Long Thanksgiving Weekend

Sunday's Giro heading out a bit faster than usual.

By Wednesday afternoon the office was deserted, except of course for me. The emails had stopped coming long ago, and so after my one mid-afternoon meeting on the main campus I just went home rather than pointlessly riding back to the office for another hour of boredom. I had no plans for Thanksgiving other than a morning holiday Giro Ride.

Thursday morning I rode out to Starbucks wondering if anyone would show up. There had been a suggestion for a Thanksgiving Giro, and I'd dutifully sent something out to the NOBC about it, but there had been only one or two comments. As it turned out, we had a pretty decent group out there by the time we started. The weather was pretty nice and the pace was smooth and steady. Nothing to write home about, really, which sometimes makes for a perfectly fine bike ride. On Friday I went out with Danielle and a couple others for the regular Tulane coffee ride. Most of the undergrads were out of town for the holiday, but we ended up with five people and an extra-long stay at Fair Grinds since nobody had any reason to rush back.

Small group for the Tulane coffee ride - just medical and graduate students

Saturday and Sunday were two more Giro Rides for me. On Saturday I made a point of doing a fair amount of work since it seemed like I'd been taking it easy for weeks. The weather was cool without being cold, but there was a pretty strong wind blowing. Fortunately for the group it was more easterly than northerly, which kept the crosswinds at a minimum and contributed to the 37 mph top speed for the day. Even Woody showed up for that one. He's been taking some time off the bike and had been notably absent for a couple of weeks. Jaden and a few others were on the front a lot pushing the pace, so it was mostly a solid training ride. We had three riders on hand who were in town from Canada, having ridden down the Natchez Trace from Nashville to Natchez, and from there eventually down to New Orleans.  They had done the ride an the fast track, logging daily mileages of 125, 190, 60, and 170, so I was pretty impressed that they were able to hang in with the Giro without any apparent problems.

Visiting Snowbirds from Ontario enjoying the warm weather.

I was even more impressed that they showed up again on Sunday. Sunday's Giro was a little unusual. The turnout was, not surprisingly, a little low.  Dustin's wedding the night before had pulled away a number of riders, plus it was fairly chilly that morning. Three or four riders who don't do the Giro on a regular basis were there and, unaware, I guess, of the usual protocol were kind of pushing the pace from the start. Halfway down Lakeshore Drive, where we're usually spilling along at an easy conversational pace, someone rolled up alongside me, looked over, and asked, "Is there something going on I don't know about?"  With a little headwind we were kind of strung out going maybe 23, which isn't all that fast, but was faster than the more typical 18 mph for the warmup part of the ride. It wasn't what you'd call "hard," just "different." It was kind of repeated after the turnaround where we'd normally have more of a lull in the speed.  I was spending most of my time safely tucked into the paceline, so it was more interesting than anything else. One thing I noticed was how strongly Rachel has been riding. When we got back onto Lakeshore Drive, a few of the riders at the front continued pushing the pace rather than easing up to talk as usual. Fortunately, the Canada contingent was not showing any signs of distress, although a number of riders backed off after we crossed the Seabrook bridge.  I rode most of the way back uptown with the visiting riders plus a couple others, which provided some nice conversation.

This pair is getting to be a common sight along the river.

So on Sunday evening I posted something on the NOBC Facebook page saying I'd be
riding from the pipes on the river bike path at 6:30.  I had been doing this for the past few weeks anyway, and figured I'd see if anyone else might be interested in meeting me.  Well, apparently not.  The weather had warmed up considerable since Sunday morning as the wind had shifted to the southeast, so I had a comfortable Monday ride.  Along the way I saw the pair of eagles that we've been seeing routinely near Colonial Country Club, and I also saw what must have been a juvenile eagle a couple of miles farther upriver. We're expecting some rain this evening and tomorrow, but a the moment it's looking OK for tomorrow morning's ride. The south wind will be with us for another day or so until the next cold front comes through Wednesday morning, bringing with it more rain.  I'll be up in Jackson this weekend to officiate the cyclocross race and have the LAMBRA Board meeting. At the moment, the weather up there for the weekend is looking to be in the 40s and 50s with rain.

The wrist is still a problem, and I may end up resorting to another visit to the doctor about it.  The pain has been focused on the end of my ulna, so I'm guessing maybe I tore one of those ulnar tendons. It only hurts when I make certain movements under load, like drinking from a coffee cup or flexing the wrist like I was doing a push-up, which I definitely can't even attempt.  Otherwise, there's practically no pain at all, so it's kind of strange.

Crosswinds and 'Cross

A big group turned out for the combined Saturday ride, but it didn't stay together for very long.

This morning, Monday, was the first ride in weather I'd call "cold" so far this fall. The temperature was actually in the 40s when I headed out the door for a much-anticipated solo ride up the river on the levee bike path. The brutal crosswinds we'd had last Saturday were long gone, and as the sun rose I could feel the warmth on my back. I'd had to dig deep down into the bottom of the drawer that morning to locate the long tights and long-sleeve jersey, but was glad I'd done so. It's critical to over-dress a bit on those first colder winter rides so you don't have that fear of freezing in the back of your mind the next time.

It was an interesting weekend.  On Saturday Brian had kind of tried to organize a big group ride combining the Giro Ride with the earlier WeMo group and the later STCC group. In his head he was imagining a nice controlled paceline ride with 60 or 70 riders. I think a lot of the other riders were imagining the same. That morning when I saw the 18-24 mph north wind, however, I was imagining carnage. Although the STCC ride and the WeMo ride are intentionally controlled pace-wise, the Giro isn't. Also, there is no "leadership" for the Giro Ride, so there's no way to even be sure you've contacted everyone who rides it, much less impose any sort of restrictions on it.  In the beginning, there was just the Giro.  The other rides formed because those riders wanted a more controlled and somewhat less demanding ride, so I knew putting them all together probably wouldn't last too long. As it turned out, there were a number of people on the Giro who had no idea that Brian had organized this combined ride.  They were also mostly the people at the front.  On the plus side, we started out with at least 60 riders that morning as we rolled down Lakeshore Drive, bypassing the east end of the road because the waves were splashing over the seawall due to the wind. Once the group got down from the bridges onto Hayne Blvd. the pace picked up just like any regular Giro Ride, made worse by the crosswind.  Naturally, as the speed increased, so did the gaps, and by the time we rounded the curve at the end of Hayne Blvd. it looked like just the regular Giro group. Picking up the tailwind heading south from Hayne and across the interstate to the service road the speed was well into the 30s, and when I looked back as we turned onto the service road I couldn't even see whatever was left of the group. Mind you, I'd never gotten even remotely close to the front and had to really redline a few times to close gaps just to stay in contact. In that regard, it was basically just another Giro Ride. I spent about 90% of the stretch down Chef Highway balancing in the six inches between the fog line and the rumble strip, scrapping for a little bit of draft. When the road curved right after Highway 11 and the wind became a full direct crosswind things near the back started coming apart very quickly. Riders were dropping like flies and I had to make some more big efforts to close gaps up to the rapidly dwindling front group.  The ride back offered a little more tailwind along Chef and Hayne, so speeds got up pretty high there, but at least the necessary effort level was a little lower than it had been on the way out. Except for the wind issues, it was pretty much a regular Giro Ride from my perspective at the back and I hoped it wouldn't piss off too many of the people from the other group who may have been led to believe it would be an easier ride.

Great photo by Murat from Sunday's cyclocross race in Audubon Park

That afternoon I rode over to Audubon Park to check out construction of the new flyover that the DSGP was putting up for Sunday's cyclocross race.  It was pretty impressive - and big.  My fears that it might be some poorly constructed makeshift arrangement disappeared when I saw the huge trailer full of pre-fabricated sections made with three-quarter inch plywood and enough framing to build a small house. I  helped out as much as I could, although the injured wrist made me reluctant to do any heavy lifting.  Since it was the first time they had put all the pieces together, it took a while to figure out where everything went and in what order, but by the time I left for home at 4:30 it looked like they had it more or less under control, although I was pretty sure they would be working well in to the night before it was finished. One thing that seeing it confirmed was that I would definitely not be trying to race, even if at a slow pace and at the back. Just looking at the transitions was enough to make my wrist hurt and I knew I'd just do more damage it I tried.

The flyover certainly made things interesting

On Sunday I brought the old Trek mountain bike out to the race, along with a car full of stuff for the officiating setup. I even rode most of a lap around the course.  I walked it up and down the flyover, though, for obvious reasons. I had already handed Rusty my Garmin so he could log one lap of the route. I then converted the FIT file to a GPX file to upload into CrossMgr for the animation.  The first race, which was a combined Cat. 5 and Junior race, was kind of chaotic from an officiating standpoint because of the relatively large field and the fact that Ricky was riding it rather than helping officiate it. I wouldn't be surprised if we got a couple of the placings wrong down beyond 10th place.  I was just using CrossMgr, and Tim was scoring on paper, but he wasn't very successful with it so I didn't really have any backup data for a couple of things I wasn't too sure about.  Nobody has complained so far, so I guess that's good.  Ben Spain took a header coming down the flyover and looked like he hit pretty hard, on his head. He seemed OK afterward but went to the doctor to get checked out just in case. Otherwise, the races went pretty well. It was still a long day.  I left around 4 or so and spent probably another two hours cleaning up the registration and results information, posting to the website, etc.  There were a bunch of one-day license riders and various registration screw-ups that I had to clear up in order to put up decent looking results.  That meant going through the stack of release forms and trying to decipher a lot of very poor handwriting, often followed by looking up stuff on the USAC site to fill in the gaps.

Looks like it'll be in the upper 40s tomorrow morning and then gradually warming up toward the weekend. We probably won't see the anything in the 40s again for another couple of weeks, which is pretty typical November weather down here.

This morning I had a nice easy spin on the bike path out to the end of Jefferson Parish and back.  I ran into Donald for a little while before he had to peel off to head home at Jefferson Playground.

Not Quite Yet

A very calm Thursday morning ride on the lakefront bike path

The mornings this week have been a little cooler - cooler enough for a base layer and occasionally a pair of arm-warmers. However, it has not quite yet been what you'd call cold. It's looking like we'll get a brief taste of "cold" pretty soon, though.  Although it's 77F down here at the moment, at 4 pm on Friday, the forecast for tomorrow morning is calling for 57, which wouldn't seem too bad except that it will be accompanied by winds in the 18-22 mph range. That should make the morning ride somewhat interesting. On Sunday there's a cyclocross race here in New Orleans at Audubon park, and for that we're looking at an early morning temperature of 46, which qualifies as "cold" in my book. Luckily the actual racing, in which I will not be participating, doesn't start until 10:00, by which time it should be substantially warmer.

So last Wednesday I made it over to Baton Rouge with a few of the Tulane riders for a little velodrome time. There was a nice group of at least fifteen when we finally arrived after crawling through rush hour traffic just to get out of New Orleans at 5 pm. A number of riders were entirely new to track, so we started out with some simple little paceline work. I found myself to be quite uneasy in that group and was leaving a pretty good gap between myself and the rider in front of me. My problem wrist was hurting a bit more than normal, probably because I was white-knuckling the bars a lot more than usual. They did a couple of short scratch races and a miss-and-out, neither of which I did.  Instead, I rode laps in-between the races. I really, really didn't want to be taking any chances of crashing again when my wrist was obviously still hurt. Immediately after the first sprint in the miss-and-out there was a crash near the back of the field that took two of the guys down. One walked away with a whole lot of road rash.  I guess the rider in back wasn't ready for the pace to ease up or perhaps one of them forgot he was on a fixed gear and tried to coast.

Teamwork (Ben's bottom bracket was creaking so much they pushed him for a while so as not to wake up the neighbors.)

The cyclocross race on Sunday is supposed to have a flyover that they will be building, or finishing building, on Saturday.  Since I'll be officiating I'm planning on going over there to check it out and make sure it isn't too sketchy.  I expect they'll do a reasonably good job with it, but wouldn't want any surprises in the morning.

Thursday morning's ride was remarkably smooth.  For some reason it seemed like nobody wanted to go too hard. Perhaps it was the time of year and the really great weather we had that morning. This morning we did the regular TU coffee ride.  It seems like we are hanging around the coffee shop longer and longer each time.  I didn't get home until almost 9 and had to rush to work.  Still better than watching the news, which frankly I have been avoiding as much as possible for the past two months. If someone would just email me when it's safe to go back to watching it without causing a dangerous elevation of blood pressure, I'd appreciate it.

In a Chair up in Ruston

Last weekend was a two-day cyclocross race up in Ruston, Louisiana that I'd agreed to help officiate. Ordinarily, I might have planned to jump into maybe the masters race just to salvage a little bit of the weekend, training-wise, but my left wrist is still giving me trouble and I knew that a hilly cyclocross race would be practically the worst possible thing I could do.  So I left the bikes at home and walked out the house around 4:30 am for the long drive, arriving just about 45 minutes before the 10 am start of the first race. Way up north in Ruston it was a whole lot colder than New Orleans, but the sky was clear and the wind calm, so it wasn't a problem at all. Anyway, I rushed to get the computer set up so I could track the race with CrossMgr, just barely getting it all together in time for the start of the first race.  Unfortunately, help was in short supply and Ricky, the other official, was riding in that race, so I was pretty much on my own, trying to manually enter bib numbers as riders crossed the finish on each lap while concurrently trying to write them down on paper. Naturally I screwed up a few of the electronic entries since I hadn't used the program since last year, but since the field was small and the course was hilly it didn't cause any issues.

The race was held at Lincoln Parish Park where there was an established mountain bike course with some pretty significant hills. It hadn't really rained up there in weeks, however, so the ground was hard and sandy, and included a stretch along a sand beach.  Even so, lap times were in the 6:30 - 7:00 range. I was kind of disappointed with all of the errors I made logging lap times on the first day, but with such small fields the results were easy anyway.  After the race a bunch of us went down the road to eat the Log Cabin Grill, and then Ricky and I drove over to Monroe where he had found me a temporarily unoccupied apartment for the night.

Sunday morning started out in the upper 30s, but by race time it was probably closer to 60.  This time I had a lot more time to get organized and set up the CrossMgr software.  Ricky had cropped out one lap of his race from the prior day so that I could load it into the program for the race animation feature, which is pretty cool.  Here's the HTML file that the program can create, in this case, Sunday's Cat. 1/2/3 race.  The races went well and scoring was easy because of the somewhat predictable low turnout in that part of the state, so I had a pretty nice relaxing day of mostly sitting in a chair and clicking on bib numbers.  The software supports chip timing, which would make things really easy, especially for large fields where it would be almost essential.  What I like most about it from an officiating standpoint is that it helps calculate how many laps a timed race will be based on the average lap time for the first two laps.  Also, of course, it helps a lot with keeping track of lapped riders and detecting those who aren't showing  up at the finish when expected because of some incident elsewhere on the course. Anyway, I got in zero riding for the weekend and about ten hours of solo driving.  Glad I sprung for Sirius XM in the car.

Next Sunday we have another cyclocross race here in New Orleans.  Somehow, Wes has apparently gotten permission to hold it on the "Fly" which is part of Audubon Park between the levee and the river.  I suspect it may be a pretty short and fast course and I'm kind of expecting to see some complications with pedestrians since it's a pretty busy public park in a metro area.  On the plus side, I would also expect to see a pretty big turnout. Should be interesting. Unfortunately, my wrist is still causing problems if I have to twist it or anything, so there won't be any cyclocrossing for me.

On Saturday Brian Baum has kind of organized a big super-Giro, combining three of the traditional rides that do the same route but at different times on Saturdays. The idea is to make it a smooth paceline kind of ride.  I'm not too sure about how that is going to go down with the racing rank and file who are accustomed to using the Saturday Giro as a hard training ride. It will be mixing Cat. 2 level bike racers who spend most of the time somewhere north of 25 mph with local fitness riders who tend to stop at stores twice during a 45 mile ride to eat, so it should be interesting to see what happens.

An East Wind.....

"There's an east wind coming all the same..... It will be cold and bitter....., and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared."

This morning I finally resorted to arm-warmers. The most recent cool front has thus far brought two days of strong east-northeast wind; so strong in fact that yesterday's WeMoRi was barely recognizable.  There were probably only ten riders out there when I arrived, latching onto a little break of three.  Looking back, I couldn't even make out the rest of the group, and it was only when it briefly came back together on Marconi that I realized how few there actually were. It fractured once again on the half-lap of Lakeshore Drive and I spent the rest of the lap glued to the wheel of the big guy ahead of me as the tailwind blew us toward West End at 30-34 mph. It was fun, but I was nursing my once-again re-injured left wrist and didn't enjoy it as much as I might have.

I'd been walking the dog the prior evening and as we went past the neighbor's house I noticed him up on a ladder working on his porch light.  The front door was partially open, and all of a sudden his two dogs came blasting out of the house in full stride toward Renzo who doesn't respond well to such things. I had to swing him around by the collar to keep him from attacking the two smaller dogs and in the process really wrenched my left wrist.....again. It was bad enough that I was feeling it all night, and after the WeMoRi I noticed it was swollen a bit.  Damn.  This is getting really old, but then again reading Steve Tilford's blog chronicling his TBI recovery does kind of put into perspective.

Anyway, this morning the temperature was a little cooler, I think around 59 or so, and the wind a little stronger, I guess around 15 mph. Out at the Lakefront we had a pretty decent sized group, though, for the lap of Lakeshore Drive, but a lot of them turned back for home at the end rather than heading over to the bike path for the stretch out to the casino boat at Williams Blvd.  Of course, there was still that strong tailwind, so we averaged something over 28 mph all the way out there. Knowing it would be a very long ride back, I took myself out of the rotation pretty early.  As expected, the ride back was kind of hard.  We were down to like four riders by then, and 18-19 mph was a struggle even with a smooth paceline in place.  Seemed like it took forever, but at least I hadn't killed myself on the way out and was pretty comfortable taking my pulls.  The wrist was feeling better after spending the night with a wrist brace on it, so hopefully the dog-walking incident won't turn out to have been much of a setback.  I've got an Ace bandage thing on it at work, which is interfering a bit with typing but manageable.

Speaking of setbacks, the recent presidential election was a surprise. Living in New Orleans and working at a university you kind of start to think that the majority of people are, at least, reasonable. While I didn't like either candidate much at all, I really thought that when push came to shove more people would have been reluctant to vote for someone with such a volatile temperament for president, especially when the alternative's policies and efforts would have clearly been somewhat balanced by a congress in control of the purse strings.  I just wish there had been better options, which is all I will say about that. I'm a white person, one who didn't leave what is probably one of the more ethnically diverse cities in the country in order to move out to the suburbs or elsewhere where I could complain about the city without actually living in it and where we've had lots of experience with both good and bad leadership from numerous flavors of people. Yeah, I'm offended by this stuff, but at least I know enough not to sort all the people into convenient little buckets based on skin color, which incidentally, is represented by a pretty extremely broad gradient around here. Get it together, people.

V2V - VII

Post-ride at Varsity Sports in New Orleans

The month-long string of dry days and nice riding weather was coming to an end. Indeed, as I write this on Monday afternoon it's still raining and the news is full of photos of flooded streets. So the weekend cool front was going to fall apart after the weekend, making Sunday a must-ride day. Looking at the various Facebook posts and Strava files, it seems like everyone had some big mileage on his or her plate. Wes was leading a small group on one of the semiannual Tour de Lac rides around Lake Pontchartrain, a distance of around 200 miles, Sunday morning. A number of local riders logged something in excess of 100 on Saturday. Alison C. put in 124, which admittedly is pretty normal for her. I felt a little guilty for doing only the Giro Ride on Saturday.

Sunday was the 7th annual Varsity to Varsity (V2V) ride from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. This is a collegiate ride started by LSU and subsequently joined by some of the Tulane riders. As a point-to-point ride of around 105 miles, it poses some logistical challenges.  For the LSU riders, they need a way to get home. For the Tulane riders, they need a way to get there for the 7:30 am start. That's where I come in. This year we got two minivans from the university's new shared motor pool (they're long-term rental from Enterprise) on Saturday afternoon, so at 5 am on Sunday morning I found myself walking from home to the university parking lot, just a few blocks away, in order to hop in the van and drive down to the cycling facility on Broadway Street to load up bikes and riders. As often seems to happen, the ten riders originally signed up for the ride had dwindled. A couple had backed out, a couple were already in Baton Rouge, and a couple had already gotten their bikes transported to Baton Rouge. As a result, my van had only three people and two bikes in it, including myself.  The other van had two people. Anyway, we arrived at 7 am in time to pick up some coffee and drop everyone off at Varsity Sports on Perkins. After a group photo, we Quentin and I headed back for New Orleans.  The plan was to pick up our own bikes, meet back at the university parking lot, return the minivans, and head upriver on the bike path and River Road until we met the group coming down from Baton Rouge. Once I got onto the interstate I kept looking in the mirror for Quentin, but wasn't seeing him.  How could he be going that slowly?  He'd been talking with someone as I pulled out but couldn't have been more than a few minutes behind me.  I was halfway back when he called to say that they had shut down the interstate right behind me because of an accident and he'd had to make a long detour.  I ended up waiting about twenty minutes for him at LaPlace since we needed to put gas in the vans anyway.  While I was there, Wes' Tour de Lac group rolled in for a rest stop.  Coincidence.

Heading back downriver to New Orleans

By the time we were on the bikes we were a good 45 minutes behind schedule and I was wondering if we'd make it much past the Spillway before meeting the group. Once we got up onto the bike path, though, I started thinking otherwise.  We had a pretty nice tailwind, which meant the group, which would be riding at conversational pace anyway, would have a pretty significant headwind all the way down to New Orleans. If that wasn't enough, Quentin was riding a borrowed TT bike and wearing a skinsuit and TT helmet.  There's a whole story behind that, of course.  Anyway, right after we started he noticed the bike felt strange, as if one crankarm was longer than the other.  It turned out that someone had installed the crankarms wrong so that they were a good five degrees out of parallel. For the record, he ended up riding about fifty miles like that. Not that it was slowing him down. For most of the ride upriver I was just sitting in his draft as we cruised along at 25 - 27 mph. The net result was that we got in a good 45 miles before meeting the group somewhere well past Reserve and practically where I'd met them the prior year when I hadn't been delayed.  Along the way I nearly crashed when we were riding on the levee bike path in St. John parish and came to an unexpectedly sharp right-hand curve going 27 mph.  I ran out of asphalt and launched out over the levee on the river side, miraculously staying upright, but having put a lot of pressure on my right wrist.

The rest of the ride back to New Orleans was pretty steady.  I suggested we take the St. John section of bike path in order to get off of River Road for a little while. Once up there I went up to the front and told them that when the asphalt ended at the parish line there wasn't a road back down to the street level, so we'd need to ride down the grass.  Well, that apparently didn't get communicated to anyone else and so when they hit the gravel they just kept going like lemmings, which kind of shattered the group.  After a little while a few of us rode down the grass and got back onto the road, soon coming across the rest of the group that was stopped to change the inevitable flat tire.

So I ended up with about 90 miles for the day, some of which was pretty brisk, which made for a good ride on the first day of standard time and last day of the October drought.

Halloween and Plunging Into November

The front of the Sunday Giro heading back along the service road.  

The long streak of nice riding weather continues.  We went the entire month of October with any rain unless you count four hundredths of an inch one day that wasn't enough to get the street wet.  It looks like that trend will continue for at least another week, too.  The plants are starting to really suffer and the back door is really hard to close now since the piers holding up the back room that was once a porch have sunken along with the dried-out ground. The morning temperatures have been fairly cool, but still not even cool enough to pull out the arm-warmers.  That won't likely happen until the end of the week when a cold front is supposed to come through. Perhaps then it will start to feel like Fall, especially when we have to set the clocks back by an hour this weekend.

Speaking of DST, which won't end until next Sunday, it's been just so very dark in the mornings! I am really reluctant to ride too fast when it's dark, and being the short guy at the back of the paceline just makes it worse. Even in broad daylight I usually need to look underneath the riders ahead of me to see what's up the road, so it's considerably more comfortable to stay near the front. Sunrise right now is around 7:15, so that's an hour and a half of riding on weekdays before sunrise, which means a good hour of riding in the dark.

Last weekend I ended up riding both the Saturday and Sunday Giro Rides.  That hadn't been the plan, but it turned out to be for the best. I'd been scheduled to help officiate the cyclocross race on Sunday up in Baton Rouge, and really would have liked to have gone. It was being held in Perkins Road Park where the Baton Rouge Velodrome is, and the course included a lap on the track and then another lap around the outside of the track. Candy had decided to do our usual Halloween party on Sunday, the day before Halloween, rather than have the hassle of trying to do it after work. It worked out very well and a lot of people were able to come and hang around that otherwise wouldn't have been able to do so.  When I looked at the race schedule for Baton Rouge, though, I saw that the last race wasn't scheduled to start until 2:30, so even if everything was on time and I just cut and ran the minute that race was over, I probably wouldn't have gotten back home until 5:00 or 5:30, plus I would have had the car all day too.  So I called Ricky and he got Mike to stand in for me, which was nice.  That also meant I got to ride the Sunday Giro, which had a fairly small group because of all the stuff going on that weekend.  It was a nice ride, though, and I ended up with a good 300-mile week.

Bat-baby and family stopped by for the party.

The day before, on Saturday, I hadn't been back home from the Saturday Giro very long before the phone rang and I found out that the wife and daughter were at the grocery store and the car wouldn't start.  They got a jump from someone and made it back home, but obviously something was wrong with the battery or starter or electronics or alternator. I put the voltmeter on it and the battery was showing 11 volts and the car was reporting "low battery." Trying to start it, I could hear it turn over maybe once, but it didn't have enough power to do much more than that except make noise. Of course it was a weekend, and the car wouldn't start, so my options were limited. I could try and charge the battery with my old antique battery charger so I could maybe drive to the dealership on Monday and get the electrical system checked out, or I could cross my fingers, pull the battery, and use the scooter to run down to the local auto parts store for a replacement, hoping that it was just a shorted battery. After checking online at NAPA, I decided to go for the latter option since the battery was on sale.  So far, so good.  It's a good thing though that I had gotten out of the officiating thing in Baton Rouge, because even if I'd replaced the battery I wouldn't have been all that confident about driving up there just in case it was a charging problem and not a battery problem.  Anyway, the cyclocross race looked like a big success with 100+ entries, although the ground was bone dry and the temperature by mid-day was nothing less than hot.

So the Halloween party went well. Every last drop of Candy's gumbo was consumed, as well as all of my pasta salad.  I drank entirely too much wine, of course, and we have about five pounds of leftover brisket and chicken from Whole Foods.  Halloween night itself was very busy in the neighborhood. For a while the street along our block was so clogged with kids and parents that the occasional cars couldn't get through. We were going pretty much non-stop from 6:15 until 8:30, at which point the average age of the trick-or-treaters went from 10 to around 18 and we decided it was time to turn off the lights and shut it down. We went through a ton of candy, as usual, but then this morning I was dismayed to find even more of it still in the house.  Candy can always be counted upon to get more than needed.

So we have new neighbors.  A couple bought the house next door and moved in on Friday. They immediately started a major painting and fixing-up effort that involved lots of their extended family and/or friends.  I was hoping they would stop by for the party, but they have been painting and working on the house non-stop every day from early morning until late at night. I'm exhausted just from watching them.

Next weekend is the annual LSU/Tulane Varsity to Varsity ride from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. We're hoping to get one of the big new Tulane passenger vans so I can shuttle most of the group up to BR for the 7 am start, and then rush back home and start riding upriver to meet the group somewhere around LaPlace.  The weather should be pretty nice since the cold front is supposed to be coming through some time on Friday, I think.  The temperature in Baton Rouge will probably be in the 50s when they start but should be in the mid-70s by the time they get to New Orleans. The predicted 9 mph ENE wind may slow them down a little bit, but probably not too much since the pace is fairly well controlled for that ride. Last year I did the same thing and got in around 90 miles, so hopefully I'll be able to do the same this year. We may need another person to drive a car up there with bikes since we really don't know what we can fit in to the passenger van, assuming we can get one.  The wrist is still an issue for me, but I think there has been a steady but slow improvement over the past couple of weeks. The outside of the wrist around the end of the radius still hurts when doing certain things and I suspect it will be a few weeks more before all of that subsides.  On the plus side, it has been interfering less and less with riding.  The left shoulder is also still causing some pain when reaching back for things, like the seat-belt in the car.  I think that will also be a long time healing.

This morning's Tuesday ride was pretty normal, for the most part.  A few of the usual players were absent and I think that kept the pace a little slower than usual. Mike W got into the group as it headed toward the Metairie lake bike path from Lakeshore Drive, and other than the usual unsteadiness that we're all pretty used to things seemed fine until we got close to the turnaround. Somewhere within the last kilometer he accelerated past the group in his big fixed gear. The front couple of riders didn't respond and so came around at a little faster pace just holding around 30 mph until I and everyone else saw the couple that was walking on the path ahead of us.  There was also someone coming from the other direction, so at that point I eased up and signaled for everyone to slow down. Mike, however, just continued his long sprint and I think literally brushed one of the pedestrians as he went by at, I'd guess, 32 mph. I mean, really?  Robin was coming from the other direction and saw it all, including the part where I just threw up my hands in disbelief.  He paused to apologize to the walkers, which was nice.

Dark Mornings

It's that time of year when the morning rides seem a little more stressful, and not necessarily because they're faster.  Lately, like since I crashed on a training ride in the dark because I slammed into a block of concrete nobody saw, I've been keeping my headlight on the highest setting a lot more. Man, that really drains the battery fast, though. I'm recharging it practically after every weekday ride. Earlier this week Brandon got hit by a car over on Robert E. Lee near the 17th street canal. I hate that stretch of road, between the canal and West End, where there's no shoulder at all and lots of broken concrete and manhole covers on the right edge. Brandon was kind of lucky, at least as far as injuries to, and got away with a broken thumb and ton or road rash. I've been following Steve Tilford's blog and it sounds like he's having a pretty rough time of it.  It's been two weeks since he crashed on his head in a training race after hitting a dog and fractured his skull.  Seems like the severe headaches haven't really diminished much at all yet. For someone like Steve, two weeks off the bike, all by itself, is torture. I think it's going to be a lot longer than that before he's able to ride again, though. I'm pretty sure Steve should not be blogging or reading computer screens or pretty much doing anything, since the consensus seems to be that all those things tend to interfere with recovery from a TBI, but I'm really not surprised and can certainly understand his need to stay connected and keep the blog going.  I'd probably be doing the same thing.

So I've been trying out a couple of new things on the bike lately.  Since I'd cracked my Giro Aeon when I crashed (apparently both times), I got one of the new Giro Synthe helmets.  As usual, I got the small size. My head circumference is precisely at the upper limit of the small size and the lower limit of the medium.  Comparing the old and new helmets, it's clear that the inside of the styrofoam is pretty much exactly the same shape and size.  Problem is, the new Synthe has this kind of plastic band thing that is supposed to create some space between your head and the helmet. Naturally that meant it was too tight since I didn't have any space to spare at the limit. As I usually do, I made some minor field modifications to the back to accommodate my apparently elongated skull, and then another modification to allow the band thing to sit flush against the front of the helmet.  That seemed to make it work OK for now, although it was still fairly tight.  It was obvious, however, that once winter came and I wanted to put a skullcap underneath it, I was going to have a problem. So, since they were on super closeout sale (I'm guessing there's a new version coming out soon), I went ahead and got a medium size as well.  That resulted in a couple of problems. For one, the straps are fixed at the back of the helmet, unlike all of the previous ones I've had.  That means that one side can't be shortened at all. Since my head is the smallest for the medium size helmet, that put the buckle so far over on the other side that there was practically no adjustability left for the other strap. I ended up folding the strap over itself and stitching it to shorten it, with kind of solved that problem.  The other problem, though, is that the larger helmet comes down far enough on the front and sides that it's contacting my glasses and kind of pushing them down on my nose.  Not good.  So perhaps I will now have a warm-weather helmet and a cold-weather helmet.  We'll see.  It's kind of the same problem I've had all my life trying to buy pants!

Pretty nice weather for the end of October.

Meanwhile, I finally got hold of that 80 mm stem I wanted to try.  It's all of 10 mm shorter than my current one, so I didn't know if I would even be able to notice a difference, but after using it for a couple of days I think I like it. For some reason 3T changed it from having two bolts for the steerer like my other, older ones have, to only one and increased the torque spec by 1.5 Nm. All to save the weight of one little bolt?  Go figure.  Anyway, it's working out fine, so I think I'll keep it on there and put the 9 cm stem on the track bike that I haven't ridden more than a couple of times all year.

Unfortunately, nothing seems to be helping with the wrist injury much, although it has changed a bit. Initially, the thing that was hurting the most was around the base of the thumb.  Now, that's feeling a lot better, but the outside of the wrist seems to be hurting more. I don't get the sharp pain when I hit a bump any more, so that's an improvement, and just riding along it doesn't hurt very much in most positions.  For some reason, though, when I lift it off the bars to change position, it seems to hurt the most. I guess it's just one of those ligament things that is going to take some time to heal.

I've been up on the river levee bike path a couple of times this week and it looks like everything is open now except for whatever temporary closures are still needed way upriver where they are building a new conveyor for the big grain elevator. Apparently when they need to work on that, they have to shut down both the bike path on the levee and River Road.  Getting around that is practically impossible.

This weekend is the start of Wes' cyclocross series.  I was scheduled to officiate on Sunday in Baton Rouge, but got Ricky to find a substitute so I could either not go at all or at least leave early.  Candy is having our annual Halloween party on Sunday evening, and with the last race in Baton Rouge not ending until 3:30 at best, plus probably an hour and a half to get home if I cut and run, that would be cutting things a little close, plus she'd be without a car for the last-minute grocery store trip(s) that always seem to be necessary.  I'm trying to decide if I should drive up and help out with the early races with the larger fields and then head back before the Cat. 1/2/3 race starts. I'd kind of like to get in some more practice with CrossMgr anyway.  We've had nearly a month of picture perfect riding weather around here, and it looks like it will last through the weekend at least. In fact, it will be pretty warm. Looks for certain we'll make it all the way through October without even having to search for the knee-warmers.

Blue Skies and Tire Boots

The collegiate ride had riders from ULL, Nicholls, LSU, and Tulane.

It was another weekend of great weather down here, unless of course you are plant life in which case things are getting kind of desperate water-wise.  For the Saturday Giro Ride I pulled on the arm-warmers for the first time this season. Although the pre-dawn temperature was just a few degrees below 60F, it was pretty windy and  felt substantially colder. Although it eventually warmed up to the upper 60s, I was never inclined to stuff them into my pocket. Out on Chef Highway I was toward the back of a long skinny line of riders when I heard a loud explosion followed by the sound of something metallic bouncing around on the asphalt.  One of the guys had slashed a pretty good hole in his tire.  A few of us stopped to help, which was a good thing because we needed the piece of an old Mr. Tuffy I had in my bag in order to get him rolling again. Even so, we didn't dare put more than about 40 psi in the tire, fortunately on the front wheel, for fear of blowing the entire tire boot right through the gaping, bulging hole.  He headed back home (don't know if he made it) and we continued on, eventually turning around to get back into the group that was already on its way back. Other than a mile or two where four of us were bridging across a big gap that happened at an intersection, it was a moderately paced Giro.

Lots of narrow shady roads

Sunday morning there was the Collegiate Family Ride up in St. Francisville.  Quentin had reserved one of Tulane's new passenger vans, and I was to pick it up at 6:45 am from the parking lot on campus.  Problem was, nobody was there.  I went back and checked the emails about it and realized that the person handling that must have thought the trip was on Saturday rather than Sunday. So I had to run back home and take my own car to meet the rest of the group.  Luckily there was another car available and only five of us going after one had backed out at the last minute, so it was no problem, but it would have been nice to have been able to work out the still unresolved issue of how many bikes we can get into the thing, which will depend on whether we can remove the rear seats. On the way over, along the elevated portion of I-10 where it crosses the marsh between New Orleans and LaPlace we spotted four bald eagles, presumably two mating pairs.  Nice to see them returning to the area for the winter.

The weather was pretty much as good as it gets.

There was a decent sized group for the ride this year, and by the time we arrived the temperature was just warm enough to leave the arm-warmers in the car.  This was a nice controlled-pace 60 miles or so on pretty quiet roads, which was nice. My injured hand/wrist is still hurting.  It seems to be more of a wrist problem now than hand problem, and the 12-hour naproxin that I took kept it from being very bothersome. We hadn't gone fifteen miles when one of the riders hit something and slashed his tire pretty badly.  Luckily I had put more tire boot material into my bag the night before.  This hole was so big I needed two pieces of Mr. Tuffy to keep the tube from blowing out, so Dustin gave him directions to the nearest gas station with instructions to sit tight and wait from rescue.  I guess he made it there. Later, of course, Dustin had us riding through a small section of gravel which of course resulted in another flat. Then, as we approached a fence line, a white horse snuck through a hole in it and started running alongside the group. When he turned toward the middle of the road everyone pretty much came to a stop, not knowing what he would do next.  Then we gingerly rode by as he watched us.  As if that wasn't enough, the whole group almost got taken out by a truck and trailer that came speeding around a bend on a narrow country road.  Lucky nobody was over on the left side.

Hope this horse made it back home safely

I felt pretty good on this ride.  The weather was perfect and the pace was moderate, so I was never stressed.  It was a nice morning to look at the scenery.  I spent most of the ride at the back keeping track of the newer riders who I knew would eventually hit their limits.  I think a few of them had never ridden more than forty miles at one time. The front of the group kept the pace down in the 16-21 mph range most of the time, at least until we were approaching "Red Bug Hill" a couple of miles before the finish. Naturally it became a race from there to the end so the group pretty much blew apart.  I turned back and picked up a few of the stragglers to pace them in the last couple of miles. Afterward we all drove into Baton Rouge for a late lunch at Kaminari Sushi and Hibachi, near the LSU campus. For a buffet style sushi place it was reasonably decent and inexpensive, which more than met my standards for that sort of thing.

So I was surprised to find Steve Tilford actually posting stuff to his blog.  Well, actually I'm not all that surprised since it's Steve Tilford, but if it was pretty much anybody else I'd be surprised. He's still having constant headaches and other neurological difficulties as a result of cracking his head on the road about 11 days ago. He hasn't been sleeping much and really doesn't have the energy to read emails or that sort of thing, which is expected after a severe head injury. He probably shouldn't be trying to type on the computer either, although he has been keeping it very short. On the plus side, his writing is pretty much normal, so that's a good sign.

Of course nobody noticed this inconspicuous label.

Meanwhile, I'd been waiting for a couple of weeks for an 80mm stem that I'd ordered.  When I had to get new handlebars I figured I'd see how a 1 cm shorter stem might feel and whether it would make any difference to my aging neck and back.  they called right away and told me it wasn't in stock but they could get one in a few days, and since I wasn't desperate for it, I was fine with that.  Anyway, when it still hadn't shown up by Saturday I called and they said they showed it had been delivered on the 11th and that the tracking said it had been left with an "agent." So this morning I made the rounds to the neighboring offices looking for it.  Turns out it had been shipped via USPS and they had delivered it to the university mail room.  The mail room had stuck a huge label on it with my office and name on it and brought it over to our satellite location along with the other mail.  Somehow it ended up in the personnel office a couple of doors over where we have a "slot." However, it didn't find its way into that particular slot, so nobody picked it up and it just sat there.  Shipping that little box involved the shipper, the US Postal Service, the University Mail Room, and the Personnel Department (aka the Workforce Management Office).  What could go wrong?

Bars and Braces

Sitting on the back of the group all morning.

I woke up this morning with the same dull ache in my wrist I've had for a week and decided it might be time to try something different.  I knew I'd miss the 5:45 group, since the alarm clock is precisely set to allow only the absolute minimum of time needed to dress, roll the bike out the door, and ride the half mile to the meeting spot. I went downstairs and dug up the clip-on aero bars and spent a few minutes bolting them to the bike. The idea was to minimize the repeated impacts to the wrist and hand in order to give them a chance to heal. Since I went down on the same hand I'd messed up a few weeks prior, it's been a constant problem, especially while riding, and most especially while riding on New Orleans streets in the dark.  So with the headlight no 'full' and steering with my elbows I finally headed out to the lakefront.  I don't ride with aero bars on a regular basis.  In fact, I typically bolt them to the bike minutes before a 3 or 4 mile stage race time trial stage, warm up, do the time trial, and immediately remove them.  So I was just a little bit apprehensive about a 2+ hour ride, mostly in the dark, that was going to include sitting on the back of the morning training ride train.

I rode out to Lakeshore Drive, and then town to Elysian Fields, where I looped around the traffic circle to head back to West End, waiting to get swept up by the group. Somewhere around Marconi The long, long line of riders rolled past and I easily latched onto the back, being careful to leave a little extra space between myself and the wheel ahead of me. I was a little uncomfortable having my hands so far from the brakes, but after a while I got used to it. I immediately noticed how much easier it was sitting in the draft in a TT position.  I also was glad to confirm my suspicion that doing so was a big relief for my hand and wrist.  So that was my morning ride.  A little shorter than usual, and a little easier than usual, but way better than sitting on the couch watching the sprained wrist heal.  I'm thinking I'll leave the aero bars on for the rest of the week and hope it helps speed things up a little bit.  Meanwhile, I'm wearing the wrist brace at work, although it does interfere with typing and pretty much everything else.  I guess it's worth a try, but realistically I know that this will just take time - probably a month or so of it - before things are more or less back to normal.

Injured Reserve on the Levee

The Bonnet Carré Spillway  

I hate riding when I'm injured, but I guess I hate not riding when I'm injured more. For the past week my riding has been a study in compromise. It's like being on injured reserve. I've been sitting on the back of the group rides, trying mostly unsuccessfully to limit the impact, both literal and figurative, on my achy wrist and thumb joint. The reality, though, is that it's practically impossible to ride the bike without putting a fair amount of pressure on that hand. The times when it would be nicest to have the hand off the bars are also precisely the times when a firm two-handed grip is most needed.

I rode the Saturday Giro, which fortunately turned out to be a bit on the tame side, as easily as I could, continually surfing around at the back for the best draft while constantly changing hand positions in search of something more comfortable. I'd taken some naproxin in the morning, and that definitely helped, but there were still plenty of bumps in the road to remind me that things were definitely not back to normal yet. The wrist was achy enough that when I got home I iced it for a while.  Don't really know if that helped or not.

So when Mignon sent a text suggesting a Sunday ride out to the Spillway on the relatively smooth bike path, I jumped at the chance. The weather around here continues to be unusually good for riding, although I'd have to say we are approaching drought conditions.  I don't think I've seen any significant rain in two or three weeks now. Anyway, we ended up with around fifteen people on Sunday. One of them was Brady, who was keeping the pace a bit higher than I'd been expecting.  It's funny how bad you feel when a group ride is faster than you were expecting.  I'm sure that if I'd done the Giro I would have felt fine, but for this ride I'd been expecting something in the 18-20 mph range and instead got something in the 21-24 mph range.  You wouldn't think it would matter much, but I guess I was just hoping for an easier ride and a chance to give the hand some rest. The good news is that the Mississippi River levee bike path work is almost complete.  The yellow lane divider has been put down on all of the repaired sections, practically all of the path has been cleared of dirt and rocks, and the contractor's two big mobile homes have been removed from the old PHI Helicopter site where they'd been for at least two or three years. The only remaining problems are the bypass around the new green pipes at Florida Street and the five or six places where the new asphalt has collapsed on the edges where I guess the underlying dirt hadn't been sufficiently compacted before a truck rolled over it. This morning I rode easy out to Williams Blvd. and back.  On the return trip I dropped down to River Road as usual to go around the green pipes and then was surprised to find the access road back up to the top on the other side blocked.  It looked like they were working  on repairing the collapsed asphalt up there, so that's a good thing.  I had to stay on River Road holding up traffic for a little while before I could take the next, unpaved, access road back up to the bike path.  A little while later I came across a guy walking his hybrid bike with a flat.  I asked him how far he had to go and when he said Carrollton Avenue, which was still a few miles away, I stopped and fixed the flat for him. That was my good deed for the day, I guess.

Meanwhile, I've been checking up on Steve Tilford's blog that is being updated by friends since he suffered a serious head injury on Friday during a group ride in Topeka.  We're talking fractured skull and brain bleed here, so he was in ICU for a few days and it was probably a bit of touch and go for a while there.  He'd been riding without a helmet when a dog ran into the bunch during a sprint. I suspect the no-helmet thing was an freak thing since just the day before he'd blogged about taking a bunch of old helmets to a community organization to give to riders who needed them. For those who don't know, Steve is the definition of old-school U.S. bike racer. There's an interview with him from 2010 here.  He's been racing about as long as I have, although always quite a few levels above.  He's been on the national team, raced in Europe and South America on numerous occasions, raced road and mountain bike at the highest levels, won a bunch of national championships and classic U.S. races, etc., and has just never stopped. They were writing articles about how old he is for over a decade now. It's been interesting reading his blog because I see him dealing with the same age-related issues as I, except for him it's like, "how come I'm having so much trouble winning this Pro/1 race," while for me it's like, "how come I'm getting dropped in a LAMBRA master's race." Anyway, I read this afternoon that he's been transferred out of the ICU and in classic tough old bike-racer fashion  "at 4:30am Steve decided it was time for a shower. He disabled his bed alarm,  rolled his IV stand into the bathroom and took one, he almost got away with it but for the noise from the water. He will not be going home until he can eat and drink without puking everything up."  I took it as a good sign, though, despite the fact he's clearly not quite out of the woods yet.  There's a pretty good chance of long-term neurological problems from that kind of injury, one of which is death, so the fact that he's communicating and responsive and all is probably a very encouraging thing. I wish Steve a quick and full recovery, and fully expect to see him back on the bike next Spring.

Not Too Broken

The X-Rays on Tuesday didn't show any obvious fractures, and it appears that the main issue isn't a broken scaphoid but instead an old and jacked-up Carpometacarpal Joint at the base of my thumb. This was both good and bad news, I guess. On the plus side, no bones appear to have been broken so there is no hand surgery in my immediate future.  On the minus side, it still hurts and serves as a constant reminder that I'm just that much older and arthritic, and the only cure will be to get younger. I went home (well, actually back to the office) with a  one-size-fits-all brace that comes almost all the way up to my elbow, to maybe give the joint(s) a little rest so they can heal faster, and the usual "ice and analgesics" advice. Wednesday morning I went out early and alone, wearing the brace, basically to see if I could actually ride a bike while wearing it. It was tolerable, and certainly did help to minimize the discomfort when riding over bumps in the road, but it was by no means comfortable and made it pretty difficult to do any effective braking with my left hand. So this morning I put two riding gloves on that hand and went out to meet the group.  It had all felt a lot better by yesterday evening, but in the morning I was still having trouble finding a comfortable place to hold the handlebar.  I quickly decided that I'd be spending the morning ride at the very, very back just to be on the safe side.  Fortunately, the group was going pretty easy and there was practically no wind to deal with. I took a few photos of the sunrise when we turned around out at Williams Blvd., but the camera was apparently not able to focus in the dim light. Suffice it to say the sunrise was pretty nice this morning.

The other day Danielle go a new 2-year brake tag (aka Inspection Sticker for those from outside New Orleans) and I was surprised to find that the entire design had been changed.  I mean, the New Orleans brake tag design had not significantly changed since at least 1969. Even more surprising, on the back of the sticker, facing the driver, was a "Share the Road" reminder.  Amazing.

So anyway, I guess I'll just take naproxen and wear the brace when it's feasible for a week or to and hope the hand and wrist calm back down to normal, whatever that is. It shouldn't keep me off the bike, but it's pretty likely to keep me well away from the front and may very well get me dropped now and then when I don't want to stand up to close a gap or go barreling through a bumpy section of road. Since I don't have any racing any time soon, that won't really be an issue.

What are the Odds?

Lakeshore Drive was wet from the surf breaking over the seawall on Saturday.  

Last weekend's weather was pretty great, assuming you don't mind a 10 mph wind. Actually, the weather's been pretty great for a pretty long time now around here. It also hasn't rained in a long time, which means the grass is turning brown and the back door won't close right.

Saturday's Giro Ride was unavoidably affected by the combination of crosswinds and whoever was on the front. Although I wouldn't say it was a super-hard or fast Giro, it was certainly a lot worse at the back than at the front. They had part of Lakeshore Drive closed off because the wind was blowing water across the road.  Naturally we rode through that anyway.  Riders were getting spit off the back for most of the way out Hayne Blvd. By the time we got a little ways down Chef Highway an actual paceline finally formed up and things got way better.  That is until Ben S inexplicably came blasting through after I'd taken my pull. I glanced over and nobody was going with him, so I slid over into what passes for his draft as he continued what looked like a sprint leadout.  Well, it would have looked like a sprint leadout if (a) we hadn't been two kilometers from the turnaound, and (b) there had been someone other than myself on his wheel. Once the rest of the pack closed the gap the paceline was pretty much shattered. On the return trip we had more of a tailwind, and around the time the group was getting up to a sustained 29-30 mph, I saw Jerry and another rider who had been dropped earlier making a U-turn to try and get back onto the group. Unfortunately, they executed that particular maneuver behind us rather than ahead of us, and when the group's rolling a tailwind at around 30 mph that rarely works.  I heard someone yell to them "SPRINT!" as we went past, but it was already too late. Jerry ended up riding like 100+ miles that day anyway, so he got in a pretty good workout anyway.

Photo opp. at the Spillway.  

For Sunday we had a planned NOBC ride out to the Spillway on the levee bike path. I think there were only about four of us at the start, but lots of people were waiting at various points along the levee to join the group, so I guess we had close to twenty at some point. The weather was great, although there was still a pretty good breeze blowing. Somewhere along the way out we lost Charlotte who flatted (didn't even realize she was gone until we got to the Spillway) and Robert Lee who was in town from Jackson (we found him on the way back - he'd stopped for food). Anyway, it was a great weekend for riding and I ended up with an unusual 300+ mile week.

Then it all went south on Monday.

Frank Colangelo at the front. Probably the oldest
NOBC member going back to 1969.

Monday morning I decided to do an easy recovery ride on the levee. The weather was still really nice and I was out the door half an hour before sunrise looking forward to some alone time with the bike. Turning onto Willow Street I decided to stay in the right lane, which meant crossing a whole bunch of curved streetcar tracks where they turn into the Streetcar Barn. Since they re-paved all of that last year, it hasn't been much of a problem to do that rather than swinging out into the oncoming traffic lane for a whole block to avoid them.  I was going 12 mph.  That particular morning, however, there was a streetcar kind of sticking out into the street that hadn't been pulled into the barn itself. As a result I couldn't go as far to the right, where the tracks are more perpendicular to the road, as usual.  That was my downfall, literally.  I was going to make a hard turn to the left to cut across them when I heard a car coming up from behind.  Well, the last set of tracks caught my front wheel and I fell like a sack of cement on my left side. Unfortunately, I also tried to stop my fall with my already injured left hand and when I got up I knew I'd done some damage.  What are the odds of falling on the same freaking hand twice in three weeks when you haven't crashed for well over a year prior? I was pretty pissed off, and it hurt pretty much, but I went ahead and rode around 20 miles hoping it would feel better eventually.

It didn't.

So I skipped riding this morning and will be visiting Tulane's Sports Medicine Institute where I'm fully expecting to see a pretty picture of a broken scaphoid in my left hand. It will be interesting to see if it had already been broken and was starting to heal from the crash three weeks ago. It definitely hurts more now than it did after the last crash, so I'm taking that as a bad sign. Anyway, I'm already thinking about how I'm going to keep riding with a brace or cast or even surgery.  I'm thinking some short clip-ons and heavily padded gel gloves?  We'll see. There's always the WattBikes, I guess.

Road Racing Season

Last weekend was the last event of the 2016 LAMBRA road racing season. The Team Time Trial and Criterium had been re-scheduled because of the disastrous flooding in August.  In fact, it was amazing that the folks down in Thibodaux and Houma were actually able to pull off the re-scheduled race since I'm some of them were still in the process of repairing their homes. On the plus side, the weather for the entire weekend was beautiful thanks to the season's first cool front. Morning temperatures were in the upper 60s with mid-day highs I guess in the low 80s.

The week before the event I started contacting people about trying to get a TTT team together. My first attempt was an email to what I considered the most likely group.  From that I got a quick positive reply from Steve, with whom I've done this particular TTT a number of times. After that was just silence. Eventually, one person said he was already committed to another team and another was out that weekend with baby duty. I then expanded the search to the whole NOBC email list but still didn't get a solid bite except for David, whose arm Steve had twisted.  He was not exactly enthusiastic, but still willing to fill out a 4-man squad if needed. By Friday night the situation had still not improved, so Steve and I were considering just riding it as a 2-man for the exercise.  I had to make the trip anyway since I had the USAC medals and the LAMBRA radios.

Early in the race as Adrian was closing the gap.

So I made the 1-hour drive Saturday morning, arriving early enough to help with registration a bit. I soon received a text from Steve saying he wasn't coming, so that pretty much ended any hope of my getting on the bike that morning. Turnout was pretty low, which wasn't too surprising under the circumstances.  There were a bunch of other things going on that weekend, and by this time in the season a lot of riders have already switched, mentally at least, into winter ride mode or cyclocross training mode or festival mode. On the plus side, results were quick and easy and I was back home in time for lunch.

Sunday's race started early, so I was out the door in the dark in order to get to the course around the time of the first race at 7 am.  Well, although the local club had done a fantastic job with the race and had lots of course marshals, police, jambalaya, drinks, awards, etc., turnout was again pretty dismal. The Women's and Junior's races had zero entries.

The Masters race had four, including me. I was not feeling too good for this one.  My left wrist and hand were still kind of hurt from the crash, so I didn't really know how they would hold up to the very technical 8-corner criterium. As usual, Kevin Landry attacked at the first opportunity. Peter responded and I went with him, but Adrian was I guess caught a little off-guard and got gapped off a bit. Our chase seemed more for show than effect, however, and within a lap or so Adrian was back with us. The rest of the race was essentially a nice smooth 3-man time trial at decidedly sub-maximal effort levels. I was a little surprised that Kevin didn't lap us, but I think he knew where we were and since he was planning on doing the Cat. 1/2/3 race later he had no reason to go any harder than necessary. By the time we were halfway through my left hand was going numb and I was glad we weren't going fast enough to require a lot of braking. The road were old city roads, so every once in a while I'd hit a bump on a right turn and really feel it in my left hand. Going into the last lap Adrian was on the front and so I figured I'd stay on his wheel in case Peter attacked. Coming into the last two turns I eased just a bit in order to give Adrian a gap for the three-block finish straight. He was able to hold out all the way to the line. My own attempt at a sprint was kind of short-lived and Peter came around me at the end easily. I think I still went home with $70 which more than covered entry fee and gas for both days, so that was nice.  I probably should have entered the Cat. 1/2/3 race since there were only six entries and prizes went seven deep, but I wasn't willing to put myself, or my hand, through an hour of corners.