90s with the crash in the sprint, foul language in front of spectators and children, accusations and subsequent disqualification from the series. Of course, in this case some colorful words after such an unexpected kind of crash are understandable, but the whole thing should have been resolved with a couple of apologies, a refund, and a handshake.

Six Slow Gaps

The Tulane Cycling group, shortly before heading down to the 7:30 am start

Slower isn't really easier at Six Gap. Saturday morning we loaded up a couple of Tulane's rental minivans with eight riders and hit the road promptly at 8:00 am. It wasn't quite early enough, as it turned out. The weather forecast for my 12th annual flogging was calling for a nice dry weekend with Sunday morning temperatures starting around 65F but rising to around 90F. It was going to be a hot one. Before I left, I put two big bottles on the bike, one for plain water and the other for water with whatever electrolyte tablet I had handy, which turned out to be Nuun. Years ago I would have been planning to do the whole ride with whatever I had on the bike, skipping the rest stops in order to make up for time lost climbing like a turtle. This year, my plan was different. I was determined to stop at a few rest stops to down some Coke and Gatorade and refill my bottles. I'm pretty terrible at hydration and will typically ride myself right in dehydration territory without even realizing it. Anyway, I wasn't going to worry about my time this year, and was going to take a few minutes at the tops of the big climbs to catch my breath before plunging down the other side. I would, however, still be climbing like a turtle.

This year I went up with Gavin, Julia, Frank (Houting), Paola, Ben, Julie, and Kaitlyn. The first three would be doing 6 Gap and the other three would be doing 3 Gap. I knew that Gavin was planning on crushing it, but didn't know about the others. I was just hoping to finish quickly enough that I didn't delay our departure time back to New Orleans. Last year we'd left around 8 am and arrived literally as they were closing Saturday evening registration at 6 pm (eastern time), so I wasn't really holding out a lot of hope that we'd make it there in time to pick up packets on Saturday. The Tulane minivans will beep at you if you go more than 75 mph, so trying to shave off a few minutes by driving faster wasn't really an option. Anyway, the drive went fairly smoothly, but at one point everything came to a halt on the Interstate and we lost probably fifteen minutes. Together with a stop for lunch, and 5 pm traffic through Atlanta, we were looking at a 6:15 ETA. The first minivan was ahead of us by about ten minutes, but when they arrived at around 6:05 they were told they'd have to wait until Sunday morning to pick up packets. I'd never picked up packets the morning of the ride, so I didn't really know what to expect. We made a reservation at Pueblo's Mexican Cuisine, where we traditionally have dinner, and then wandered around town a bit until our table was ready. Dinner was nice and then we headed for the Super8 motel, the same one we'd stayed at the year before. When we walked in I recognized the guy behind the counter who'd given us all kinds of trouble the year before with the credit card situation. Tulane's club sports folks make the reservations, give them their credit card number, and send them a credit card authorization form. You'd think that would suffice, but no. Once again, this guy refused to use the credit card that the rooms had been reserved with. I ended up using my Tulane corporate card, which I'm sure is going to cause all sorts of problems once the charge hits my account and I need to move it to the club sports account.

Kaitlyn and Julia, with Haoting in the background
waiting for the start

So Sunday morning we got up around 5 am, had a quick breakfast at the nearby McDonalds, and got to the high school in Dahlonega around 6:15. Packet pickup was actually very well organized, so the only problems were Paola, whose packet they couldn't find, and Ben who was taking Seth's place. Even so, that was all handled pretty quickly. I rushed back to the cars to unload bikes and get my act together. Time goes by really quickly before something like this. We took a quick group photo, and I rushed through the rest of my preparations - Garmin, HRM, two bottles of HammerGel, electrolyte in one water bottle, shoes, phone, gloves, glasses - and rushed down toward the start a little late. We ended up standing on the sidewalk with about a hundred riders in front of us. Then I saw Gavin walking toward us and told him he needed to go to the front, in front of the rope, because he'd been under 6 hours the year before. I knew that if he wanted to be with the front group, starting where we were wasn't going to work. Julia had said she wanted me to ride with her, but I was pretty sure she was going to eventually ride away from me on the climbs (she did, remarkably easily). The start was the usual chaos as I was trying to keep track of Julia, Frank, and Paola behind me without causing a problem for the riders all around me. Eventually things started to thin out and Julia appeared next to me with, "Were you trying to drop me?"  I'd already lost track of Frank and Paola. We rode up the first climb pretty much together and I could tell Julia wasn't going to be having any trouble with the climbing. I was looking at my heart rate and trying to mostly keep it at or under 160 on the climbs. She waited for me at the top of the second and third (Hogpen) climbs. I think it was a pretty long wait at Hogpen! I'd lose her immediately on the descents, but she was easily climbing a couple of mph faster than I, so I wasn't surprised that she kept going on her own over Unicoi. I stopped there as well, and a few minutes later Frank and Joe showed up. The Unicoi descent was lots of fun, as usual, and basically I was on my own for the rest of the ride. Frank stayed behind a bit at the top of Unicoi and I'd lost Joe right away on the descent. I was never pushing it on any of the descents this year. The aero wheels did seem to make a difference, and so I was coasting a lot. I touched 50 mph for a moment, but mostly I was enjoying the swoopy downhills at speeds in the 40s.

Six Gap riders listed as Louisiana or Mississippi, Frank (Haoting) really flew up the timed climbs!

So after stopping at three rest stops and not bombing any of the downhills, and being old and decrepit, I wasn't even looking at my time. When I finally rolled across the finish back at Dahlonega and looked up at the big clock I was kind of surprised to see it reading something like 6:38. I'd expected to be more like 6:45. My final chip time turned out to be 6:37:43. The really surprising thing is that the year before, my time was 6:37:57. What are the odds that I'd be within 14 seconds of last year's time?  Anyway, I was pretty well-cooked by the time we finished. My neck was killing me as usual for the last 30 or 40 miles, but maybe not quite as much as last year. My quads were pretty sore, though. I spent a fair amount of time in the 39x28 and 39x27 going 6 mph, so I guess that's to be expected.

The drive back went smoothly and we arrived in New Orleans a little past midnight. One thing I know now is that going slower at Six Gap does not make it easier!  There were some impressive finish times from some of the riders I know, though. Elliott finished in 5:12, and Gavin, who punctured out of the lead group on Hogpen, at 5:20. Julia rolled in at 6:26, followed by Frank and Paola at 6:45 and 6:47.

Calm Before the Storm

Hills haven't gotten any lower since last year. I checked.

I've been trying to take it a little easy this week ahead of next Sunday's trip up to Dahlonega for the annual 6 Gap Century. It's not so that I'll have fresh legs and a full tank to attack the climbs and record a spectacular time. No. It's so that I'll just survive. Maybe. I first did this ride back in 2008 with a 39x25 low gear. It hasn't gotten any easier with time for sure. I did that one in about 5:44. Last year I think I was around 6:30. I blame it on the 39x29 I had. Having a lower gear to work with seems to just make me go slower without having much of an effect on how much the climbs hurt. This year I guess I'll use my new aero carbon wheels and a low gear of 39x28. Heavier wheels, higher gear, older rider. What could possibly go wrong? I'm definitely leaving open the option to stop at rest stops this year. The forecast is calling for a high of 90 F, which will make it one of the warmest I've done. Although I've survived the ride a few times on just the two large water bottles on the bike, that ain't going to be happening this year. So anyway, I figure at least I'll start without sore legs from the prior week's riding.

A new HRM for me!

This week I started using a new heart rate monitor. My old armband HRM was getting to be a problem, mainly because one of the pins on the charger got jammed so it didn't always make contact. I sprung for a Wahoo Tickr Fit this time. So far, so good. Although the instructions tell you to put it way up on your forearm, it seems to work just fine down closer to my wrist. Wednesday was the first time I wore it when I made a reasonably intense effort and I was surprised to find that it showed a max heart rate of 182 bpm for a second or two. Perhaps the old one's sample rate and algorithm didn't pick up the spikes as well as this one ..... or maybe I should see a cardiologist. Anyway, I put the carbon wheels and brake pads on the bike Wednesday, along with the new "6 Gap" cassette so I can put a few miles on it all ahead of time. The new wheels are SRAM/Shimano compatible, but seem to work fine with the Campi 11-speed stuff. The bike's been slow to drop the chain down to the smaller cogs for a while now but I'm probably not going to bother trying to re-cable things before the weekend. Slow shifts to bigger gears will not be the main problem at 6 Gap.

I was glad to see the U.S. having some success at Road Worlds this year. Dygert won the Women's TT, and Garrison and McNulty were 2nd and 3rd in the TT, and then Simmons won the Junior RR with teammate Sheffield 3rd. Guess there's still hope for road racing, eh?

There was a nice turnout for the Wednesday Night races on, you know, Wednesday.

Yesterday I rushed out of work early, rode home, changed, and drove up to Baton Rouge to help officiate the Wednesday night track races at the Baton Rouge Velodrome. Along I-10 over the marsh west of town I saw a pair of Bald Eagles at the odd nest to the north of the interstate. It has to be the lowest Eagle's nest ever - maybe ten feet above the water on this solitary dead tree - but they've been nesting there for years. Seeing Eagles again is a sure sign that Fall is coming. Eventually. Likewise, there are a lot of Brown Pelicans around. They always thin out a lot in the summer but start showing up near the lake around this time of year. There were about 20 riders doing the 4 km Pursuit, and then we ran a couple of Scratch Races. There was a crash in the Cat. 4/5 Scratch Race that fortunately took only two riders down on the back straight. They seemed OK afterward, so that was good. I guess I got back home around 11 pm or so but didn't go to sleep until midnight by the time I got something to eat and watched a little TV to try and relax a bit.

Mornings are getting darker and darker

In keeping with my strategy to take it easy and gain as much weight as possible before riding 103 miles and climbing 12,000 feet next Sunday, I started this morning's 6 am ride with the idea of taking shorter pulls and limiting the intensity. I didn't really succeed there, but I think I kind of made up for it by turning back early, at The Big Dip. I'd been expecting to turn back there and then have a nice relaxed ride back, but as it turned out the other three riders also decided to turn back with me, so the ride back was a bit faster than I'd planned. It is getting noticeably darker day by day now in the mornings already, and it won't be until November 3rd that Daylight Saving Time ends. I'm never very comfortable at the back of a paceline on the bike path when it's really dark, and usually leave a little extra room just in case. We almost always get surprised by a runner or something without lights or reflectors, even though everybody has nice bright headlights and we aren't usually going more than 25 mph or so. Anyway, last week was low-mileage with no riding at all on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, and tomorrow will be just an easy coffee ride, while Saturday will be sitting in a car for nine hours.

I may not be in shape, but I'm definitely not over-trained.

Colorado Springs the hard way

Things seemed to be going along nicely last week. I got my bike back from Bicycle World with a brand new Campi Record crankset (nothing feels as nice as brand new chainrings), and then on Wednesday my new Wahoo Tickr HRM arrived.

By Thursday afternoon I was kind of looking forward to my Friday morning flight up to Colorado Springs for the USA Cycling Local Associations Conference. I figured I could probably use a few days off the bike, and it would be nice to catch up with some of the USAC staff and other LA folks. It was mid-afternoon when I checked the weather and discovered that the FAA had just shut down the Houston airport until Friday afternoon because of flooding associated with a tropical storm. Houston was where I was supposed to catch my connecting flight to COS. Crap. I spent an hour on hold with United Airlines, only to find that there was basically nothing they could to for me but give me a refund. So I pulled up trusty Orbitz and luckily found a flight that went through Dallas that would get me to COS in time for the first meeting Friday evening. It seems that all United flights go through Houston and all American flights go through Dallas. So after shelling out another $200 I booked the flight and felt like all was good.  It wasn't.

I got to the New Orleans airport very early for my flight that was scheduled for just before noon so that Candy could drop me off and then get to work. While I was hanging around the airport I ran into Brian and Laura on their way up to Alaska, so it was nice to be able to catch up. They were on the same flight to Dallas. So eventually we get onto the plane, buckle up, and back away from the gate, roll down to the runway, and then we stop and the pilot shuts down the engines. Crap!  Well, turns out they had just issued a Ground Stop for anything destined for Dallas because of the weather. We sat on the plane for a couple of hours while I online chatted with Orbitz since I knew I'd miss my connection in Dallas. The guy on the other end was amazingly helpful and got in touch with American, but in the end there was nothing he could do and the best advice was to just go ahead to Dallas and roll the dice rather than exit the plane and cancel the whole trip. By then the whole seemed like a challenge, so I went with it. By the time we landed in Dallas, Orbitz had rescheduled me on a later flight to Colorado Springs, which was kind of amazing since there aren't all that many flights into COS anyway. The downside was that I would be missing the 5:30 meet and greet and insurance presentation. So then I had to contact the USAC folks who were scheduled to pick me up at the airport to shuttle me back to Headquarters. They were super helpful and didn't have a problem picking me up later than planned. Over the next couple of hours the flight was pushed back another hour or so, and then moved to another gate on another concourse, etc., etc., so by the time I finally arrived in the Springs it was around 10:30. At least I was there!

The symposium agenda this year looked ominous, which is one reason I made the extra effort to attend. USAC has a brand new CEO plucked straight out of the business world (New Balance shoes) who had basically retired to his home in Utah until this job pretty much fell into his lap. I think for him it's just another challenge. So after all of the usual presentations about declining memberships and events, we started up Sunday morning for a long session about re-structuring the Local Associations model. If they had anything specific in  mind, they weren't saying, but what they were saying was basically that the current model was broken and was not going to continue, so we were tasked with making some suggestions about what a new model might look like. I don't know if they got out of it what they wanted, but we could all agree that three of the things that the LAs currently handle - event permits, upgrading, and officiating - would soon be almost entirely automated under the new system that was originally supposed to be in place about two years ago. Still, there are things like shared equipment, local knowledge, mentoring, etc. that need to be done more locally than centrally. Also, there's the whole issue of figuring out a way to pull new people into the organization as members. In the past, USAC was basically a race licencing organization that provided event insurance and rules for, mainly, road racing. Now there are all sorts of other cycling-related things going on that don't fit under that model - gravel, fondos, Zwift, eBikes, etc. The new president wants USAC to be the go-to place for all of that, so that's the challenge in a nutshell. At any rate, I expect we'll see some radical changes happening in a very short timeframe. Hopefully it won't be a repeat of the disaster back around 1999 when USCF abruptly fired all of the District Representatives, which led to the establishment of a few competing organizations like OBRA.

Anyway, the meeting was interesting and we had a nice dinner at a New Orleans style restaurant Saturday night, plus the weather was pretty spectacularly nice if you don't mind 12% relative humidity. The flights back were fairly uneventful but full - typical for Sunday afternoon and night flights. On the leg from Dallas to New Orleans I was way back in row 33 in the middle seat (remember, I had to make the reservation at the last minute) squashed between two huge people, one of whom looked like a Saints linebacker, complete with knee brace, and the other like yo' mama from the Nint' Ward. Good thing I'm small.  At least all the time I spent in airports and planes allowed me to read Draft Animals by Phil Gaimon, which I thought was quite good and very well-written.

To the Shop

It's sunrise season for the morning rides

A couple of weeks ago I put on a new chain, which I try to do every 2,500-3,000 miles. Every time I do that, I listen carefully the next morning when I go out to ride, and check to see if the new chain is skipping on the more worn cogs, which are usually the 14 and 15 in my case. What I heard, and felt, was a little different and I knew immediately what it was. I'd been looking around for replacement chainrings for my older 11-speed Campi crankset without much luck. They made those particular ones for only a couple of years before changing the inner ring so that they were threaded, thus doing away with the "nut" part of the chainring bolts. A couple of years after that they went to the newer 4-pin crankset with the smaller bolt circle. I could get the threaded type chainrings, but then I'd need the bolts as well, and with the chainrings were generally in the $100 and up price range - each - so I'd been reluctant. Anyway, it was getting obvious that something had to be done since I could now hear all those wasted watts every time I pushed on the pedals. Last week I just happened upon an eBay listing where a shop was obviously getting rid of some of the older Campi cranksets, and at $200 for the whole crankset, with bearings and chainrings, it looked like a great deal and easy solution. So on Monday evening I went down to the basement to do what I thought would be a really easy and simple crankset replacement. Unbolt the single bolt holding the two halves of the crank together, pull the old cranks off, clean things up a bit, put the new cranks on, re-install the bolt and torque to spec. Easy-peasy, right?  Well things were going fine until I pulled off the non-drive side crank and heard the sound of metal pieces falling on the floor. The "wavy washer" was broken into pieces and the bearing on that side was completely worn out. I'd noticed some play in the crankset, so I wasn't too surprised about the bearing, but the wavy washer situation was going to be a bit of a problem since that's something that comes with the BB30 cups, not with the crankset. I figured that under the circumstances I might need new cups as well, so I called Adam at Bicycle World and rushed over there with the bike before they closed at 6 pm. to see if perhaps they had a washer lying around or something. Not surprisingly, they didn't, so I left the bike and the crankset with them so they could order the appropriate parts and put it all back together since I'm a little reluctant to use the wooden block and hammer method of pressing in bearing cups with a carbon frame. Anyway, looks like I'll be riding the old Orbea for a while until that all gets sorted.

Here we go again.....

It's that time of year when the early morning rides feature sometimes spectacular sunrises, either on the lakefront for the WeMoRi, or along the levee bike path. It's also the peak of Hurricane Season, and sure enough, there's a tropical wave heading in this general direction that has rather suddenly gotten a lot of attention. Nobody's predicting it to be a major hurricane, if indeed it even gets that strong, but then again it's still a long way out and this time of year these things can blow up really quickly. The track models are kind of all over the place, which is to be expected, but at the moment it's looking like we could see some impact around the weekend. Or maybe not. Who knows?

The 6 am Tuesday and Thursday rides have been kind of different lately. Some of the riders have been going pretty hard from the start, but then turning back either at Williams Blvd. or The Dip, leaving just one or two to do the whole distance out to Ormond. Although that makes the average speed slower, it definitely increases the amount of work! With a bigger group, I might be taking a pull once every two or three miles, but with only two, it's obviously much more frequent. I guess that's a good thing, although I've ended up alone for the last six or seven miles a few times and when I'm alone I usually have trouble pushing myself as hard as I should. Yesterday I ended up with just Dave after the Dip, and although we pushed pretty hard out to Ormond, after we turned around we were in conversational mode most of the way back, and then I was solo after he turned back to go home.

This morning's WeMoRi seemed fairly fast, but I wasn't feeling very aggressive and was just following wheels most of the time. I can definitely feel the difference riding the Orbea, which currently has 25 mm Gravel King tires on it. Hopefully the Bianchi will be back in action fairly soon. We had the Tulane Cycling introductory meeting on Tuesday and had a few new members sign up, so that was good. They're gearing up now for Six Gap in a few weeks and I guess I'll be riding that again, possibly setting another record slow time. If it's not looking like rain I'll probably try and use the new carbon wheels just to see how they fare. Will the aero advantage on the flats and downhills outweigh the extra climbing weight?

Giro³

Friday coffee ride on Lakeshore Drive

Just back from the third Giro Ride this Labor Day weekend. Not exactly exciting stuff, but at least they were both fast and convenient. This morning, Monday, we had a surprisingly big group that showed up for the lagniappe Giro, but even so, I was expecting a nice moderate pace since so many of them, like me, had also done pretty fast rides the two days prior. As it turned out, the ride got quite fast here and there, which I guess was good because I wasn't feeling too drained from the Saturday and Sunday rides. On the way back when we were halfway between Chef Highway and Lake Forest, riding along the merge lane of I-510 as we've been doing ever since the city inexplicable shut down the service roads, a Levee District police officer decided to stop the whole ride and lecture us about how we shouldn't be riding on an Interstate highway. I doubt it will have much effect on the ride, given the lack of viable alternatives. If the road surface on Bullard wasn't outright dangerous, and if there weren't a number of traffic lights there, it might be OK, but we'd lose some of the best long stretches of fast riding. I used the new carbon Mercury wheels this weekend. Figured I should give them a good workout since I'm considering using them for Six Gap at the end of the month. If it looks like significant rain, though, I'll probably stick with my old aluminum wheels since I'd rather not learn about braking with wet carbon rims while plummeting downhill at 45 mph on unfamiliar roads.

Friday was the first Tulane Coffee Ride of the semester. There was a nice turnout, and the ride was pretty easy as planned. Looks like we'll be going to Six Gap again this year.

The Org Expo table with swag from USAC

Yesterday was the Tulane Organizations Expo over at the Reily Center. It was probably the nicest venue for that they've ever had. We've already had a few new riders come along on the club rides. I think we collected about 60 email IDs for students who were interested. Based on prior experience, that probably means three or four will still be involved by the end of the semester. Most of last year's riders are still at Tulane, so it should be a pretty good year. As usual, we haven't heard a peep out of the SCCCC. They pretty much seem to ignore us for mountain bike season. I see on the website that they have an Oct. 4 deadline for 2020 road race "bids" (as if...) but I don't know if they have bothered to contact the club directly.

Pulled the rear carb to start the rebuild. It was in surprisingly good condition, despite the frozen bolts.

Meanwhile back at home I finally got around to pulling one of the carbs off of the GT-6. It was surprisingly clean inside, other than the brown powder left from evaporated gasoline. I have the rebuild kits and will probably do them one at a time, just replacing the essentials to avoid changing any of the existing settings. Unfortunately, one of the Phillips-head bolts holding the dashpot cover on, and which I needed to remove in order to change the torn diaphragm, was seized so badly that it broke. I'm going to keep spraying it with penetrating lubricant for a day or two before trying to remove the rest of the bolt with some vice-grips. Wish me luck.