4 Spokes and You're Out

Somehow he got it stopped before is self-destructed

It's truly summer now. Every ride starts with a hopeful look at weather radar and ends with sweat-soaked jersey and gloves clinging to dehydrated skin. I love it. Well, maybe love isn't quite the word, but I definitely like it a lot better than frozen toes and fingers. Last week was kind of an exercise in slipping rides in-between raindrops, sometimes unsuccessfully. Even so, there were lots of riders out and about, so the group rides were fun and challenging. Back at the office full-time now, I think I got rained on twice coming home from work, but neither time was much more than a light rain and insufficient to get my feet too wet. 

The weekday morning rides were mostly pretty well-attended last week, so that was nice. A few people have been meeting up with the 6 am group along the levee, which has been kind of making up for Charles and Rich who have been AWOL. With things to do at home on the weekend, like fixing that big hole in the bathroom wall, and thinking about trimming hedges and cutting grass (never happened) I never even considered anything other than two Giro Rides, both of which were fine, at least until the incident on Sunday. 

We were maybe 300 meters from the Goodyear Sign Sprint on Sunday when I heard a very strange sound somewhere in the middle of the group. It turned out to be Jeff neatly severing four spokes out of his formerly nice Enve carbon front wheel when Steve's rear derailleur attempted to occupy the same space at the same time. Fortunately nobody crashed, which is notable since losing four adjacent spokes out of maybe 20 could have easily resulted in catastrophic rim failure leading to a big crash. Of course, once he stopped it was clear he wouldn't be riding home on that wheel. A few of us waited to make sure everything was OK while he called for extraction. As the rest of us started back I found myself behind Steve. Looking down at his rear derailleur I could see that the cage was bent dangerously inward, so he stopped for a second and straightened it out by hand. After that it looked fine to me, although he said it wasn't shifting quite right.

Sticker Shock

I headed over to Lowe's to pick up a piece of plywood so I could fix the hole in the bathroom wall. It wasn't really a simple task since I'd be working with the tiles I'd earlier pried off of the now-removed sheetrock. They still had a fair amount of mastic on them. I wanted to replace two rows of tiles and the same thickness sheetrock that had been removed, the tiles with the old mastic would be sitting higher than the surrounding tiles. Also, I wanted to use plywood since we'd had to cut into a cross-piece in order to get to the shower pipe, and I wanted to strengthen that area. So a decent half-sheet of plywood was basically fifty dollars, which was considerably more shocking than what the plumber had charged, but I really wasn't willing to go with something cheaper. So the two rows of tile went in just fine, but then of course making the removable panel was complicated by the usual old-house complications, which is to say that nothing is quite square, or level, or flat. I eventually got it all sorted out thanks to sandpaper and a little planer and a lot of patience, but it took an extra hour or so. I moved the little antique oak washstand back in front of it all and you'd never know there had been a problem there. Still need to get the drain line replaced, of course. Meanwhile, the road work crew moved our water meter over about three feet to presumably free it from the tree roots, and the plumber had already removed the flow restrictor from our hand-held shower head, so if you turn the shower full-on the water pressure is probably now sufficient to take the skin off your back. Incremental progress.

Jered Gruber's photo of Sepp

Last week was an interesting one for the Tour de France. As happy as I have been to see Mark Cavendish again winning sprints behind an awesome leadout train, I was even happier to see Coloradoan Sepp Kuss finally get the opportunity to do what I've known he could do since last year's Tour, which was to win a stage. Although I can personally relate a lot more with Cavendish and sprinting, albeit at much, much slower speeds, it was great to see a U.S. rider win a stage after such a long drought. It'll be interesting to see how this last week plays out. Sepp doesn't have much left in the way of domestique duties, and Mark doesn't have many surviving sprinters left to deal with.

Slippery When Wet

Slippery when wet!

We seem to be in the midst of some kind of monsoon season around here lately. Where and when it will rain seems to be entirely unpredictable, but the fact that it will rain somewhere, sometime, is an absolute certainty. Often the where and when coincide with wherever I happen to be.

It was like that last Saturday. I went out to do the Giro Ride rather than an 80-miler that was happening on the northshore because it looked like it might rain ... somewhere. Despite the almost useless weather forecast there was a pretty good crowd on hand for the ride and it turned out to be a pretty good ride. Well, that is until we got onto Hayne Blvd. and it started to rain. It wasn't too bad, though, and the pace remained pretty high as we went over the casino overpass and blasted across the dragstrip between that and the Seabrook bridge. By then I was well toward the back of a string of riders, and as we got closer to the bridge I called out, to nobody in particular, "don't forget about the grate!" referring of course to the steel grate on top of the drawbridge that has taken down more than a few riders. When it's wet, it's very slippery, and when you fall on it you don't slide. Well, my voice definitely didn't carry all the way up to the front of the group, and as I watched the first few riders sprinting to the top I said out loud, "Oh shit." Sure enough, the first couple of riders made it across but the third slid out right in the middle of the right lane and was very slow to get up. He had hit his head and done some pretty significant damage to his left hand. As we got him sorted out and riders started rolling down the overpass, he noticed that he'd lost his Garmin watch. It's probably at the bottom of the industrial canal now, because we couldn't find it. Anyway, Eddie D and I stayed with him all the way back to make sure he was OK. Back at home the streets were dry, of course. 

Monday was plumber day. The plumber came in the morning and replaced all the valves and plumbing for the tub and shower, which involved me cutting a big hole in the wall that I have yet to repair. On the plus side, you can actually turn the water all the way off now. On the minus side the wife hates the handles he put on, so I'll probably end up spending another hundred dollars for something different. I told the plumber I'd call him next week to set up time for him to replace the tub drain lines and trap since they have been fairly clogged up since we bought the house thirty years ago. I think the road work crew finally moved my water meter out from the roots of the oak tree the other day. Anyway, the road is still a complete disaster area but it looks like they are finishing up most of the underground work, so I guess next will be the curbs and such before finally getting to the re-paving part. 

Neighborhood kids and parents making the most of the dirt road after a rainstorm

On Tuesday the forecast was also pretty inconclusive and it was just Scott and me on the levee at 6 am. We learned that Charles, who had crashed at the Tour de La road race on a slippery wet turn, had finally gotten a good MRI done and was told he had, "Nondisplaced acute fractures of the left hemi sacrum, anterior wall of the right acetabulum, right inferior pubic ramus and right side of the pubic symphysis." Some of that sounds familiar, and indeed I had told him that I thought he had probably broken something like his pubic ramus based on the fact that his symptoms were so muck like mine were a year and a half ago.  In other words, he probably shouldn't have been riding with us the prior Thursday. Actually, since that injury was almost a month prior, it should be well on it's way to healing, so I guess he'll take another couple of weeks off to be on the safe side. We did a good ride out to the Big Dip and back, but it was not without incident. On the way back, Scott's rear tire went soft so we stopped to change it. Then, when he got back on the bike the chain came off and he tried to force it, which resulted in the chain getting lodged underneath the pin on the drive-side crankarm. You know, that pin that is supposed to keep the chain from getting stuck between the crankarm and the chainring. It took is about fifteen minutes to get it back out of there using a combination of multitools, four hands, and brute force. 

Yesterday I made it out to the WeMoRi which seemed to be a bit faster than usual, which felt good. Then I got rained on coming home from work. Then today there were just three of us at 6 am so we were talking about turning around early, but then we started picking up more riders along the way and were up to eight eventually, so we went all the way out to Ormond.

There are some races finally being planned. Jason F is putting on a criterium at the lakefront later this month, then there are criteriums in Mobile the following week. Robert L is working on a road race and criterium weekend up around Jackson for some time in September. I've been back in the office full-time as of Tuesday (I kind of was for a week prior to that), along with everyone else. It was nice to be here with other people and even nicer that they got the coffee maker fixed. We might be trying out a kind of flex schedule where we would take turns working remotely on Fridays. I'm not real sure what the benefit of that is in my case, but whatever.

Water and Rocks

Flat number two on Saturday

It was late afternoon on Friday when the crew tearing up the street usually packs up to go home for the weekend when I heard the pump start up outside the living room window. Looking down at the street corner I could see four or five guys standing around a huge hole from which they were now pumping water into the storm drain. They did not look happy. 

I quickly surmised that they had managed to break a water line, probably the one going to the fire hydrant. So now they had to wait for the Sewerage & Water Board to come out and shut off the water to that line so they could make the repair. After waiting for about an hour, and promptly when overtime kicked in four or five S&WB guys arrived. Looking out of my home office window I could see them wandering around looking at the ground. They didn't know where the water shut-off was. I went down there and told them it was near the corner. I'd seen people shut off the valve numerous times in the past since we've had numerous water main breaks around here. The search continued, however, so I finally went down there myself, kicked away the riversand that was covering the valve cover, and called them over. Things were wrapped up about an hour later, albeit leaving the road closed and a big hole on the corner for the weekend. Two steps forward, one step backward.

Casing repair

Saturday's Giro featured two people flatting, both of whom I stopped for. One was a hopelessly slashed tubeless tire that ended up as a call for extraction. At least we had a nice little group of five or so for the ride out toward Venetian Isles where we met back up with the group. Then, on the way back down Hayne Blvd. there was a new hole in the concrete complete with a debris field of chunks of fractured roadway. Dave hit one of them and but a big slice in his sidewall. We were able to get him back on the road, though, so that was good. Then, just a block from home, I was navigating another pothole that's been there for about four years when I caught a rock just right and slashed my own tire's sidewall. I limped home on the flat and stitched in a boot made of some leftover rim strip rather than trash the tire. We'll see how long that holds out.  Sundays Giro was more normal, fortunately. Afterward I stopped at Starbucks to find the visiting rider from Florida who had contacted me the day before. By then I couldn't resist getting a coffee Frappuccino for myself. Back at home I peeled off the sweat-soaked clothes and jumped in the shower.

Old plumbing at EOL

The bath tub/shower faucets have been a problem lately and it's been practically impossible to stop them from dripping even though I'd changed the washers recently. When I went to turn off the hot water I felt something give inside the valve stem and knew it was bad. Hot water was just pouring out and the valve was obviously broken. Now in a normal house this wouldn't be a huge problem. However, in my house there are no shut-off valves for tub water lines. The cold water valve doesn't fully shut off the water either, as of last week. The shower diverter leaks enough that water from the cold water line gets to the hot water valve and vice-versa. The main house shut-off just sort of works, which is to say it doesn't quite shut off all of the water. The one valve that does work is the water heater valve, so I shut that off, which stopped the wide-open water pouring into the tub, leaving us with no hot water and a rapidly dripping cold water valve. This morning I pulled the valve stem out of the hot water valve after shutting off the whole house and rode the bike over to Ken Brown & Sons in Mid-City. If they didn't have what I needed for this old valve assembly, nobody did. The guys there were great and tried to find a valve stem that would work in this assembly that was made by a long-gone company, even calling a plumber who had come in with a similar problem a few days ago to find out if what he'd gotten had worked. The bottom line was that it didn't and we were basically out of do-it-yourself options. On the plus side they gave me a plumber recommendation. On the minus side, I probably won't see him until the end of the week. Fortunately it's summer now and the "cold" water is warm enough to shower with, so I guess I'll just shut off the house water at night to limit the waste and wait.

What Goes Up...

Removal of temporary classrooms

It is just shy of a year ago that I posted a photo of the temporary classrooms going up on Tulane's uptown campus. This morning Tulane News posted a photo of them being taken down. It seems like it's been much longer than a year, but unless one of the newer COVID-19 variants like B.1.617.2, combined with people too stupid to get what is probably the safest vaccine on the planet, makes us all have to backtrack, I think things are looking pretty good here in the States. While there are still a number of precautions in place, they're pretty much on the honor system unless you happen to be in a hospital or something, where one might imagine mask-wearing might become a permanent thing. Although I am still tracking COVID cases daily, I've recently added more detailed tracking of vaccinations, at least state-wide and within New Orleans. Here in town we are currently at 46.2% of the (2018) population having completed their vaccinations. You'd have thought it might be higher by now considering how many people died when it first hit and then when there was the summer surge. Even so, New Orleans has about the highest percentage of its population vaccinated unless you count West Feliciana Parish where most of the population is comprised of prison inmates who probably didn't have a choice. For comparison, the state as a whole is at only 33.9%, and some parishes are below 20%. 

After a pretty good WeMoRi yesterday, I went out this morning knowing I'd get wet. The radar was not looking good at all, so I stuffed my brand new father's day Assos rain jacket in my pocket before hitting the road. As I climbed up the levee I saw Rich and Scott starting to return home. They had both arrived a couple of minutes earlier and had seen the rain falling just half a mile upriver. They yelled down to me that it looked like it was pouring down rain up ahead. I just smiled since I was looking forward to trying out the rain jacket. Granted, there is practically no need for a rain jacket if you're riding in cycling kit in the summer in New Orleans since there is no chance at all that you will get cold. I ended up riding all the way out to Destrehan, mostly in a light rain and almost all on a wet bike path, and it was fine. The rain jacket worked fine. I put it on and took it off a couple of times during the ride. On the plus side, there was a rainbow in front of me for the whole outbound ride.

What a mess.

Meanwhile back at home they are tearing up even more of the street on my corner. Yesterday they told Candy they were going to have to relocate our water meter because of the Oak tree roots that had enveloped it. It looks like they started that and then stopped when yesterday's rainstorm came through. This morning it looked like they had abandoned that project and were focused on ripping up more of Pine Street. I can only hope that the Oak trees don't all die as a result of the significant damage being done. The street floods pretty badly now when it rains since they have removed all of the storm drains and it doesn't look like they will be back in operation for quite a long time at this rate. Just in time for hurricane season. Candy had a pre-op appointment yesterday for her second hip replacement that is scheduled for July 23. She was kind of depressed reading the notes from the CAT scan about all of the degeneration in her hips, knees, etc. 

Getting old is not for sissies.

Solid Summer Week

Thursday Levee Ride

With Tropical Storm Claudette (not actually named a TS until after it got here) I'd been expecting a few days of rained-out rides, but as luck would have it most of the rain skirted the city, the wind was unimpressive, I got wet only once, and didn't miss a single day of riding. Thus, all I can complain about are the heat and humidity, which is basically just normal for a New Orleans summer that, by the way, officially started yesterday.

Thursday morning featured some drier and marginally cooler air that pulled a number of riders out of the woodwork, or bed, for the 6 am ride. We had a good solid ride despite the increasing wind. I was expecting a few days of rainy weather, so while I was glad to have some more riders on the ride, I also felt like I wasn't getting enough time on the front.

Ominous sky. We didn't stay dry much longer on Wednesday.

With the yet-to-be-named tropical storm heading straight for us, I got up early Friday morning expecting to see nothing but rain on the weather radar. So I was kind of surprised when it looked like the deceptively named "Friendly Friday" ride would be fine for at least a couple of hours. I headed out to meet the group at the Museum of Art, fully expecting to be back home well before any rain started. I was wrong, of course. As the group  turned onto Lakeshore Drive at dawn I could see a big black cloud band to the east, directly ahead of us. I turned to whoever was next to me and said, "I think I'm going to have to revise my 'chance of dry' forecast for today's ride." By the time we got to Franklin Avenue it was pouring down rain and the group kind of started to shatter. I eased up and turned around just before the Seabrook loop and headed west, waiting for whatever was left of the group to come by. A little while later, in very un-friendly fashion, the front of the group came streaming by at 30 mph. I had to make a big effort just to catch a wheel near the back. Things kind of came back together for a little while and before I knew it we were at Marconi where some people turned off  onto Marconi, which is the usual route, while others went straight and others looked around at each other trying to decide where to go. It was still raining so some people were just heading straight home while others were heading back to the museum where we'd started and where the ride normally ends. I'd gone straight since the riders ahead of me had, but then a few of us decided to turn at Canal and head back toward Marconi. Anyway, I was basically on my way back home at that point. Back uptown the streets were completely dry, of course. We'd managed to find the only rain.

Predictably, it was wet Saturday morning, and although it wasn't really raining much I decided to stay inside and try again later. That turned out to have been a good decision. The bad weather from the tropical storm was all to our east, and by noon the sun was starting to come out. So I filled the water bottles and headed out for a solo ride out to the Spillway, knowing I'd be dealing with 10-15 mph winds at some point. All the way out it seemed like I was riding straight into a west wind that was making it a little difficult to maintain even 19 mph. On the other hand, the ride back was more like 21-23 mph at the same intensity level. 

Massive can be a relative term

Sunday we had a little pop-up northshore ride. It was just Randy H., Pat, Steve, and Keith Mc., which turned out to be a pretty good group for the planned 65 miles. After a relatively relaxed ride the day before I guess I had a little extra energy to burn off, so I put in a few efforts on the little climbs here and there and just generally did a little more work than usual. By the time we were on the last ten miles or so it was getting pretty hot and I was getting pretty tired, but Steve and I still kept the pressure on from the no-more-watchtower hill to the ballpark anyway. Later, I saw that Strava kind of agreed with my own more subjective assessment, tagging it as "Massive Relative Effort." I wouldn't have used the term "massive," but it was definitely a solid ride to finish off a week that I thought might be a wash-out with a 280-mile total.

Invest 92L

Thursday morning

This morning felt cooler and drier than it has in a week, so I guess it was no coincidence that we had a pretty long line of riders for the 6 am levee ride. With a gradually increasing tailwind the speed stayed a little higher than usual all the way out to Ormond, which I knew meant we'd be battling a headwind on the 20-mile ride back home. Lots of riders to share that with, though, so I was probably in the wind for less than ten minutes the whole time. It's 2 pm right now and looking out the office window past the Superdome it's just a normal breezy summer afternoon with a few scattered clouds and a few Mississippi Kites flying around catching insects. You wouldn't think that the forecast for tomorrow would be as bad as it is. A few minutes ago I got a bunch of alerts on my phone because the weather service has issued a flash flood watch for the city, along with a coastal flood advisory. It things go as currently expected, Invest 92L will become a tropical depression and drift northward toward us tomorrow bringing mainly just a whole lot of rain. Right now it's looking like the rain will start around 10:00 tomorrow morning and it won't stop until some time on Monday. That doesn't mean there won't be an occasional window here and there when it stops, but for all practical purposes it's looking like the weekend will be a complete wash-out. I'm hoping the rain will hold off long enough tomorrow for me to get in an early morning ride, but after that I'll just have to play it by ear.  At any rate, tomorrow is looking like a good "work from home" day. I've heard one prediction of 13 inches of rain. Considering that almost all of the storm drains on our street have been demolished as part of the road work going on, I can't really say what that will mean. There are four storm drains on my block of Neron Place. All four are currently gone, along with four others just around the corner on Lowerline. The one across the street on Pine is blocked off, and the two on that little piece of Neron have been non-functional for years. At least the one on Pine across from the basement door works, although it's probably half clogged up with riversand by now. At least we're on slightly higher ground than most of the surrounding neighborhood. By "slightly" I'm talking maybe a foot, though.

Summer Again

Riding back home from the Giro alongside the posts protecting the gutter/bike lane on Marconi.
No, we don't ride in the debris-strewn gutter unless absolutely necessary.

Last weekend it felt like we'd stepped out of Spring and plunged head-first into the deep end of Summer. I did the Giro Rides on Saturday and Sunday, and although they were mostly fast, by the time the group was coming back down Bullard you could tell people were feeling kind of wilted. After a nice enough solo recovery ride on Monday I arrived at the levee for the 6 am ride to find nobody there. Rich is out of town and Charles is still a little bit on the bench following his Tour de La crash, and I guess having those two out provided adequate cover for a skipped morning ride. As it turned out, once I got going I started picking up riders. At one point I think there were about six of us, but that didn't last very long as some turned back at Williams Blvd. and others at St. Rose, so I found myself alone again until Steve showed up. He rode with me back out to the Ormond turnaround and then all the way back to the country club, so that was good because by then the temperature was rising significantly. I've been doing fine with just two small water bottles so far this year, usually getting back home with one of them still full, but I can see those days rapidly fading away. Even on shorter rides I'm easily going through a full bottle or more, so I guess it's time to break out the big bottles.  Well, maybe just one of them since getting to big water bottles on my bike is a challenge. In fact, I backordered a side-entry Tacx bottle cage about a month ago that I probably won't see again for another month. I had to really search for that bottle cage, but in my experience the Tacx cages are some of the most reliable and secure ones out there. I gave up on "carbon" bottle cages years ago. They were expensive, turned my bottles black after a couple of months, and regularly ejected bottles. I'll admit, though, they look cool. I was talking with Billy of GNO Cyclery last weekend and he was telling me that getting road bikes and even components and tires is still a huge problem for the shops. He was saying that he couldn't get any good 11-speed chains. I didn't tell him I have two of those on my workbench. My current chain is a KMC because at the time I couldn't find the Campi Record ones. It's about to hit 2,500 miles so I'd already ordered a second one to have on hand. Then I found the Record one in stock over across the pond at Probikekit, so I got one of those too. You never want to be putting off changing your chain because you don't have one handy. By now I think the cassette on my training wheel has close to 10,000 miles on it, so we'll just have to see if we have much skipping when I put a new chain on. I'd just assumed that the supply chain issues had eased up by now, but apparently they haven't. 

So I started going in to the office again on Monday. Tulane is expecting everyone to be back no later than July 6 but I thought it best to go ahead and pull the plug on the working from home thing a little early. I can certainly work in either location, but what I especially want to avoid is working from both. I really prefer to segregate most of my work stuff on my office computer. Keeping files on Box is fine when necessary but it gets more and more complicated every year. We are starting to use Microsoft Teams now, so for me files could be on Box or Dropbox or Teams, or any combination, possibly in different versions. Anyway, I like being back at the office even through I will surely miss the frequent trips to the refrigerator, and the commute to work can be a bit on the hot and sweaty side even at the super-slow speed at which I commute in the summer. To celebrate returning to the office, I took a little time this morning to get an actual haircut at Supercuts where, somewhat surprisingly, they still want everyone to wear a mask. I had not had a real haircut since probably December of 2019. As usual, it feels a little too short, but I'm sure I'll appreciate the improved airflow through my helmet.

Welcome to hurricane season!

With the arrival of the hot temperatures came some early activity in the Gulf, namely "Invest 92" that probably won't be a huge problem except that it will likely mean a very rainy weekend. Speaking of rain, The Daughter sent me an Assos Equipe rain jacket for Father's Day. My old Adidas one is pretty worn out so the tops of the shoulders aren't as waterproof as they used to be. The Assos jacket is very much race-fit, so it might be a little bit of a stretch, literally, to wear over my regular clothes when commuting. We'll just have to see how that goes. In any case, it looks like a really nice jacket with tight-fitting cuffs and collar, and will be great to bring along on longer rides when the temperatures are cooler and there's a chance of rain.

Friday!

Aftermath - drying out in the basement

Well, the rain-soaked tents and other race equipment is all dried out and tucked away in the basement, ready for the next race. Results are posted, the post-event report has been submitted despite what is now the usual USAC website complications, and things are slowly returning to normal in more ways than one. I expect to be returning to the downtown office for at least a few days next week, and we're expecting pretty much everyone to be back no later than July 6. Yesterday Candy had her second cataract surgery, which is considerably easier and faster than getting you Louisiana driver's license renewed, and her vision in that eye is now better than it's ever been in her life, so that's a big plus. She has hip replacement surgery scheduled for July 22, though, so I'll be taking a few days off for that and Danielle will be flying in for a few days as well. In the meantime, Keith has been working on the new NOBC team kit design, which looks pretty good, I think. You never really know about that sort of thing until you see the actual final product out in the wild, but this design looks promising.

Friendly Friday (at 25 mph)

The weather here, after last weekend's unfortunately timed deluge, has been typically hot, extremely humid, and rain-free, so despite losing last weekend's miles I'm back to the routine, such as it is. This morning I went out to meet the 6 am "Friendly Friday" ride for the second time. The Tulane Friday Coffee Rides are in summer hiatus, so this may be my new Friday routine for a while. This ride seems to have gotten larger and faster lately, a somewhat normal evolution for group rides, but on the plus side I was back home before 7:30. 

Current draft design

There's finally some movement, or at least talk, on other possible LAMBRA races, and Townsend has scheduled an online meeting a week from tomorrow, so hopefully we can get a few races on the calendar, elect/draft new officers, and get things back on track. 

Here at home we're still dealing with a torn-up dirt street and will be for at least another six months, probably longer. I was walking the dog yesterday and he stepped off the sidewalk next to one of the new fire hydrants they just installed and the riversand just gave way underneath his rear legs. I had to pull him out of the hole. Good thing it wasn't bigger! 

Yesterday Tulane sent me a 30th anniversary gift package, which was mainly a pin and some Tulane coasters and a certificate suitable for framing, but also included a $200 gift card thing that I set up for Lowes. The store is only a mile from here but I'm not even sure if I can use it in person, but at any rate I can order online and have stuff delivered, so maybe I should break down and get a couple of sheets of plywood that is lately apparently in short supply and selling at ridiculous prices so I can see about the garage roof before the termites finish eating it and it collapses onto the GT-6 that I also should be working on. First, though, I need to fix that leaking faucet in the bathtub. And then there are the gutters that need to be replaced and all the rotting decorative wood accents up around the roof of the house, not to mention the antique plumbing that could go at any moment.

Tour de La Number Fifty

It is really hard to believe that I've been closely involved with this race for half a century. I still remember going to help out at the first one back in '72. This weekend was the 50th edition of the stage race, and although you'd think by now we deserved a weekend without any weather concerns, well, I guess you'd be wrong. By mid-week the forecast was already looking bad, and over the following days it just got worse. Flash flood warnings were posted. Registrations lagged. I had to seriously consider having to cancel the race and try again later (in the hurricane season). Last year, we postponed the race twice, once because of COVID and then again because of a tropical storm. I really didn't want to do that again, but the forecast was not offering even a glimmer of hope. I basically crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. The forecasts for this type of weather system are pretty sketchy, so there was at least a chance, but as I packed up the Volvo on Friday afternoon I threw in my waterproof boots that I normally reserve for winter cyclocross officiating, along with a couple of umbrellas and some wool socks. I admit, I was not feeling very optimistic.

Friday night I slept poorly with various disaster scenarios running through my head. While racing in the rain is uncomfortable and risky, standing on the side of the road out in the middle of nowhere in raging thunderstorms, soaking wet, hoping not get electrocuted by the generator powering the finish cameras and computers and radio is not exactly a walk in the park either. So when I awoke before dawn Saturday morning and looked out the Holiday Inn window to see a fairly dry street I was hopeful. I headed out for Stoney Point without even stopping for coffee and arrived around 6:30 or so. Registration opened at 7:30 and the racing started at 9:00. You would think that would be lots of time but in reality if flies by and you are always feeling rushed. I set up the registration area and put up the tents at the start/finish quickly since I was expecting torrential rain at any moment, but as the other volunteers started to arrive I could see that the sky was not looking all that bad. The other officials (Chief Ref and three Moto-refs) arrived, Pat went out to put up the course signage, Mignon and Christian got sign-in going, follow car drivers arrived, the police showed up, and generally things went well. We started right on time and had all five groups out on the road with nothing more than some light rain. Somehow we made it through the whole road race stage without getting drenched, although the occasional light rain probably contributed to a significant crash in the Masters race at the left turn onto Sunlight Road. Meanwhile, riders were dropping like flies from many of the races due to flat tires or just getting dropped early. By the time it was all over I guess we'd lost a third of the entire field.

We tore everything down, packed it up again, and headed back to the hotel to finish up and post the Road Race results. Then we headed for the Time Trial course at Lakeshore High, arriving around 4:30 for the 5:30 start. Amazingly, we didn't have any rain for the time trial and everything went pretty smoothly. We rushed back to the hotel, finished up and posted those results, and walked over the Copeland's for dinner. The forecast for Sunday was looking really, really bad. I was wondering if we'd end up having to cancel the whole thing. So when I awoke early Sunday morning and saw it wasn't pouring down rain I rushed over to the course to start setting up the finish line. I wanted to at least get the tents set up before it started raining. I got the big red tent up and tied one corner off to the car since I was expecting a thunderstorm at any time. As it turned out, there was no rain at all for most of the races, but mid-way through the Cat. 3-4 race we could see some heavy rain approaching from the south. We shortened that race a bit to make sure they could finish on dry streets, but for the Cat. 1/2/3s after then, there was really no hope. Sure enough, it started raining a couple of minutes before their noon start time, so they were racing on slick old city streets the whole time. Fortunately it was a small field, and also fortunately they were all experienced bike racers. Despite some very aggressive racing, they all stayed upright, even though a couple of them stopped at the Pit to let some air out of their tires because they were sliding around too much on the turns. 

So we finished the slightly shortened Cat. 1/2/3s in a light rain just minutes before it became a torrential downpour. I had the printer covered with a plastic bag as I printed out their results. We tore down everything in a heavy rain and stuffed it all into the car, stopping for a quick bite at Jimmy John's, still in the pouring rain, before making the trek back across the Causeway to New Orleans. My basement is now full of wet and soggy tents, banners, and other race equipment. I'll throw the long USA Cycling banners and our big windfeathers into the wash soon and then stuff them into the dryer before packing them away until next time. At the moment there are no more races on the LAMBRA calendar, although I think we should be able to pull off at least criterium and road championships.

In all, I'd say we really lucked out on the weather. It could have been way, way worse. As it was I wasn't really wet and cold until we were packing stuff up after the last criterium, and even then it wasn't all that bad. After I got home a couple of riders contacted me about errors in the results. It would have been nice if that had happened right after we'd posted them rather than hours later, of course. Ricky, the Chief Referee has all of the score sheets with him, so it may take a little while to correct things. This year's event was pretty expensive. Sponsorship dollars were relatively low, costs were higher, and registrations were low. We had 110 riders this year. This race has had as many as 204 in the past. Of course the weather was mainly responsible for this year's numbers being so low.

Three-day Weekend before Next

Lining up in St. Francisville - some came to race, some to ride

The alarm went off at 4:30 am. It was Saturday morning, barely, and I was picking Joey up from campus for 4:50. I'd gotten everything together the night before, so I pulled on a pair of bib shorts, straps hanging down, and a t-shirt, clamped the bike to the roof of the car, threw my bag and front wheel in the back and headed over to Tulane. We were riding the Gran Fondo St. Francisville, put on by Bill Burke and Premier Event Management, that started at 7:30. It was the first cycling event over there in a few years. The parish council had enacted some insane anti-cycling laws after a car ran down a couple of cyclists (totally the driver's fault, not the cyclists') but eventually those people got voted out and more sane people voted in and the rules changed. As Gran Fondos go, this one was a bit less grand than most, with the long ride just 58 miles, but I was looking forward to the ride anyway. I'd ridden most of the course many times in the past as part of various races and training rides, so I knew the roads pretty well, and I knew Bill's crew would be well organized. We made good time and arrived well before our target time of 7:00, so there was lots of time to pick up numbers and gear up. They were using passive disposable stick-on timing chip numbers from Chronotrack that consisted basically of a big sticker that went around your seatpost with the number part kind of flapping in the breeze behind. As those things go, these were pretty good - much better and easier to deal with than the ones that you have to somehow affix to your handlebar. Turnout was a little disappointing, but that didn't mean there wasn't enough horsepower on hand to turn it into a race. I can never really get in to race mode on these kinds of things, and was planning to stay out of trouble like I'd done for the Tour de Jefferson. There were around 90 riders for the long ride but of course at least that many additional who would be turning off along the way for shorter loops.

Things started off fairly calmly for the first ten miles or so, then the pace just gradually increased. 4D had a bunch of riders, mostly up at the front, and every now and then there'd be a brief surge. I was just following wheels toward the back and feeling a little nervous about the unfamiliar riders, some of whom were on tri bikes. Eventually, most of the more sketchy riders drifted off the back. We weren't too far into the ride when what I gather was a 4-rider break that included Dustin and Chris Brown went off the front. If there was a surge and attempt to chase, it wasn't apparent to me at the back, and indeed I didn't realize they were gone until probably ten miles later when I looked over at Barry and said something about the pace, to which he replied that he thought it wouldn't be as erratic now that the break was gone. I replied, "well, at least not until we hit those two climbs near Red Bug hill." I was feeling quite comfortable but wasn't really wanting to have to sprint up those climbs. Well of course when we got to them there was an attack and by the time we got to the top there were riders scattered all over the place. I could see a group coming together up ahead but didn't really want to put in the time trial it would have taken to catch it. Looking back, there was nothing resembling a group at all. No-man's land, indeed. So I kept pressure on the pedals and eventually a few riders caught up. I took some long pulls hoping we could work together to make the bridge because the group ahead wasn't going all that terribly fast, but twice when I pulled off there was a big gap behind me and nobody to pull through, so I eased up until we had a nice little group of seven. After a while a few of them kind of recovered so we had a nice little paceline for the last 12 miles or so, which was really the only part of the ride during which I did much work, which is to say an average heart rate of 157 and average speed of 24 or so. A few of the group sprinted at the end, but between the lead break and the second group there were 14 riders up the road. We were about a minute forty-five behind that second group, and averaged 23.8 for the whole ride, which was fine for this non-race race. I finished up feeling pretty good about the ride, and not particularly tired despite Strava tagging it as "Massive" relative effort. Strava apparently doesn't know how efficiently I can suck wheels. Results are at https://trinitytiming.com/results/#/race/NlBt02/G/. 

Sunday was the usual Giro Ride. An unexpected cool front had come though overnight and I was surprised to find it so cool and breezy as I rode out to Starbucks in the morning. There was a pretty good sized group on hand, but not many people seemed interested in pushing the pace, so it was only got fast in a few places, mostly when there was a good tailwind. It's so nice to be able to ride out to the Giro without needing a headlight now that the sun is coming up early enough. 

Next weekend is the 50th Tour de Louisiane. I have a lot of loose ends to tie up, but fortunately Mignon has picked up a whole lot of the slack. We're still trying to figure out who we can get to pick up something soft like wood chip bags to cushion some of the things alongside the criterium course. It's always hard to find someone willing to handle that since it's a fair bit of work. I still need to print out race bibles, etc., etc. Online registration stands at around 40, which is about normal since most people wait until like Wednesday to register. We'll probably do race-day registration, although the flyer says pre-registration is required, since the COVID situation has improved significantly, at least for the moment. At any rate I'll probably wait until Wednesday to make any announcement about that. Tomorrow Kenny B is leading a Memorial Day ride, which I think I'll do even though there is apparently also going to be a holiday Giro at the same time, starting from the same place. I feel like I could use an easier ride tomorrow.

Under the Weather

It's been a very wet week around here, which happened to coincide with me getting some sort of mild but nagging stomach virus. I suppose that as COVID restrictions continue to be relaxed we'll all be catching up on those little infections that we've missed out on over the past year. Anyway, it seems like every morning this week it's been either raining or threatening to rain. I went out early Wednesday to ride the WeMoRi, where I felt less than great but not terrible. I'd skipped riding on Tuesday between the rain and the stomach queasiness, and then likewise skipped riding Thursday as well since there was a high wind and flash flood warning essentially all day. I could have gotten in a ride in the evening without getting wet but battling the 15-18 mph wind on the levee just didn't seem like a good idea under the circumstances. This morning I was feeling more back to normal, so naturally it was raining when I looked out the window at 5:30. I may try to get out for a few miles later in the day if the weather cooperates.

I did finally get my little internet range-extender set up as an access point so I now have much more solid wireless in the front of the house. That involved running Cat 6 ethernet cable from the back room to the living room, through the basement, and then a whole new learning experience about correctly wiring up the connectors. Turns out that how the pairs are set up is more important than I thought. It took me a few tries, some head-scratching, and some Googling to get that properly sorted out.

In the meantime, in-between rainstorms, the city's contractor has been tearing up the street right in front of the house. They're putting in the huge new concrete storm drain lines and related connections, which has not been without substantial collateral damage to, well, everything in the vicinity - curbs, sidewalks, trees, etc. This will be ongoing for probably another full year by the time the underground work is finished, the curbs and storm drains are replaced, sidewalks repaired or replaced, and finally the road re-paved.

With the Tour de Louisiane coming up in a couple of weeks, I'm planning on spending much of Saturday out on the road race course, marking turns, checking out the course, and hopefully patching some of the worst of the pinch-flat inducing potholes on the back side. Bill Burke is holding his Gran Fondo St. Francisville event this Saturday that I'd like to do, but I think the TdL course reconnaissance is going to have to take precedence and I don't think I can do both. 

Last week I experimented with some cold-patch asphalt on a pothole near the house and was a little surprised to find that a 50-pound bag didn't even fill what was not really a huge pothole. On the plus side, the tamper worked well and it's at least better than it was. I have a couple more bags in the basement, but for the Tour de La road course I'm thinking I'll need quite a few more just to soften the worst of the sharp edges. It would be a shame to have to find another road course just because of on particularly bad segment of asphalt out there. I can think of one or two other possibilities but they aren't really any closer or more challenging. It's too bad we can't realistically use the old 20-mile loop near Covington, but there's just been too much traffic around there since it all started to get built up a couple of decades ago.

Watching Crashes

Tour de Jeff, neutral roll-out

Things are heating up in more ways than one as COVID concerns wane and people envision a late but active road race season. With that we are seeing more riders on the group rides, which by the way seem to be multiplying weekly. Tulane has outdoor graduation ceremonies this week, so most students have already gone back home. The university's COVID testing has therefore dropped dramatically, with just faculty and staff being tested once every two weeks. Positive tests had been running between zero and two for weeks anyway, so at the moment things are looking pretty good in the city where mask requirements for vaccinated people have been essentially discontinued. I expect the Tulane COVID dashboard will be suspended soon, although I'll continue to monitor city and state numbers in case we see a surge from one of the variants. Louisiana is lagging behind most states in per-capita vaccinations, so I'm still a little uncomfortable about sounding the "all clear."

Deciding if the bike is rideable after the crash

On Saturday I headed out to the Giro Ride start around 6 am, leaving the headlight at home for the first time in a long time. As riders started to filter in to Starbucks a long-lost Bill Short walked up to say hello. He had contacted me via Strava a few days earlier to confirm the Giro details because he was going to be in town for, I think, his daughter's graduation from Loyola. Bill had attended Loyola and was part of the Loyola collegiate cycling team while there. With Dee Harper as its advisor, that small team had survived for many years, and was probably the first official collegiate cycling team in the state. Bill and I spent some time catching up during the warm-up along Lakeshore Drive, and once things picked up I was glad to see he was having no difficulty at all with the pace. He's lives in the D.C. area. Anyway, Saturday's Giro wasn't quite as fast as normal, although it had its moments, probably because the Tour de Jefferson "ride" was the following day. For some reason the Tour de Jefferson has gotten to be an annual de facto race for the Giro Ride crowd, and is sometimes referred to as the city championship. This is despite the fact that the route involves lots of turns and u-turns and is generally not set up as a race. Anyway, the Giro Ride was going along nicely - fast but not super-fast - until after the Goodyear Sign sprint on Chef Menteur. For a year or so there has been this little "bump" in the asphalt over on the right side of the road as we approach the entrance to the interstate. The asphalt there is not broken up or anything, and it extends only about two feet into the right lane, so it's really hard to see, and even if you see it, it's really hard to tell just how much of a bump it is. There had already been a couple of crashes there when riders hit it unexpectedly. People do call it out as we approach it, but even that doesn't always work. Indeed, it didn't work on Saturday. I was toward the back of the group there and had just warned people about it when, up ahead, someone hit it and crashed. Fortunately the rider looked OK, which is  more than could be said for the bike. A bunch of us stopped, of course, but at the time someone had already been off the front with a string of riders chasing, so the front part of the group never knew what happened. Anyway, he ended up calling to get someone to come out and pick him up, so we continued on. Later, someone who had been behind it posted video of the crash.

I was up early on Sunday to drive across the river to the Tour de Jefferson start. Parking was a little bit limited so I wanted to get there early enough to get a spot in the park parking lot rather than the roadside. This was a 50 mile route with, I think, six U-turns, so I was expecting it to feel like either Intervals or a Criterium, or both. Either way, I knew it was get fast. Lining up for the start I looked around and could see that almost everyone near the front was a regular Giro rider, as expected, so this was clearly going to be a fast Giro Ride on an unfamiliar course with enhanced bragging rights. To make things more interesting, there were a few miles of the course with traffic cones separating the left lane from the right lane. If you've ever ridden in a group on a road where there are traffic cones you know that unless you're in the front five or over seven feet tall, you can't see traffic cones. Being one of the smaller riders in the group just makes that situation worse, and stressful. The whole time I was just waiting for someone to hit one of the traffic cones and launch it into the middle of the group. In fact, Jeff did hit one of them that fortunately went in the right direction rather than the wrong direction.

As expected, things started out pretty fast after the 2-mile neutral section behind Bill Burke's car as a handful of riders at the front alternated attacks and chases. Within a couple of miles the entire front group was basically the Giro Ride group. Despite all of the attacking going on up front I was kind of surprised it didn't seem harder. There were occasional lulls that brought the speed down into the lower 20s (we averaged 24.5 mph), so the fast segments were never quite long enough to split the group, and with so many riders still around, there was ample draft at the back. I had loaded the route into my new Garmin, but for some reason I wasn't getting all of the turn notifications and it occasionally thought I was off course, so perhaps I loaded the prior year's route by mistake. Anyway, I never really knew where the hell I was or where the next U-turn would be. What I did know was how far we'd gone, so I wasn't surprised when we turned back onto the highway with the traffic cones and the speed started to ramp up again. 

This was a "ride" and not a "race" and so now unsurprisingly there wasn't a 200-meter flag or 1-km banner, or anything like that, just orange duct tape arrows on the pavement. The finish was on the park road about 100 meters after a hard right turn that I don't think a lot of riders saw until the last second. The combination of a flat course with a big group, a course set up as a ride rather than a race, and riders, may of whom had little actual race experience, riding as a race rather than a ride, made this particular situation a little sketchy, to say the least. I was happy to stay at the back where I could watch. 

Well, we approached the turn at around 30 mph. The first couple of riders flew through criterium-style, and then one rider decided to go straight rather than try to make the turn. This is always a disaster. Even in criteriums where riders are told to go straight after the finish sprint, there's always someone who forgets and turns and causes a crash. So Lane decided to just go straight. Dustin was trapped to his left so Dustin also had to go straight. Sean, I think, was anticipating the turn behind Dustin and crossed wheels with him, going down pretty hard and taking one or two others behind him down too. By the time I coasted through the turn Sean was already getting up, so I knew he was basically OK. Later that day someone posted a video of the crash from behind. Interestingly, the rider with the camera overcooked the turn himself and hit the outside curb, going down in the grass pretty softly.  

So I had a nice enough weekend with two good training rides plus the bonus entertainment of watching two quite unexpected crashes, neither of which should have happened, from behind, complete with post-crash video analysis. Sean crash resulted in some road rash, a cracked helmet, broken seat, broken pedal, and somewhat torn-up shifter, but fortunately no ambulance rides. I hung around for a while for a plate of jambalaya and was back home around noon.

This morning at 6 am I looked at the radar and figured I'd better try to get in a ride right away. There was rain all around and the promise of lots more. I made the right call. As I turned around into a bit of a headwind at Williams Blvd. on the levee bike path I felt the first little sprinkles of rain. That continued all the way back home but fortunately never quite turned into a proper "rain," so I arrived back home just a little damp but far from soaking wet. A few minutes later the rain got heavier, and it's looking like it will stay that way for a while, with scattered thunderstorms in the forecast through Thursday.

Race of Truth 2011

Setting up for the Time Trial

Last Saturday we put on the "Race of Truth" LAMBRA Time Trial Championship over on the LaPlace course that we've now been using for over a decade. A couple of months ago we were pleasantly surprised to find that the first 10 k or so had been re-paved with nice new asphalt. The second half of the 40 k course, of course, wasn't re-paved. Although it's not a terrible road surface - older asphalt - by comparison I'm sure it felt rough. I'd gone out a few weeks earlier and re-marked the three turnarounds at 5, 10, and 20 km, riding mostly on the shoulder of the road with a backpack and a couple of cans of road marking paint. Fortunately my Garmin 520 plus was still working at that point (more on that later). 

This year the weather for the time trial was pretty great, except for a steady SSE wind that made the return trip considerably more challenging. I'd scheduled the race for a Saturday this year, a result of trying to avoid the Cheaha Challenge the following weekend and of course Mother's Day last Sunday. Turnout was only 78, so I think the Saturday date cost us about twenty riders. Typically we get around 100 if the weather forecast is good, which it was. As usual we required pre-registration so that we could seed riders ahead of time. I ended up using mostly the 2019 USAC time trial ranking points this year since most people didn't have any 2020 points, for obvious reasons. I guess it all worked out OK. With both Pat and Mignon unavailable because of graduation date conflicts, I had been worried I wouldn't have enough volunteers this year, and had even recruited Candy to handle check-in and number pick-up. As it turned out we had a good volunteer turnout, so things went really smoothly in that regard. We didn't even have anyone who missed his or her start this year, which was nice, and there were no issues with results or timing either (although I did get some reports a day or two later about some drafting out on the course here and there). Anyway, despite the wind we had one rider who was within fifteen seconds of breaking the course record of 51:12. We used up the last of the leftover USAC gold medals for this event, so although we still have a lot of silver ones from prior years, and a ton of bronze ones, we may need to have some made ourselves for other championships this year. USAC stopped providing them for free two years ago and I've been asking them to at least set something up so we could order "official" ones, but nothing has happened on that front yet.

USAC is in the midst of finally transitioning to the new post-event reporting system, so when I went to do my post-event I kind of ran into a brick wall. First, I tried the new system. It looked nice but none of the links were there so I couldn't actually do anything. So then I went to the old system. That looked normal but after entering everything it wanted to charge $15 for one-day licenses instead of $10 and then marked the post-event as "Paid" even though I hadn't actually paid anything. I emailed Stuart at USAC and he got everything fixed right away. I guess I was a default beta-tester for this. One other problem was that BikeReg didn't default to charging anything for one-day licenses, which I didn't discover until a few days before the event, so a lot of people got free one-days this year (for which we had to pay anyway, of course). Not a big deal in this case, but you'd think that if you tell them it's a USAC event then the default situation would be to collect the $10 per rider per day. 

A week or so ago when I set up the Tour de La event permit I ran into similar issues. I had to have Valecia at USAC correct an incorrect date I'd put in (can't make a date change online after submitting it) and then the system tried to charge me three additional permit fees, so I had to get Stuart to fix that. I hope that eventually the folks at USAC will be able to stop putting out fires once the legacy system is officially killed off!

We've started getting a few early registrations for the Tour de La already. It's the first weekend in June, so coming up quick. Bill Burke has his ride in St. Francisville the weekend before and, being more familiar with triathlons he's worried because he doesn't have a ton of pre-registrations yet. My experience with races has been that most people register the week before the event, with about half not registering until two or three days before the event. Of course we've never offered incentives to register early, like discounts for early registration.

The Sunday Giro

This morning's levee ride was interesting. The weather forecast has been sketchy for the early part of this week. Yesterday morning was rained out, but I was able to go out around 4:30 and got in a nice ride on the levee, so that worked out. This morning the radar looked good so we met up as usual at 6 am, and waited a few minutes for a train, which I had barely missed getting held up by, to pass in case anyone had gotten caught by it. Those few minutes would later turn out to have been important. We had a nice ride out to the turnaround, picking up a few riders along the way, and then losing a few who had to turn back early. Heading back with a slight headwind the sky kept getting darker and darker, which is the opposite of what should have been happening. By the time we were around River Ridge we could hear distant thunder and see some lightning. A few little sprinkles of rain fell, but nothing significant. I reached into my pocket for the ziplock bag I'd put there in case of rain and put my antique Garmin into it. My regular 520 had died last Friday after randomly trying to reboot itself a few times during a ride. It then just faded away to black and is now basically a brick. I found a 520 plus on sale online and went ahead and ordered one. The new 530s look nice but I know I'd never use any of the new features, so the only advantage there would be the longer battery life and faster processor. Not quite worth the extra hundred dollars for me a the moment, though. I'll call Garmin later and see if there's anything I can do with the dead one at a reasonable cost. It's a bit over two years old, so we'll see. Anyway, my old, old one that has electrical tape holding the buttons in place and water marks on the inside of the screen is somehow still working, so hopefully it will survive until the new one arrives.  

For a while it looked like we had somehow missed most of the rain. Then, as we exited the levee onto Oak Street, the rain drops got larger and more frequent and I knew we'd about run out of time. I got home just a little wet a minute or two before the sky opened up after barely avoiding getting doored by someone exiting a passenger-side door while stopped in traffic as I approached in the bike lane. I hit the brakes and locked up the rear wheel while screaming "take a look!" as I skidded past with inches to spare.