Square One

The Sunday Giro

I rode out from the house into the quiet Saturday morning air.  With the streets still deserted I could hear the light "tick, tick, tick" of the computer's wheel sensor each time the magnet passed it. I felt like I was starting back at square-one, riding-wise. This would be, hopefully, my first full Giro Ride since I'd broken my collarbone on the last day of October. Even worse, I'd been off the bike for a full week attending first the USAC Local Associations conference in Colorado Springs, and then the NCURA annual conference in Washington D.C., finally returning home in the wee hours of Thursday morning.  It had been a long week, and even now I'm still playing catch-up.

Looking west near USAC headquarters in Colorado Springs

The LA conference had gone well.  USAC is working on a new insurance and officiating structure for track racing, which is long overdue.  There was, of course, a lot of discussion about doping.  USAC gets about 350 tests a year from USADA, but is trying to add some additional funding so they can do more.  Even so, the most efficient mechanism for catching dopers is the USADA hotline. They are looking closely at the Florida model for that, along with taking a more pro-active approach to information dissemination and working with promoters.  It still costs about $6,000 to do maybe ten tests at an event, so for many races it will be impossible without some sort of subsidy.  Shawn is working on a major revision (mostly structural) of the rulebook that will rearrange things in a more reasonable way, clarify some things that are fuzzy, and, interestingly, officially allow riders to race up a category in time trials. There was also a lot of discussion and analysis of the "new rider" experience.  Where they come from, why they start racing, why they don't renew their licenses, etc.  The top two reasons for not continuing to race:  Distance to races (85 mi. seems to be the key distance), and lack of appropriate categories.  They're working on a curriculum for racing skills clinics and will be offering a Skills Instructor certification for coaches.  There is also now the Race Director certification program where RDs can take the test online to get certified. Since each club gets one free RD license, they should all designate someone for that position.  We listened to the always terrifying discussion of insurance, the only bright light there being a new optional bicycle insurance program that they will be rolling out in 2013 through Markel.

From chilly Colorado I flew over to even chillier Washington for the annual NCURA conference and three solid days of sessions and nights of "networking" that included trying to keep track of the election returns in the midst of the party and, later, in our region's hospitality suite.  Being the Southeastern Region, we had two full bars going so we ended up with a lot of people from other regions.  Anyway, I was pretty wiped out by the time I got a standby seat to Chicago for a long wait for the last leg back home.  I lucked out on the standby seat, since my original flight ended up seriously delayed because of the big storm that came through in the northeast.

So, getting back to this weekend, I felt reasonably good on the Saturday Giro, although it was a little stressful trying to find that balance between staying in the draft while at the same time leaving a little more reaction space than usual between my wheel and the one ahead of me.  The group split on the way back down Chef, and I was kind of glad I ended up in the second group because that old competitive instinct would probably have found me taking more chances than I should have otherwise.  The collarbone is still a little ways from completely healed, but yesterday marked six weeks post-injury, so it wasn't too much of a distraction.  I spent the rest of the day standing behind a table in City Park where I'd been volunteered to sell beer tickets a the annual SPCA New Orleans on Tap beer festival.  I was handling the credit card purchases using an iPhone and Square, which I'm thinking we should get for the NOBC so we can take credit cards at events in the middle of nowhere.

Having survived Saturday, I decided to up the ante on Sunday and put in some extra make-up miles. The plan was to ride the Giro as conservatively as possible, ride back home to refuel, then ride out to the levee and head upriver to around Norco and hopefully meet the LSU riders who were doing their annual Baton Rouge to New Orleans 100+ mile ride, along with a couple of Tulane riders. It had been pretty windy on the Giro Ride, and by the time I got out to the levee around 10:30 there was a relentless gusty southeast wind blowing at 10-15 mph.  I knew the ride back would be long and hard, and I had no good idea of where the LSU ride was, so I rode at an easy sightseeing speed out past Ormond.  I'd figured that the earliest they could possibly get to the spillway was 11 am, and that noon was more likely. I rode around there for a little while and then stopped at the benches in front of Ormond plantation for quite a while to wait, hanging around there until 1:00 with no riders in sight.  By then I was getting pretty hungry and was starting to wonder if they had been seriously delayed.  I finally decided to head back alone in to the headwind.  All the way back I was in the 12-15 mph range.  I saw David and Celeste heading the other direction as I got nearer to town.  I think they were able to meet the group and ride in with those riders, but by then I was looking at over 100 miles on the computer and thinking obsessively about food, and specifically about the big bowl of leftover Halloween candy in the living room.  Tonight should be my final follow-up visit to the orthopedist!

Off-Track

Having survived at least the conversational part of the Saturday Giro Ride, along with the ride to and from, with my collarbone still intact, I set about gathering up the items needed for the weekend's volunteer officiating duties.  While this is normally a fairly quick process, doing so with a still-healing collarbone required a slower and more deliberate process.  The heavier items, like the PA system and tent, would have to await assistance from Mark and Graeme who would be going up with me to the Baton Rouge Velodrome for the QDS Systems Track Omnium. I filled a plastic bin with clipboards, paper, stopwatches, bell, megaphone, printer, table, chair, etc., and went upstairs to pack some warm clothes.  The races wouldn't be starting until around 5:30 and the temperature was going to be dropping rather dramatically, and since I would be spending a few hours standing in the wind on the wrong side of the Blue Band, I knew I'd best plan for Arctic conditions.  The night before I had been particularly proud of myself for discovering the "Large" function in Excel which would allow me to build the results spreadsheet for the omnium in such a way that it would automatically total only the top five scores for each rider.  I had also downloaded the "SloPro" application for my iPad.  I had heard of people using it for bike race finish judging and since the LAMBRA cameras were all up in Monroe I figured I'd give it a try.  Of course I knew it wouldn't work once it got dark unless we had some heavy duty lighting on the finish line, which we didn't, but the schedule called for races on Sunday morning too, so that looked like it might work. 

By 3 pm we had packed Mark's new car to the ceiling with equipment and the three of us headed west on I-10 for the drive up to Baton Rouge. By the time we arrived the sky was clear and sunny and there was a stiff north wind blowing.  I was glad I'd brought lots of warm clothes.  The turnout was fairly good by our standards, which is to say there were more than twenty riders on hand for the evening's events.  Everyone was grouped into Cat. 1/2/3, Cat. 4, Cat. 5, or Women since we didn't have enough Masters or Juniors, which is not uncommon.  The events went off pretty smoothly thanks to the LSU team which has hosted a number of track races over the last few years, and we wrapped things up for the evening around 8:30 pm or so, leaving us time to get something to eat before heading over to Dustin's place.  As we pulled up to the house, Dustin was just getting out of his car.  He shuffled over to me and said he had just come down with a bad migraine headache and would be heading immediately for a dark room.  He was in really bad shape and ended up emptying his stomach a few times that night.  The three of us crashed in the living room where I had a decent night's sleep zipped into my trusty old 1983 vintage Marmot sleeping bag.  Sunday morning it was probably in the upper 40s when we headed off to the track, and although I knew it would be warming up a bit, I still went pretty heavy on the clothes.  It's one thing to be racing, it's quite another to be standing around with a stopwatch and clipboard.  Anyway, the races went smoothly despite the usual last-minute rearrangements to accommodate the relatively small field sizes.  A miss-and-out with only three women is really just a very short scratch race, so we changed that to matched sprints.  We also combined some of the categories for the Miss-and-Out to save a little time and make it more interesting.  I was quite impressed with the little iPad and SloPro software which produced quite nice frame-by-frame finish line video.  It's not exactly FinishLynx, but with adequate lighting it was just about as good as our usual digital camera system, plus it was extremely convenient -- no wires, no files or flashdrives to transfer, etc.  Just aim at the finish line, shoot the video, and then view the video in real time or frame-by-frame by dragging a finger along the timeline. While the races were going on, they had someone cooking up a big pot of jambalaya - real jambalaya, not that red creole version you sometimes get here in New Orleans.

So by the time I got home and unloaded everything I could tell that my collarbone and shoulder in general had gotten a pretty good workout despite my efforts to avoid it.  It wasn't so bad as to keep me off the bike Monday morning for another easy solo ride.  This morning I went out and met the 6:15 am group on the levee.  The plan was to sit safely off the back and turn back early, which is almost what I did.  Almost.  Actually, since there were only three or four of us at the start, I went ahead and stayed in the paceline for a while (still keeping a bit of a gap between the guy ahead and myself).  Along the way we picked up a few more riders and by the time we got out to the country club the pace was getting faster.  Of course it was still over half an hour before sunrise.  Just after the country club curve there was a walker on our side of the path and also an oncoming rider or something, so we had to hit the brakes amid much loud verbalizing that practically scared the hell out of the lady who was walking (in the dark without so much as a reflective stripe on her shoes).  At that point I decided it would be prudent to revert to my original plan of hanging a bike length or so off the bike to allow for a little extra reaction time.  That's where I stayed until we go to the parish line where I eased up and rode a few more miles to the dip alone before turning around and heading home.  So I'm still gradually working my way back into a training routine as the collarbone continues to solidify, but I think it will be a couple of weeks yet before I'm ready to jump back in to the big group rides. I'll be heading to Colorado Springs on Friday for the annual Local Association conference at USA Cycling and from there to Washington DC for a research administration conference, so after those six days off the bike I figure I'll be ready to ease right into early Base Training mode for the rest of November and December.  It's a plan, anyway.

Not There Yet

A cool front pushed through overnight and after checking the temperature I decided it would be wise to hunt through the "winter clothes drawer" for the knee-warmers.  Ordinarily I might have just suffered through the first hour of chilly legs, knowing that once the Giro Ride got going I would warm up quickly.  Since my collarbone is clearly not there yet, however, I knew I'd better dress warmly because I wouldn't be riding hard enough or long enough to really get warmed up.  I was glad I did.  I headed out to meet the group straight into a pretty strong north wind, and for a little while even wondered if the two jerseys, arm-warmers and knee-warmers would be enough to keep me comfortable on this first truly chilly ride of what passes for Fall around here.  Since the Voodoo Fest was in full swing this weekend, and I didn't want to have to deal with any early-rising Metallica groupies, I decided to take the Canal Blvd. route instead of my usual route through City Park.  As I was making my way down Canal, Woody and Eddie came by, so I latched onto them for the rest of the trip to Starbucks.  I shouldn't have been surprised to find a fairly long line waiting for coffee this morning.  The other thing I was surprised to find there was Ben, who had gotten his broken jaw un-wired earlier in the week and was out for his first post-crash cautious ride with the group.  This was good because I was planning on riding just to the end of Lakeshore Drive.  The collarbone is still a pretty long way from being ready for action, and it will be another week or two at least before I'm comfortable doing fast group ride.  Ben was being equally cautious, and I could tell that he was feeling every little bump in the road.  The sky stayed overcast the whole time, so I was glad I'd piled on the clothes this morning.

So the collarbone seems to be progressing normally, which is to say that it is getting kind of frustrating.  There was a lot of noticeable improvement between week 2 and week 3, but that has slowed down a whole lot this week.  I guess part of it is that without the brace I tend to try to do more with the arm and pushing the "range of motion" envelope, usually unintentionally, results in a more consistent dull ache, especially when I'm doing things like typing.  I probably should have invested in some kinesio tape last week to ease the transition.  Oh well.  Maybe next time.....

This afternoon I'll be heading up to Baton Rouge with Mark to officiate the track races at the Baton Rouge Velodrome tonight and tomorrow morning.  I'll be bringing a lot of warm clothes with me for sure!

Followup

The Sports Medicine Institute was still going strong at 7 pm last night when I showed up for my followup appointment. I leaned back against the x-ray machine's film plate, which I'm sure doesn't actually contain "film" nowadays, as the technician set things up for the standard two pictures. 

Later, as I stood in the waiting room, I listened as Dr. Savoie discussed another case with the residents just outside the door.  A few minutes later he popped into the room and said, "It's looking pretty good.  Come see." The x-ray showed the somewhat diffuse fuzziness around the break indicative of the early stages of healing.  He said I could stop wearing the brace and start gradually getting back to normal activities as long as I promised not to fall.  I didn't tell him I'd already been back on the bike.  While he was there I described the stiffness and pain I've been having in my right elbow ever since the hurricane. He reached up and put his finger precisely on the spot where it hurts the most.  "Tennis elbow," he said, launching into a description of the problem and saying, basically, that it's a tough thing to get rid of.  He said he'd tried injecting all sorts of things into such elbows and that it didn't really seem to matter what it was. His impression was that the needle itself was what helped the most, causing enough irritation to stimulate the increased blood flow that is what is really needed.  His best suggestion was frequent massage, but he handed me a prescription for something that I could get the pharmacist to mix up.  I suspect it is based on horse liniment. Anyway, I walked out with the x-brace in my hand and a followup appointment in three weeks.

This morning I decided to ride over to the Reily Center to meet the 6:30 am Tulane group so I could drop off my "recreational" membership dues.  I felt kind of vulnerable riding without the brace, and after a few miles could feel a little soreness around my neck as the muscles that hadn't had to fully support my arm and shoulder got an unfamiliar workout.  I'd expected to drop off the back of the group or maybe even just ride laps around Audubon Park, but the group was doing an easy ride today so I stayed with them for a couple of laps around the park and then up onto the levee bike path, always trying to keep a couple of extra feet of space between the rider ahead and myself.  Although normal steady riding doesn't seem to be a problem at all, sudden braking definitely hurts and any kind of fall would be really painful at best.  Even so, it was a perfect morning for riding -- not too cool and not too warm, with virtually no wind at all.  I finally pulled off on the way back to drop down the ramp onto River Road and pick up Oak Street to go home.  As I came down the ramp I glanced over my left shoulder, calculating the speed and timing necessary to merge smoothly into a gap between the cars.  Then I noticed some guy who was stopped at the bottom of the ramp.  As I was contemplating my options, he picked up his bike and turned it sideways, completely blocking the path.  Sheesh.  Of course I had to hit the brakes and go around him on the grass, which meant I completely missed slotting into the traffic, so I ended up on the edge of the road for a while until a couple of cars went by and I could move away from the edge. No problem, really, but under the circumstances I'd have preferred a smoother transition.

Test Rides

I rode slowly, carefully, down the dark and quiet streets toward the lakefront.  I could feel the cool October air blowing through the new crop of hair on my legs and made a mental note to do something about that. The Orbea was still sporting its Rolf race wheels and 6-Gap cassette, since it really didn't seem worth the considerable effort to swap out cassettes and wheels one-handed at the end of the season. 

It had been almost three weeks since I'd smashed my right collarbone and I had decided it was time from a little test ride out to meet the Saturday Giro.  I figured that the five and a half miles to Starbucks would be a good start, providing I took my time and stuck to the quiet streets.  I was surprised how well it went, actually.  The first broken collarbone, back in 2008, was still quite painful after five weeks, but this one felt quite different.  I rode for a long time with my hands on the tops with no complaints whatsoever, and eventually slid down onto the brake hoods where I was equally comfortable.  The only discomfort came when I changed hand positions, so for the most part I just didn't do that with my right hand. Of course I was still wearing the x-brace.  On the one hand, the brace definitely helps stabilize the whole collarbone and shoulder.  On the other, it makes it difficult to reach upward and forward with my right arm (which is pretty much its intended function).  Riding more on the tip of the saddle than usual seemed to help a bit. So after the Giro rolled out (it will be a couple of weeks yet before I'm willing to risk getting in the middle of a group ride) I headed back home to formulate plans for the next week.

I didn't ride on Sunday, and instead took a long walk and did some work around the house. I'd had the electrician over during the week to change the routing of the house's electrical service.  For reasons lost to history, the main service to the house came in to one corner, and from there three separate wires, in places devoid of insulation, wrapped around the back of the house, through three separate porcelain insulators, across the back shed roof (that used to be the back porch) with only about four inches of clearance, to the opposite corner where they finally entered conduit and came down to the meter located mid-way down the length of the house on the opposite side of the drop.  It was basically an electrical inspector's nightmare.  We are starting on an expensive remodel of the kitchen and this was basically step one.  Anyway, on Sunday I fabricated some sheet aluminum sections to seal off the holes left in the antique aluminum siding where the meter had been.

So this morning was test ride number two. I was aiming for twenty miles on the levee bike path, which is always especially quiet on Mondays. This time I was going to try to get just a little bit of exercise without going too fast or taking any chances.  It worked out fine, although I was feeling pretty paranoid as I rode the last mile or so down Carrollton Avenue in traffic.  I have a followup visit with Dr. Savoie tonight (7 pm!), so I'll wait until I see how that goes before making plans for the rest of the week.

It Was Time

It's been two weeks.  Two weeks of sitting around, eating, sitting around some more, eating some more, and not sleeping very well.  Although the collarbone is obviously not healed yet, it seemed good enough to take a shot at a ride on the trainer. Like it or not, it was time.

As frustrating as it's been to be off the bike all this time, I can't say I was particularly anxious to get on the trainer.  Frankly, I'd rather be under-dressed and riding up the Gavia in snowstorm than ride the trainer inside. But it is what it is, and what it is is time to get back on the bike.  So I set the trainer up in the office, flipped on the old Hunter tabletop fan, and climbed up on the bike ever so carefully.  Reaching out to the handlebar was a bit uncomfortable, and for some reason lifting my right hand off of the handlebar was downright painful, but once in position it wasn't bad at all.  I managed about fifty minutes, which was about all I could take without lapsing into some mild form of insanity, which I figured was sufficient for the first day back.

Meanwhile, Jorge Cardona, who used to race here in New Orleans, was down in Tampa visiting his father and posted an old photo of a criterium we had on Canal Street in New Orleans back around 1991 or so.  A little later, when his flight back stopped in New Orleans, they got stuck here for a couple of hours because someone from Miami might have had Typhoid Fever.  Anyway, the riders I can identify in the photo include myself, Jorge, and Rob Konrad. I think the race was tied in with some sort of Latin America festival.  I can't imagine getting part of Canal Street shut down for a bike race nowadays.  For some reason I don't remember much about that particular race.  I have the feeling that I was somehow rushed and couldn't stick around very long.

The Clavicle

So yesterday evening I had my first followup with Dr. Savoie at Tulane's Sports Medicine clinic. He feeling reasonably good about things and so we're going to pass on the surgical option for now since the shoulder seems to be maintaining a good relationship with the rest of me, which is to say it's still out where it needs to be. When I told him that the current x-brace that I've been wearing tends to move farther out on my collarbone than the break we devised a little field modification involving lots of velcro that should help keep some pressure on the piece closest to my neck so it stays close enough to the other pieces that they'll all eventually merge into a big glob of bony matrix.  Naturally, that is making it a little more painful today, especially when I'm on the computer typing, which is pretty much what I do all day.  So I think I'll stop in a minute and take some Advil! Otherwise, I rode the little folding bike in to work again today, which is a lot less stressful than driving and parking, especially since today is Farmers' Market day at the office.  The x-ray above is from yesterday evening and is from a different perspective than the one I posted last week, which is why the gap looks so much more impressive.

A Bike That Works

My ride for the next few weeks!

It was an incredibly boring Saturday, and the worst part was being stuck at the house surrounded by a hundred little jobs that I'd been putting off all summer, but not being able to do anything that required two fully functional arms.  In the morning I went out and trimmed some of the most overgrown of the hedges and bushes around the house.  Of course nothing above shoulder height got trimmed, but at least it kept me busy for a little while.  By mid-afternoon I'd watched about enough Hallmark movies on TV and eaten most everything in the house that didn't require cooking and I started wondering if I might have a bike that would work for my current situation.  There was no way I could reach forward enough to get my right hand onto the handlebar of any of my usual bikes, and even if I could, I probably wouldn't want to.  There was also the issue of starting and stopping.  Getting on and off of a regular bike didn't look like it was going to work very well, and I certainly wasn't willing to risk a fall.  So I turned my attention to the little folding bike I've had for a few years.  It usually gets pushed into service around Mardi Gras and JazzFest when we have a bunch of people who want to get somewhere where parking is impossible. The nice thing about it is that it's easy to adjust the the handlebar and seat height over a very wide range.  So I raised the handlebar up nice and high, pushed the seat down enough so I could touch the ground with getting off the saddle, put it in a low gear and gave it a try.  It worked!  I could sit upright and ride with one hand on the bar (two if really necessary) and start and stop without getting off the saddle.  Granted, I wasn't going to be going any faster than brisk walking speed, but that's OK under the circumstances.

A cool front came through last night and this morning, although it was till cloudy, it was cool, dry and breezy, so naturally my thought turned to coffee.  It was time to give the folding bike a trial run to the coffee shop.  It was nice to be back on a bike, even though I doubt I cracked 10 mph, and after getting back home I had to kick myself for forgetting to log the ride to Strava!  Oh well, maybe next time.

An Unproductive Week

Well it's been a long and unproductive week.  Between the dull ache of broken bones and the side effects of various analgesics from hydrocodone to ethanol, it's been harder than usual to get things done.  I shouldn't complain, though, compared to the last time, when I broke the other collarbone, the pain has been relatively light and I've been doing OK on regular Advil most of the time.  Every now and then I'll reach or something and the pain level will jump from dull to very, very intense, but otherwise it's not really that bad.  Typing with my right hand, for example, isn't bad at all as long as I keep the keyboard very close.  Using the mouse with that hand is more of a challenge, and I've been doing a lot of left-handed mousing at work.  The touchpad on the laptop is actually a lot easier to deal with.  The real challenges are walking the dogs and getting dressed.  Even if I'm holding the leashes with my left hand, it one of the dogs tugs on the leash it gets transmitted over to the other collarbone.  The really fun thing is getting dressed.  This morning was the first time I successfully pulled on a T-shirt.  It's not that the collarbone itself is less painful, it's just that I've refined my technique!  The problem is that I really can't lift that arm above my shoulder -- not even close, actually.  Anyway, it seems to take me half an hour to get dressed, and even then it's not quite up to my normal standards.  Next, I have to put the x-brace back on and tighten the straps, which has been challenging since The Wife has been away at a conference all week and it would normally involve reaching behind my back.  If I stick the velcro just the right way, though, I have enough slack to get the thing on, and can still reach the ends in order to pull them tight.

Anyway, it's been a long week.  On Monday a friend, who was a club member and sponsor, died suddenly.  I learned about it shortly after getting back to work from my neighbor's funeral. Two in one week was really hard. I went to the visitation today, rather under-dressed since putting on a sport coat and tie is entirely out of the question right now, and the place was absolutely packed.  Ronnie was a fireman and a very outgoing one at that, so he had a lot of friends.  Although he never did much actual racing, he really liked being part of the club and up until the last few years was a regular fixture on training rides.  He'll be missed by a lot of people.

So it feels really strange not having any plans for the weekend -- not even the Giro Ride.  I've been off the bike for five days now, and I think that maybe I'll be able to get on the trainer in a day or two, although I doubt I'll be able to put any weight on my right arm for another couple of weeks at best. Fortunately it happens to be a good time of year to take a week off!  The hard part is going to be on Sunday when the cool front comes through and we get a few days of spectacular fall weather.  Now that's going to hurt.  In the meantime I need to replace my smashed helmet, check out the bike, and think about building up a new bike with that Campi 11-speed stuff I got from Matt a few weeks ago.  I don't guess I'll be building much of anything until I can use my right arm, though. Yesterday I made travel arrangements for the November 2nd USAC Local Associations summit in Colorado Springs, from which I go directly to D.C. or the annual NCURA conference.  Hopefully the collarbone will be significantly better by then.

Fun While It Lasted

Last weekend was the annual Six Gap Century Race Ride up in Dahlonega, GA. For the last few years we've put together a number of people from the club to make the trip and kind of cap off the road racing season with this ride.  At 104 miles and five or six long climbs, this ride can be approached as a long fun challenge or as a long hard race.  It's your choice, and for a lot of people the choice changes after the first or second climb.  On Friday we had no fewer than ten people lined up for the trip.  By the time we actually left on Saturday morning it was down to five.  I was driving up with David and Graeme and we would be staying with Pat and Steve at a friend's house there in Dahlonega who has graciously hosted us for the last few years.  The forecast for Sunday's ride was calling for nice temperatures and a chance of rain, but compared to the climbing the weather was the least of our concerns.

The eight hour ride on Saturday was uneventful, landing us in town with lots of time to get registered, check out the Expo, buy a ton of energy gels, and watch one of the criteriums before heading over to our host's place for a great dinner.  Sunday morning we were up early, arriving as usual in the dark to get a parking spot in the school lot with enough time left over to pump up tires and otherwise get our acts together.  I hid the car key in its usual spot and the three of us rolled down the sidewalk past hundreds of other riders, inserting ourselves into the mix just behind the "under 6 hours" sign.

The start was fairly smooth and for the next fifteen miles or so it was the usual battle to stay reasonably close to the front, which in this case meant there were only a hundred or so riders ahead of us.  I lot track of Graeme and Steve right away, but could see David up ahead of me now and then. The first climb is Neel's gap, about 6.5 miles long and 1,500 feet.  Although it's long it feels fairly smooth.  I was just staying among the people around me for this one, and I'm sure a group probably raced off the front, but at any rate I found I was quite comfortable with a 39x23 for much of the distance.  The next climb is Jack's Gap, which is shorter but seems a little steeper. I rode my own pace up this one, and let a lot of riders ride away from me on that one, but as usual I bombed the downhill with a few others and by the end of the descent was back in a fairly sizable group.  Soon we were climbing Gap #3, Unicoi, which like Jack's has some pretty steep sections but is relatively short at around 2.5 miles.  Of course, on all of these climbs I was looking at speeds in the 8-12 mph range. Near the top of Unicoi most of the group was well ahead of me, but I knew that this was one of the longer downhills so once I came over the crest I went straight from the 39x25 to the 53x12. I got together with another rider who was doing the same thing and we flew down the first part together at 40-48 mph, but then we got stuck behind the line of cars that was itself stuck behind the re-forming group that we'd been with at the start of the climb.  It took us a long time to work our way past all of the cars on the narrow winding mountain road, but finally we made contact as the road flattened out and the speed dropped back below 30 mph.  I was really glad to be back with a group leading up to the long 7 mile, 1,800 foot climb up to Hogpen Gap. As the group started to bunch up a bit approaching a right-hand turn I coasted past the rider who had accompanied me on the downhill and commented, "that was fun!"  A few seconds later I was lying on the ground thinking, "Crap, it's broken."  Coming around the turn just a bit before the start of the Hogpen climb, I'd moved to the outside of the group to avoid hitting the brakes.  Unfortunately there was a little patch of sandy gravel right in the middle of the turn and when my front tire hit it, it completely washed out, dumping me immediately onto my head, right shoulder and right forearm. I was still holding onto the handlebar when I hit it was so fast.  In fact, it was almost exactly like the crash I'd had in Lafayette except that this time I broke a collarbone instead of a few ribs.  Yes, I was pissed.  I'd been having a really fun ride and was looking forward to the challenging climb up Hogpen, but there I was, alone in the middle of nowhere.  "Oh well," I thought.  "It was fun while it lasted." 

I walked over to the side of the road with my bike and leaned over it for a little while taking inventory.  I knew immediately that the collarbone was broken. I could feel the broken ends of the bone grinding against each other.  My head felt OK, although I'd hit it pretty hard, but the helmet, now broken in a few places, had done its job.  The group went around the curve and for a little while I was left alone to contemplate my next move.  I was right at the bottom of two climbs, each with a rest area at the top.  I got back on the bike and figured I'd ride slowly toward Hogpen as long as I could and then hope to flag down someone associated with the ride to get a lift back to the cars.  I hadn't ridden more than a few hundred meters when Graeme and a few others came by asking what had happened since I was riding slowly with one hand on the bars. Just then one of them recognized a car approaching from behind and flagged it down.  It was a woman and her kids who was driving the course supporting her husband who had been in the same group I'd been in.  She offered me a ride to the top, so we put the bike on the rack and took off.  A mile or two later we were picking our way though a long string of riders going 10 mph.  It was slow and tricky passing riders one at a time on the narrow road.  She stopped to hand her husband a bottle and then we continued up to the top where I got out and tracked down someone from the ride to see if I could get a ride back to the parking lot.  Their policy was to prohibit race volunteers from transporting anyone who was injured, so although my bike got a free ride back, I had to wait for an ambulance, which was a terrible waste of an ambulance.  At least I got to cheer on a number of people I know as they came over the top, and just as I was getting into the ambulance David rode up, so I gave him my transponder to return to the event folks.  When they loaded me in I glanced over to see one of them unwrapping a it to start an IV.  Really?  I asked what they thought they were doing that for, and they really did not have an answer, so I told them to stop.  Anyway, it was a long ride to the hospital in Dahlonega.

The ER was fairly quiet so I was all x-rayed and finished before the others had finished their rides.  They had put me in a sling, which is marginally better than nothing, and handed me a CD with the x-rays, so I waited in the waiting room for about an hour until Graeme and David could get over there to pick me up.  By the time were ate something it was starting to rain. I had taken some hydrocodone, so Graeme was put in charge of driving.  The weather got worse and worse as the night wore on, and by 10:30 or so we decided it would be safer and smarter to book a room in Montgomery and finish the drive in the morning, so we checked into a nice Hampton Inn.  By 4:15 am the next morning we were on the road again, but the weather didn't seem much better.  I checked the radar on the iPad and knew we'd have a couple more hours of driving in the dark and rain.  Just to twist the knife, one of the headlights burned out.  Luckily, I had a spare bulb in the car, so we were able to stop at a gas station and, thanks to David's skinny arms, change out the bulb and gas up for the final push.  It was about 9:30 am when I got home.  I rushed off to a 10:00 funeral and then headed to work where I got just a little bit done when I wasn't nodding off from the narcotics.  Yesterday I went to see Dr. Savoie at Tulane's sports medicine institute who suggested we put me into an x-brace and see how things look a week from now.  We will probably be able to avoid surgery for this one if things look like they are progressing.  In the meantime, it's kind of hard to type and get dressed and write, and I've been using the mouse with my left hand a lot, but the pain is not very bad as long as I stay still.  Guess I'll be off the bike for a while.  Naturally the weather should be spectacular.....

Off and On the Back

Hanging onto the Cat. 1/2/3 race

Last Sunday I made my way over to Lake Charles for the LAMBRA Criterium Championships.  Donald Davis had called the day before and I told him to stop by the house and spend the night rather than drive the additional 3 hours from Pensacola. I was not feeling quite "up" for this race, but often enough that's not a good indication of how you'll actually race the next day.  So we were up early (I had to get there in time for the first race since I had the race clock, generator and assorted items we'd used for the LaPlace time trial) to catch a ride with Mark D. who would be helping officiate with Ricky. It was nice that the first race didn't start until 10:00.  When we arrived, the temperature along the lake was comfortable and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.  Unfortunately there were only a few more riders than there were clouds.  I guess the late date and location in the far southwestern corner of the LAMBRA district kept a lot of riders from coming.  There were only seven riders for the Cat. 5 race, and by the time we started the Master 40+/55+ race we had only nine at the starting line.  Among those nine, however, were some strong riders, including a couple from Austin. My attempt at a warmup was pretty poor and so I went to the front from the start and pulled for the first lap, hoping to get warmed up before the attacks started.  Half of the course was long and straight, but the other half featured five turns and a sweeping curve, all in quick succession. Anyway, as soon as I pulled off the attacks started and I soon found myself hanging on the back of the strung-out paceline.  This was not going to be an easy race and I was not feeling even remotely strong for it.  My legs were achy from the start, and getting stuck near the back where I had to accelerate hard after the turns wasn't helping either.  So there I was, hanging on for dear life and hoping that maybe the strong guys up front would ease up and put all their eggs in the sprint basket. The way I felt, I figured my only hope was to sit on the back and try to conserve as much as possible in case I got lucky and it came down to a sprint. Unfortunately, I was anything but lucky that day. 

When Donald launched an attack fairly early in the race it strung us out pretty well as we approached the technical half of the course.  I was near the back, behind John Dias, digging hard to close things back up after the first turn when he started coughing.  He was coming off of a head cold and in the midst of that last surge had apparently inhaled something.  So as we're going through the series of tight turns (this was basically a parking lot, so the turns came one after the other) a gap started opening ahead of him. He waved us through as soon as it was safe, but there was already a pretty good gap and we were already pretty well toasted, so just like that I was off the back with Glen Richard and I think one of the Austin guys.  I was already gassed and just couldn't get the speed back up to where it needed to be.  A little while later John recovered and joined us, so we became a three or four-rider chase group (I use the term "chase" loosely).  Oh, since I was the only 55+ rider, I won a gold medal just for surviving.  Anyway, that was disappointing on a number of levels.

So a couple hours later, since I was there for the duration anyway, I entered the Cat. 1/2/3 race.  This one was offering a good prizelist, so at least there were a few more riders (well, there were only 18, but that turned out to be the biggest field of the day).  I figured I needed the exercise.  By the time we started at 2:15 pm, it was nice and hot, and in retrospect I was probably already nice and dehydrated.  Of the 18 riders, five were on the Herring Gas team (one of those was a guest rider from Plano). My teammate Mark McMurry was there, along with a couple of riders who had ridden the Masters race earlier.  I knew it would be fast despite the small field size.  Sure enough, by the time we had finished a couple of laps I was already hanging on near the back.  Herring was launching attack after attack and there were probably only three or four guys up front who were both willing and able to chase them down.  That, along with a number of prime laps, made for some fast racing.  For a long time I found myself sitting on Mark's wheel.  Mark is a pure sprinter, so I knew he was not likely to get dropped and also not likely to put his nose into the wind unless absolutely necessary.  I, on the other hand, was suffering.  We were only halfway through the 1-hour race when the pace surged and a gap opened one rider ahead of me and I ended up off the back again with another couple of riders. We started working together and I noticed that the pack up ahead was occasionally bunching up which told me that they were not drilling it full-time.  There was hope.  I guess we were chasing for four or five laps, mostly holding our own, when the pack eased up for a lap and we (or at least most of us) were able to close it back up and get back into the race.  Of course, I was pretty much worthless by then and resorted to hanging on the back again to try and recover, which never actually happened. What had happened to slow things down and allow us to catch was that Herring had finally succeeded in popping one of their riders, Frank Moak, off the front.  The other riders were really feeling the effects of all of the chasing they'd been doing, so they had kind of looked around at each other when Frank went.  He ended up staying off the front to the finish.  Meanwhile, back in the pack, we were coming down to the last few laps and I instinctively started trying to move up closer to the front. It was one of those situations when your head writes a check your legs can't cash.  As I made the effort to pass a few riders I felt the muscle cramps starting in my calves.  That's very unusual for me in such a short race, but unusual or not, I got the message.  There wasn't going to be any Deus ex machina finish for me today. I made the best effort I could for the finish, but 11th overall was the best I could manage.  Again, rather disappointing.

So, after that whole debacle, and with the annual Six Gap Century ride ("It's not a race") looming this weekend, I decided I'd best take it really easy this week since the last thing I want is to start that 104 mile sufferfest with sore legs. I did an easy ride on Monday with the Tulane group, and that evening went over to the hospital to visit a good friend and neighbor who was near the end of her battle with colon cancer. At 2 am the next morning the phone rang. It was her mother telling us that she had passed away.  Somehow I made it out for the 6:15 am ride on Tuesday, but once the pace ramped up I pulled out of the long paceline rather than play chicken in the dark at 30 mph with the pedestrians and oncoming cyclists.  Instead I rode easy, eventually turning around to get back into the remnant of the group on its way back.  My travel plans are still a little bit up in the air for the weekend, but somehow I'm sure I'll find my way up to Dahlonega for that last hard ride of the season.  One little ray of sunshine, though was the photo of my friend Gina Voci's new little boy. Ahh, the circle of life.....

Up for Air (Long)

Pro/1/2 riders line up for the criterium start

It's been a busy week.  It all started about a week ago when, after considerable debate, I decided to register for the 50+ masters category at the Pensacola Classic stage race.  The fact that the road race was only 25 miles had me looking seriously at the 40+ option, but as the clock ticked toward the close of pre-registration I could see that the 50+/60+ field was going to be nearly the same size as the 30+/40+ field.  Also, I recognized a few names and knew it would be competitive. Brian had lined up a condo on the beach, so left NOLA in the early afternoon, arriving a bit before John, Mignon, Celeste, and Isaac.  That gave us lots of time to pick up packets and hang out at the other condo full of bike racers where there was food and adult beverages.

The Saturday morning road race was on a long 25-mile course with basically one strategic climb. Once we got past the considerable congestion on the side road near the start line, our race started out fairly slowly.  Eventually there were some attacks and little breaks, but nobody was letting anything go for too long in a 25 mile race, especially not before "the" hill.  I'd missed the break last year on that hill, so I wasn't about to take any chances this year. Naturally there was an attack there, but I didn't have too much trouble staying in contact this time even though we shed a few riders. Things stayed together to the finish and since I was feeling pretty good I was definitely interested.  With 500 meters to go I was up near the front on the left side when the pace ramped up prior to the sprint.  At 300 meters the sprint started in earnest but when I got nudged across the centerline I hesitated for a moment. One rider had opened a little gap and when another came past me on the left I went too, quickly dumping it into the 12 for the final 200 meters.  I was closing in on 2nd place, but the finish line came up a little too early, so I placed 3rd.

I was still hanging around the finish line when the Cat. 3 race's big pack sprint arrived, and didn't even realize at first that there had been a crash at the line.  One of the LAMBRA riders riding back from the sprint spotted me and said that Ben Bradley had gone down really hard.  I rushed over there to find him on the ground surrounded by people after having crashed head-first into the bumper of a car that was parked on the shoulder just past the finish.  Apparently he'd gotten nudged to the left and hit the barricade that was up against the big officials' trailer, clipping the wheel of one of the handcycles on the edge of the road, and then slamming into the car.  We would later learn that he had broken his jaw in a couple of places, broken a few metacarpals, fractured a vertebra (C7), and probably sustained a few other injuries.  His helmet was broken in a number of places.  The ambulance arrived and parked itself right in the oncoming traffic lane, completely blocking the start/finish with a big Cat. 4 pack sprint expected to arrive any minute.  They finally convinced them to move the ambulance before the race arrived, but the riders ended up having to finish in just the left lane which of course kind of screwed up the sprint. All that they posted for road race results were the chip times, I think without bonuses included.

The evening time trial was in a much better location than last year, heading east on the beach road with very little traffic.  I rode the three miles to the start with John and then did my usual disappointing time trial, pushing me way down on the GC list.  We headed over to a nearby restaurant for dinner later that evening.

I was up in the dark Sunday morning in order to make the 7 am start time for the 50+/60+ criterium in old Pensacola.  I'd ridden the course a couple of times before and really liked it.  The half-hour race was good and fast with one rider escaping fairly early and finishing ahead of the pack. With a lap to go I was second wheel behind a rider who seemed to be determined to pull us all around to the finish.  Coming through the second-to-last turn I knew he was going too slowly to survive and was trying to keep my options open, fully expecting a stream of rider to come flying past on the right.  Coming into the last turn I caught a glimpse of Tom Gillis, who had been providing a lot of the power in the group, coming past. I went for his wheel through the turn and sprinted hard for the line.  It was a repeat of the road race finish.  I got my wheel up to about his bottom bracket before crossing the line in 3rd place.  I ended up 6th on GC, one place out of the money.  I have no idea how they came up with the GC times.  All they posted were stage finish times from the chips, to the thousandths of a second.  I tried to figure out how they came up with the GC time they showed for me but based on the stage times they posted I couldn't even come close. I guess if you don't show all of the details, nobody can complain. Anyway, I remain very unimpressed and disappointed with chip timing.

I was still hanging around at the criterium for the Cat. 1/2 race, which strangely wasn't the last one on the schedule, when a medic from Sacred Heart trauma center came up and asked if I knew GW Wenzel.  Apparently he'd crashed and probably broken his collarbone and this guy needed someone to take charge of his bike since he's come there alone. Brian had wanted to get home earlier, so Celeste was driving back with me, I also had Mignon's and Isaac's bikes.  So with three bikes on the roof and three in the back we headed to the hospital to find GW and check on Ben who was scheduled or surgery that morning.

We found GW in the ER, still waiting for an x-ray, and got his truck keys so we could drive back to the race, transfer his bike to his truck, and drive back to the hospital.  I made him a little map to his truck because I was not entirely sure he'd remember all of our conversation after looking at what was left of his helmet.  Then we went upstairs to find Ben.  His parents were still waiting for him to come out of recovery when we arrived, but a few minutes later they said we could see him.  They had spent a very long time piecing his jaw back together with metal plates and wire, so his lip and face were quite swollen and there was still a lot of nasty bloody stuff draining out of the tube in his nose.  He was still pretty groggy, but we were glad to be able to see him before heading back to New Orleans. He was definitely going to be staying in Pensacola for a while and even now I'm not sure if he's back yet or, for that matter, if he will be back in New Orleans or in Plaquemines where his parents live.

Work has been really busy this week with a grant proposal that was due this afternoon. I arrived at the office on Monday to find the carpet completely ripped out, along with big sections of the wall, black plastic taped up, and our huge commercial dehumidifiers and air scrubbers running.  I turned on my desktop computer and immediately blew a circuit breaker.  Crap.  I ended up going back to the house in order get some work done.  Then the next day we're on the interstate driving out to Metairie to visit a friend in the hospital when the car sunroof virtually exploded.  I guess a rock popped up rom a truck that had just cut in front of us.  At any rate, it was really loud.  It sounded like someone had fired off a shotgun on the roof. I'm still trying to get that fixed. At least it didn't happen on the way back from Pensacola in the middle of nowhere. So anyway, I'm just now coming up for air and trying to catch up on things.  I still haven't gotten the Pensacola results in the way I need them in order to update our LCCS points.  Maybe tomorrow? 

Road Champs- Natchez

Cat. 4s

Last weekend was the LAMBRA Road Championships event up at the Natchez State Park.  Since I had to bring the medals, clock and a few other items up there in time for the 9 am Junior races, I was on the road well before dawn.  The Masters 55+ race wasn't until 1 pm, so once I arrived I had a little time to kill.  A cold front was on its way, and just as the Juniors finished it started to rain.  Fortunately it was never very heavy, and by the time the next set of races had started, the rain was over and the cloud cover was keeping the temperatures down to a reasonable level.

The 55+/60+ race had a fairly small field of thirteen, and the 7-lap race started out at pretty easy.  I found myself at the front more often than normal, and it was clear that half the riders had no interest in putting their noses into the wind.  This course features a pretty good long stair-step climb, followed by a short downhill and then a very steep but short uphill.  Then there are a couple of miles of rollers with a fast downhill left-hand curve coming into a right-hand turn, and then a short but significant little uphill.  The rest of the race is a net downhill run with a few rollers thrown in for good measure before turning on a very rough road for the final mile or so.  I think it was on the second or third lap, just after flying through the sharp right-hander, that I glanced back and sensed disorder.  Without really thinking, I attacked the little uphill and the next thing I knew we had a 3-rider break.  "Let's work together," I said as I dropped off the front and Stanley Prutz pulled through.  I'm not exactly sure who the third rider was, but the fact that we had three riders from three teams was good.  The third rider, from Shreveport's LaS'port team, eventually dropped off the back, but his presence in the initial break kept his two other teammates from chasing which was a huge advantage. After one lap off the front we had over a minute on the field.  Stanley seemed really strong and was probably doing 70% of the work for the last few laps.  I was struggling a bit on the climbs, especially that short steep one after the stair-step, and as we started the last lap I could see the handwriting on the wall.  Sure enough, Stanley attacked that climb hard and although I came over the top within a couple of bike lengths of his wheel, I couldn't sustain the pace and watched him ride away.  I finished out the lap, placing 2nd, and waited quite a while before the rest of the field finished.

I had gotten a spot in one of the cabins with the officials for the night, so we all drove in to Natchez for dinner.  The cabin was basically within walking distance of the start line, which was nice.  The next morning I decided to go ahead and enter the Cat. 1/2 race since the field was small and I obviously needed the exercise.  I was only hoping to avoid having to do an extended time trial for this one, and knew for sure I'd be dropped before the half-way point.  After a really easy first lap, there was a hard attack on the climbs at the beginning of lap 2.  I though that if they were going to attack the hills every lap for the next thirteen laps, I might as well let them go.  A little while later another rider who had done the same thing rolled past me and we started working together, eventually catching back up to the group.  We did the exact same thing for the next three laps, but by then a break was off the front and the group I was in was down to five of six with more than half of the race yet to go.  Another attack left just me, Stanley, and Brendon Hale, and we soon settled into a steady pace.  Again, Stanley was doing more than his fair share of the work, and again, I was suffering on that little steep climb.  Otherwise, though, the cool front had brought in some delightful weather and it was good training.  As we approached the finish line with two laps to go the break caught and passed us, and Brendon thought they had said that we also had only one lap to go (like it was a criterium and we were finishing on the same lap as the leader).  I wasn't so sure about that, but when he sprinted a lap later I sprinted too, but as it turned out we did indeed have another lap to go.  The officials felt sorry for us and told us they would count that sprint if we wanted, but we decided to finish out the distance.  The next time, Stanley attacked a little earlier than I expected and although I was gaining on him, I ran out of road before we got to the finish.  Of course, we were sprinting or 8th place, so it wasn't really a big deal.  Anyway, it was a fun weekend and I left feeling like I might not be in slightly better shape than I'd thought.

Next weekend is the Pensacola Stage Race. That's always an expensive weekend, but I like the courses and appreciate the support the north Florida guys give to the LAMBRA races, so I always try to make that one.  I'll probably go ahead and register in the 50+ race if for no other reason than the $10 lower entry fee.

Back At It

On the way back along Chef Menteur Highway

After a good four hours of sleep I rolled out of bed and onto the bike.  The air outside was thick and humid, and it was dark enough to need both headlight and taillight.  I was a little early, so I took my time as I rode out to meet the Giro Ride. The biggest thing on my mind at the time was whether to have hot coffee or iced coffee.  It was a decision that turned out to be moot when I found the Starbucks to be closed.  It seemed that they had electricity, so perhaps they were having trouble getting enough staff back to work or something.  There were a couple of things we knew for sure about the Giro.  Lakeshore Drive was definitely unusable after having been submerged by the lake during the hurricane.  I also knew that once we got out past the levee on Highway 90, where the road had also been flooded, we'd probably have to deal with mud, debris and possibly standing water.

The turnout was surprisingly good, and the pace down Hayne Blvd. was pretty fast, perhaps just a little bit slower than normal.  It felt good to be back at it, but events of the past week had clearly taken their toll.  Basically, I felt like I had been off the bike for a month. As we had crossed the industrial canal bridge I'd looked down to see that the huge floodgates, finished only a month or so ago, were still closed.  Out on Chef Highway the floodgates east of the city were open, so we were able to ride over the levee there, but on the other side we found the right lane partially submerged and full of debris, forcing us into the left lane along with the trucks.  It didn't take us long to decide it was too dangerous to continue, so we turned around, ultimately cutting about ten miles off of the Giro route.

Here in the city things are slowly returning to normal.  The power company made a lot of progress on Sunday, but there are still a lot of areas without power.  On the way home we watched a caravan of a dozen power trucks as it turned onto Wisner heading into town. I'm glad that tomorrow is a holiday because we can all use the extra day to get things back in order before returning to business as usual on Tuesday.

Power!

The power finally came back on around 11:30, which would be about an hour and a half ago, and the temperature inside the house is getting down to a level at which I might actually get a few hours of sleep. It's been a few rather uncomfortable nights, but really, it could have been a lot worse.

I'm heading to Starbucks in the morning to see what we can do about a Giro Ride, considering that various floodgates may or may not still be closed and some parts of Chef Highway may or may not still be underwater. It seems like I haven't been able to put together enough consistent quality training since that crash way back at the beginning of July to really get back in shape.  Some years are just like that.

Outages

NOLA Power Outages Thursday morning

Well, we survived Hurricane Isaac without much damage, which is more than I can say for most of the trees around here.  It's Thursday morning and the power has been out since around 2 am yesterday.  At the height of the storm I could feel the house moving in the stronger wind gusts, which is rather disconcerting to day the least.  The map shows the current power situation around 30 hours later (the red lines are the ones without power).  There's no telling how long it will be before we're back on the grid, but I think most of the damage was due to trees taking down power lines, so I guess it could be anywhere from twelve hours to a few days. There are two trees down within sight of my house, one of which took down the power lines, and the other looks like it just took the telephone/cable lines.  Although we had an overnight curfew (it was quite peaceful), traffic is picking up on S. Claiborne now despite the lack of traffic signals.  We have had a few breaks from the rain, but for the most part it has been raining for two days now.  There's some standing water in the low spots of the basement -- seepage from the completely saturated ground outside, and without ventilation it's getting kind of musty down there. At least the cloud cover has kept the temperatures down and it's been rather pleasant sitting out on the front porch enjoying the breeze. The police department has been patrolling regularly and a few looting arrests have been made, so things are much better in that regard than they were seven years ago, and the new floodgates and pumping stations worked without a hitch, so despite a huge amount of rainfall, things were generally under control and there was never any hint of street flooding near my house.

This house, built in the 1920's was designed for New Orleans in the pre-air-conditioning era, and fortunately most of those features have been preserved.  The porch, window screens, casement windows, etc. have really made things tolerable. The neighbors came over for dinner by candlelight last night and even though there was no a/c, the breeze coming through the open windows made it quite pleasant.

I'm guessing I won't be getting out on the bike again today unless it really clears up.  Even if it does, there's a ton of clean-up that needs to be done, and unfortunately I have a brother in law who has been in intensive care in Baton Rouge since yesterday, so we may be driving up there some time soon.  Since I-10 is closed around LaPlace and the Causeway is still closed, it could be a long trip.  We may be able to wait until things are open again, however.  We're supposed to be back at work tomorrow and classes at Tulane are set to resume on Tuesday.  It's about time to give the generator a little break since I'm still not sure where I will be able to find gas......

Sneaking One In

Starting back down the river from Ormond

Last night when Mignon sent an email out to the group asking if anyone was thinking about trying to sneak in a final pre-hurricane ride in the morning, I thought the chances were slim.  As it turned out, however, Tropical Storm Isaac (it remains to be seen whether it was even achieve hurricane status) hadn't really gotten its act together overnight and I awoke to dry streets.  It was, of course, pretty windy, but once the sun started to come up you could see that the sky didn't look all that threatening.  Up on the levee we had Tim, Woody, Mignon, and (!) Richard Hughes, in addition to myself as we rolled out at 6:15.  Most of the ride out to Ormond had a quartering crosswind, and the sections where it was more tailwind than crosswind got pretty fast.  The farther out we got, the more I started thinking about how hard the 20+ mile ride back was going to be.  Indeed, the ride back was hard.  A few times I almost lost it when Tim pulled off and the wind hit me full-force. I was already off of the levee and on my way down Oak Street when it started raining, so I guess our timing was pretty good. After riding I went out and filled up the neighbor's two 5-gallon gas cans, stopped in at Freret Hardware to say hello to Vivian and pick up some lamp oil just in case we end up without power for a long time.  I'm really not thinking this one is going to be too bad here in the city, although the lake is already starting to flood the area between the seawall and the levee.  I did spend some time down in the basement moving some things up off of the ground as a precaution, but here at the house I know that we won't get any water in our basement until it's at least six feet deep in Lakeview.

The Cruel Truth - Take Warning

It's not called "The Race of Truth" for nothing, and the cruel truth was that I wasn't even remotely prepared for it.  Anticipating disaster, I'd stopped by Vivan's house on Saturday and picked up her time trial wheels, hoping they might at least minimize the impact of what I was already expecting to be a lackluster time trial performance.  Donald Davis was arriving at the house Saturday afternoon, so I had already gotten the results spreadsheet and officiating supplies ready, and had even picked up a new pop-up shelter for the club to replace the one that had been flattened by the storm at the Tour de Louisiane back in June.  Everything was ready, except of course me.

Sunday morning I was on the road to LaPlace just before 6 am with the car loaded up with stuff for the event -- generator, shelter, chair, race clock, traffic cones, table, flags, banners, clipboards, computer, printer, etc.  I was already tired.  Maybe it was that half bottle of wine I'd had over dinnner? Peake Racing was on hand with lots of volunteers, so once we handed out all of the race numbers and got the first few riders started, I squeezed into my skinsuit and rolled around for a few minutes before my start time.  I wouldn't call it an actual warmup, but my plan was to start out easy and work my way into it.  There was what felt like a light ENE wind blowing, so I was expecting a mild crosswind with a bit of a tailwind on the way back.  I started out smoothly, rolling up to 26 or 27 mph rather quickly with what felt like a little tailwind.  A couple of miles later the road turned just slightly to the right and my speed started dropping quickly.  I felt like I had no power at all, and I guess I was only five miles into the 40 km Time Trial when I saw 22 mph on the computer and thought, "This is ridiculous!"  If all I could muster was a pathetic 22 mph under those conditions, I was seriously questioning why I was out there.  I forced myself back up to 24 or so, but knew my ride was basically over as whatever motivation I might have had went right out the window.  Some days you just don't have anything to offer, and this was one of those. Mitch, who had started a minute behind me, went sailing by before the turnaround.  A few miles later as I rounded the pylon at 20 km Jorge powered past me as well.  I held his pace for a couple of miles, but eventually backed off again, dropping down to 22 mph.  Grant passed me about halfway back.  I'd have to say that was about the worst time trial I've done in twenty years.  I dried off and sat down at the computer to start entering finish times, and about halfway through realized that they didn't look right at all.  The starter had not written down the actual start times, but instead had written down the time of day, so I didn't have the easy cross-checks that I normally do.  It took me quite a while to figure out that I had forgotten about the 5-minute gap between the 20km riders and the 40km riders, and had to then correct all of the start times.  Anyway, we eventually got everything done, with a couple of mistakes in the Cat. 1/2s because I got a couple of incorrect times that were relayed via cellphone from the finish line.  Amazingly, Frank Moak came on top with a 54:33.  How does he do that?  On a good day I would have been thrilled with a 58:00 myself, and this was definitely not a good day (I coasted in at 1:03:35).

By mid-afternoon on Sunday the news media and city in general was going in to full-on hurricane panic mode as the storm track for Tropical Storm Isaac had shifted more to the west and was now heading directly for the city.  At some point in the early afternoon I was sitting at the computer working on the results when I heard a loud noise.  I got up to see if something had fallen in the kitchen, and checked down in the basement to see if maybe the big pop-up tent or something had fallen over, but couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.  Later than night when I was removing the clip-ons from my bike I picked up the wheel bag containing the front wheel I'd borrowed from Vivian and noticed that the front tire was flat.  When I opened the bag I found everything coated in a white powder.  The sidewall had completely blown out.  I guess the tire was a little old.  At least it hadn't happened during my time trial.  Well, actually, maybe that would have been a good thing, under the circumstances, as I distinctly remember wishing I'd get a flat so I could quit.  Anyway, I got the results posted to the website, uploaded them to the USAC database, and then met with the Tulane Cycling officers to get a start on the club's plans for the year, budget, etc.  By 10 pm I got about halfway through updating the LCCS points rankings before I started falling asleep at the keyboard and decided to call it a night.  Unfortunately I was then "urged" to go out into the night in search of gasoline thanks to the increasingly alarming newscasters.  The closest gas station had a line about two blocks long, the next two were not selling gas, either because they had sold out or were waiting for the price to go up.  I ended up filling up the car way out by Elmwood.  Anyway, this morning the forecast, IMHO, looks more encouraging and I'm not really expecting to have to evacuate the city for this one.

As I climbed the path  up to the levee this morning I glanced over my right shoulder at the red sky and thought, "...sailors take warning."  A Tropical Storm was heading our way.  It was relatively cool and breezy, and of course there was nobody to ride with, but I figured I'd better put in a few miles since the weather would probably become an issue on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Out near the turnaround I ran into a rider who recently moved to town and with whom we'd had breakfast after Saturday's Giro Ride (and whose name of course I can't recall right now), so at least I had some company for the return trip.

Blasts from the Past

Late last night I got an email from Tim Fitzgerald, and attached to it was a black and white photo from the 1984 Race Across Louisiana.  I have to admit it was a little hard to admit how long ago that was.  Anyway, I figured I'd put it up on the NOBC History page at some point and went to sleep.

It was relatively cool this morning as I rode out to meet the 6:15 am ride on the levee.  It was another reminder that summer was coming to an end and hurricane season was reaching its peak.  As the mornings get darker, riders start showing up later and later, so I wasn't surprised to find just a couple of riders there when I arrived, nor was I surprised when a quite a few others suddenly materialized within just a couple of minutes. It was a pretty normal Wednesday ride with everyone taking long steady pulls, all within a narrow range of a couple mph of 20.  The one non-normal thing was the presence of Adam Watts (of Bicycle World fame) who I probably hadn't seen on the ride in six months. As remarkable as his presence was, the fact that he had promoted one of the Race Across Louisiana races around the time the photo I'd received seven hours before had been taken was even more remarkable.  Anyway, I'd been planning on riding out to the lakefront after work for the training race, but by the time I got home it was nearly 6 pm already, so I opened a bottle of Malbec instead ..... using a Campagnolo corkscrew, of course.

Tuesday

Decorated Water Meter Cover on Oak Street

It's that time of year when it seems each morning is noticeably darker than the previous one.  I don't like that.  It signals the beginning of Fall, and those of us who get up before 6am are the first to feel its effects.  I took a few minutes to put the lights on the bike and headed out just as the dawn was filtering over the horizon.  Down on Freret Street, as I rode through a little cloud of marijuana smoke and approached the 4-way stop that I ride through every morning, a few school children waited for their bus.  Ahhh, the telltale signs of public school back in session. I should mention, for the benefit of those from elsewhere, that here in New Orleans, that public schools here are probably not what they are where you live.  My aunt, who was a school teacher, used to have a great story to explain the fact that one segment of the population here has a rather unique accent that sounds a lot like Brooklynese.  Way back in the early part of the century New Orleans already had a well-established parochial school system. The public school system was populated largely by recent immigrants.  It was also a disaster, so they city brought in a new director who happened to be from Brooklyn.  He then proceeded to bring in a lot of teachers from Brooklyn.  Since most of the children in the schools were from immigrant families, they learned English primarily from their school teachers.  Anyway, it's a nice story.

So there was a pretty big group up on the levee this morning, and to make matters worse there were a lot of other people up on the levee enjoying the relatively cool morning, or perhaps starting to train for the annual MS Tour ride.  As a result, it was a lot of stop-and-go for the first few miles today.  Otherwise it was a pretty uneventful ride and I ended up spending a lot of time sitting on the back of the paceline kind of zoned out. It wasn't until the last few miles that I snapped out of it and got back to work.  I stopped in at Zotz for a quick cup of coffee on the way home and noticed that someone had decorated all of the water meter covers.  The design on these old covers has become something of a New Orleans icon despite the fact that they were all cast in Wabash.  At any rate, you can actually by jewelry modeled after our water meter covers.