Best Made Plans

Out at the Spillway on Saturday

Random unpredictable rain showers have become the new normal around here lately. It was raining at 5:30 am last Saturday, so I turned off the alarm on the assumption that there wouldn't be a Giro Ride that day. Naturally I was wrong, kind-of. It looks like a decent group actually did the ride. By the time I got out of bed the rain had stopped and it looked like there would be a pretty nice window for riding, so around 9:30 I pulled out the old Orbea with its heavier tires and headed for the levee. My plan was to ride out to the Spillway, which would get me around 50 miles, and be back home before the rain inevitably started again. The river level was noticeably lower as I headed upriver, and soon the sun came out. I guess I had a bit more tailwind than anything else, so it was an easy ride out to the Spillway where, as usual, there were a few people taking selfies of themselves. With the river level dropping, I could see that they had already closed a number of the bays, and I wondered how much longer it would be before they closed everything back up again.

I was probably about half-way back when it started to rain. I'd taken the Orbea because I figured there was a good chance I'd get rained on and since I'd just put a new headset on the Bianchi I wanted to avoid washing all of the grease out of the "sealed" bearings just yet. Fortunately it was warm and the rain wasn't too heavy, and by the time I was getting closer to town it had stopped altogether. I thought I was in the clear at that point, but once again I was wrong. I came down off of the levee and made my way to Carrollton, just a mile from home, when it started raining again. When I turned onto Pine Street, a few blocks from the house, I could see a solid curtain of heavy rain just up the road. The last couple of blocks were in pouring rain. Perfect.

Well, at least it will roll now!

Later that day I went out to the garage and put the wheels back on the old GT-6. Phil had helped me find some relatively inexpensive tires and had mounted them up at the Porsche of Metairie shop for me a few days earlier. The old tires had been flat and rotted out since the car has been sitting there rusting away for nearly 20 years. It was time to at least get it to the point where it would roll because if I don't repair the front part of the garage where the termites and rot have eaten away a fair part of the roof and pretty much all of the corner posts, it's going to fall down on top of the car which will be even more of a mess. The car is, of course, in pretty rough shape, and it will be a minor miracle if I can get it running again. The disc rotors and rear brake drums were rusty but I did manage to get the wheels to turn, however reluctantly. I'll have to see what I can do to clean out the fuel system and carburetors, clean up the plugs and points, get a battery, and see if the starter will (a) work and (b) turn the engine over. It's going to take some time, I think, regardless, but it's a start.

The Orbea ready to go

After that I pulled out the old Cervelo and started packing it up for the flight to Seattle/Olympia. We'll be visiting Danielle for a few days and I figured I'd try and bring a bike this time since otherwise I'd be missing 5 days of riding. I then decided to go ahead and just use an unpadded bike bag and hope for the best. That bag is at least 35 years old. I put pipe insulation around the main tubes, pulled out the seatpost, removed the pedals, and removed the bars from the stem (although they're still hanging by the cables). I braced the fork ends and rear dropouts and put a little protection around the rear derailleur, so as long as it doesn't get dropped from ten feet off the ground, or smashed underneath some heavy luggage, it has a reasonable chance of survival. There's still a fair amount of room in there since it's a small bike. I have access to a rather large hard case that wouldn't even require removal of the rear wheel, but it would be a pain to deal with since we'll  have to get from long-term parking to the terminal, and then on the other end from the terminal to a shuttle to the rental car place and then get everything into the rental, and then repeat it all on the way back. It will be much easier to carry the bike in the bag, which probably weighs under 40 pounds altogether, than to roll around the old case that weighs about 35 pounds empty and would take up a lot of space in shuttles and cars.

Matt's saddle came loose on the Sunday Giro.
Pretty sure manufacturers compete to see who can
design the most complicated saddle clamp.

Anyway, the weather on Sunday was much improved and we were able to do a fairly good Giro Ride. I felt like my solo Spillway ride had taken a bit of a toll, though, and by Monday morning I was more than ready for an easy ride. There's this one sign out on the batture near LaRose that always goes under the water when the river is high. As soon as the water reaches the bottom of the sign, I know they will start talking about opening the spillway. As soon as it recedes below the bottom, I know they will start talking about closing it. Well, when I'd gone past there on Saturday I noted that the water had finally dropped below the bottom of the sign. Not coincidentally, Sunday morning was the first day since late February that my Garmin  hadn't given me a river flood warning when I went out to ride. On Monday the Corps announced that they were planning on closing the Spillway.

This morning it was raining pretty good in the early morning hours, so when the alarm went off at 5:30 I just stayed in bed for another half hour. By then the rain had stopped and the radar looked good, so I went out a bit later than usual, again on the Orbea because I knew the roads would still be pretty wet. I ran into Mignon out around the pipes, so I turned back with her a little earlier than planned. There's a cool front moving through some time this afternoon, so the forecast for this evening is calling for a 95% chance of rain between 4 and 6 p.m. so I went ahead and took the car to work. That alone may have been enough to ensure it won't actually be raining at 5:00, but frankly I am getting a little tired of riding in the rain.

After the Hurrication

Nice ride in a light rain on a day that could have been a hurricane day

Tropical Storm / Hurricane Barry was kind of a bust for us here in New Orleans, but the torrential rain and flooding that preceded it on Wednesday is still causing headaches. You wouldn't have thought that from watching the national news and weather channel, though. At least we got a nice little two-day hurrication out of it since the school closed down on Thrusday and Friday in anticipation of whatever they thought might happen. There were predictions of more heavy rain and street flooding, the Mississippi River overflowing the levees, Lake Pontchartrain overflowing the levees, etc. In the end, we had three days of somewhat rainy weather and a bit of wind here and there, but for the most part the bad weather ended up well to our west. The only excitement for us was on Saturday when a dangling static wire atop the phone pole in front of the neighbor's house got blown around in the wind and shorted against one of the secondary lines making for some sparks and ultimately breaking the secondary line, which remained hung up in the oak tree. None of us even lost power as a result and Entergy patched it up pretty quickly. The rest of the day was pretty boring since the tropical storm was just sitting out there in the Gulf. By Sunday morning it was clear we wouldn't be getting much of anything except light rain, and I eventually went out for a ride on the trusty old Pennine rain bike. Unfortunately I didn't take the time to pump up the tires since they felt "ok" to my thumb test, which apparently was entirely unreliable when dealing with those thick tires with Mr. Tuffy's in them. I rode a mile or so and decided to put some air in the rear tire, but all I had was a 40 year old Silca frame pump that did nothing but release more air. I ended up riding back home on the flat, pumping it up at home, and going back out for what turned out to be a pretty nice ride on the levee in a light drizzle.

Sundown just before the last race of the day on the lakefront on Wednesday

So although I missed riding on Saturday, things were pretty much back to normal on Monday. The ground floor of the Tidewater building on Canal St. was kind of a mess with sheetrock being torn out and blowers all over the place, but that's practically an annual routine nowadays. Before heading in to work I went over to visit Phil at Porche of New Orleans so he could mount tires on the wheels of the old GT-6 that's been sitting in the garage for about twenty years. I'd pulled the wheels off before the storm but figured I'd wait until things were settled down first. So now I just need to see how far I want to go down that particular rabbit hole. I guess I'll clean out the fuel system and carburetors, clean up the plugs and points, get a battery, and see if the engine will actually turn over. That will kind of determine where I go from there. If it looks like it's reasonably salvageable I'll then think about brakes, hydraulics, clutch, etc., etc. It would be cool to get it running again, but it's in pretty rough shape after all that time.

Yesterday was the last of the 4-race weekday Pontchartrain Beach Summer Series out at the lakefront. Race #3 had been cancelled because of the weather but the forecast looked fine for this one. I was scheduled to officiate with Michelle. Candy had to take the car to work for an early meeting, so I rode the bike to work and would then put the bike in the car, drive back to the house, load up all of the stuff, and drive out to the lakefront. Around mid-afternoon Townsend called to tell me someone had stolen his generator from in front of his house where he'd left if for a few minutes so the spilled gasoline could evaporate. Fortunately my generator was sitting in the basement full of gas. I left work around 4 p.m. and got out to the lake around 5:15, so that worked out OK. We got the first race done as a big black thunderstorm started building to the west. There was no telling if it would expand over us or not, but fortunately all we got was some drizzle during the second race. Guess I got home around 9 pm or so, ate half of a leftover frozen pizza, and put the results on the LAMBRA website after checking out the last 10 km or so of the Tour de France.

Lack of Confidence Storm

Lots of variation for something so close

Well, here we go with an early start to hurricane season. Rather unexpectedly on Wednesday morning a big low pressure area that was heading south toward the Gulf kicked off some truly exceptional lightning, thunder and rain that totally overwhelmed the pumping system and temporarily flooded many areas of the city. Since it was pouring down rain when I'd normally go to work I opted to stay home, which turned out to be a good call. My the middle of the day the shit had hit the fan. Tulane shut down for the duration, but by the time Candy got out of the Tidewater building on Canal Street the bottom floor of the building had over a foot of water in it and of course the elevators were not running. The streets were already flooded, so driving downtown to pick her up was not an option. She decided to walk home the long way, down St. Charles Avenue, since the other options through mid-city were probably going to be pretty bad.

Wednesday, downtown

I made an attempt to meet her in the car on St. Charles but didn't get more than a quarter mile before turning back. Broadway was flooded down around Willow and there was a power line that was down there so the street was closed. I knew South Claiborne would be six feet deep at State and Nashville, so there really wasn't any safe way to get there. Unfortunately, when I got in the car I discovered that the floor was soaking wet. The driver's side window hadn't been all the way up, so water had been getting in throughout the day.  The house was high and dry here on the Neron Knoll as I call it, so after a while I got on the bike and rode down Broadway, which by then was passable, and met her on St. Charles around Louisiana. By then the pumps were starting to catch up and the rain was slacking off. Thanks to the spectacular amount and intensity of the rain, our next-door neighbor had water pouring into his kitchen from a gap above a window where a badly installed gutter was allowing water to pour down the side of the house. Another neighbor down the block now has a blue tarp over part of his roof, so I guess he discovered a new leak as well.

The river level up toward Destrehan somewhere this morning. Lots of levee still in reserve.

Unfortunately, that was all just a prelude to development of a tropical storm once the low got past the coast and into the warm Gulf waters. The storm tracks were, and still are, all over the place. Even now, on Thursday evening, there's still very little confidence in any of the models. It could go to the west, it could go right over us, it could even go to the east of us. Whatever, everyone's expecting a lot of rain in the Friday-Saturday timeframe and possibly well into Sunday. Although the low-lying areas south of the city are being evacuated, most people are staying in town for this one, I think.  Looking out the window I can see that the winds have picked up considerably over the past couple of hours and are around 15 mph from the ENE. That northern component is still pulling in some slightly drier air, and the sun has been out most of the day.

This morning I went out later than usual since I didn't have to go in to work. I saw the 6 am group heading back after obviously turning back a little early. The sun was shining and the wind wasn't bad, so I ended up going all the way out to Ormond and back. It wasn't much of a workout, really. I always have trouble pushing myself when I'm riding by myself.

As I'm writing this, the city is sending out an official Tropical Storm Warning, not to be confused with a "watch." There's been a lot of concern about the river as well. It's still running near flood stage where it's been for a couple of months, and with the expected southeast wind from the storm they are anticipating a surge up to 19 feet (flood stage it 16 at this gauge). Riding along the levee this morning it's clear that the river is, at the moment, lower than it's been in at least a month. The batture is still mostly flooded, and I stopped during my ride to watch a big alligator cruising along between the levee and the trees, but in most places the water is just at or below the foot of the man-made levee.

The next couple of days should be interesting.

Mid-summer in the Mid-south

The July 4th Giro Ride

Last week was hot, and as my monthly electricity bill glides above the $250 mark, thanks to certain members of the household who insist on chilling the bedroom to 68 degrees when it's 85 outside and then sleeping under a comforter, everyone is starting to feel the burn. The 4th of July saw a fairly big group show up for a "holiday Giro" ride, and despite the 7 a.m. starting time it was already scorching by the time I got back home a bit before 10. I was happy to get in the workout, of course, but it took me a few hours in the air-conditioning to recover.

After an easy ride on Friday, I was looking at a double-Giro weekend since there didn't seem to be much else on offer and my afternoons were going to be booked anyway. I've been doing most of my rides with just two small water bottles because they're so much easier to deal with in my small 50cm Bianchi frame. In fact, even a small bottle scrapes along the underside of the top tube when I pull it out of the seat tube cage. I think it's about time to switch to the big bottles, at least for the down tube cage, though, because I'm easily going through all my water on a 2.5 hr. ride despite the 1970's ear water-rationing habit I acquired back when big water bottles didn't even exist. Saturday's Giro turned out to be pretty fast despite the temperature, which was well into the 90 by the time I got home. I think we averaged over 26 mph on the way out. As often happens this time of year, the pace on the return trip was considerably slower in response to the temperature which was considerably higher. To complicate things, the group had two flats on the way back, and I use the term "group" loosely in this case since a fair contingent didn't stick around for both of them.

Once I got my moderately dehydrated self back home I decided it was going to be my only chance for a while to cut down some more of the little trees and stuff that have grown up along I barely made a dent in the problem, I managed to go through about five cans of soft drinks in the process, an amount that clearly left me with a hydration deficit for the rest of the evening.

Saturday's Giro heading out on Lakeshore Drive before the heat had taken its toll

So after flirting with heat exhaustion all day Saturday I naturally headed out again Sunday morning for the third Giro Ride in four days, fueled by a cup of Starbucks iced coffee super-saturated with sugar. It would prove to be insufficient. Although the Sunday group was smaller than Saturday's, which I'd estimate to have been around 45, you couldn't tell from the pace on the way out. With three or four TT bikes and a light tailwind, just staying in the paceline behind the rotation would prove to be a more than adequate workout. I showed the same 26+ mph average for the outward bound 15 or 18 or whatever mile stretch. It was, however, even hotter than Saturday and with fewer riders I was definitely doing more work, although you'll just have to take my word for it since my hrm battery gave out along the way.

The return trip was a whole different story, though. I think that everyone must have been pretty burned out. As I usually do at the turnaround, I started back at an easy pace while the rest of the crew hung out for a minute under shade of the solitary little tree out there in the Venetian Isles marshland that has miraculously not been killed by urine poisoning. There were a couple of riders up ahead somewhere, but I wasn't in a hurry since I knew the bunch would be coming up on me from behind pretty soon anyway as usual. I soon found myself in a 3-rider group with a rider on a TT bike and Mike Williams, also on a TT bike (this was after Mike had passed me with the comment, "That all ya got?")  Now, being in a group with two riders on TT bikes, and fully expecting the group to come flying past at 30 mph at any moment, I wasn't taking any pulls. Every now and then I'd look back, surprised that I couldn't see the group yet. We rode like that at a fairly steady 24 mph all the way to I-510, and I still couldn't see the group. I figured someone must have flatted or something. The other two rider inexplicably went straight on Chef, but I turned onto 510 which is the normal route, and backed off to a leisurely pace as I waited for the missing group which finally showed up. As it turned out, nobody had flatted. They had just reached a group consensus to take it easy.

Not exactly pin-point accuracy at the moment

So once again I got back home pretty dehydrated. A few hours later We went over to Audubon Zoo for the welcoming party for the new Psychiatry Residents. It was held in the outside party area that the Zoo rents out, which thankfully has a roof and fans and food and drink and, in this case, snoballs. Even so, and despite my best efforts to not move from my chair, it was another few hours of being hot and sweaty, albeit with the occasional glass of wine and cup of snoball and hot-dog and salad.

I think I fell asleep around 8:30.

Mike's page is always entertaining because he gets
so excited about this stuff.

Meanwhile, the weather forecasters are getting excited about the first potential tropical depression, which is expected to maybe develop in the northern Gulf in a few days once the big high pressure area that has been causing all this heat starts to move out of the way. At the moment, all bets are off for Thursday through Saturday. Could be fine. Could be rain. Could be a tropical depression. Could be a Tropical Storm. It just depends on which computer model you like this year.

No Plans

Tomorrow is the 4th of July, which means I'll be off from work. At the moment, I have no plans to do anything in particular, and don't really know exactly when I'll be riding. Do I get up early and see if anybody shows up at the usual Thursday morning 6 am time? Do I sleep late and go out whenever I want, which will undoubtedly be even hotter than 6 am? Is there some local quasi-organized ride that will materialize between now and then?  Who knows?

Why did the turtle cross the bike path?

I'm thinking maybe I'll ride the levee up to the spillway, which is STILL open. They're supposed to start closing it soon, but I swear this has to be the longest time I've ever seen the river remain at such a high level around here. My Garmin has been showing me a flood warning alert every time I've turned it on since around February, I think. The river has been very slowly going down and some sections of batture are exposed again. Last Saturday, after coming up short mileage-wise when I stopped to help with an early flat on the Giro Ride, I put in a few extra miles on the levee to make up the difference. They were pretty easy miles, so I got to look at the scenery a bit more than usual. In addition to the usual assortment of Herons and ducks and things, I spotted one big alligator and watched a snapping turtle climb up the levee and across the bike path toward the river. The nice thing about a high river is that you get to see a lot more wildlife along the batture.

Our little post-Tour get-together at Wrong Iron was pretty nice. A number of people actually showed up and we went through more than a few pitchers of beer. We has a surprise appearance of Stan Truxillo who was in town from Texas for some sort of family thing. Chip Eyman, Adam Watts, Stan and I spent way too long talking about old-people stuff like which medications work best, reading glasses, hearing aids and other timely issues of the day. Stan was club president for a while, as I recall, back in the 80s. Adam owns Bicycle World and promoted the last Race Across Louisiana. Chip is a long-time member who broke a hip in that race and helps out with the Tour road race. Anyway, it was a fun evening despite the occasional cigar smoke and afternoon heat, and I think maybe we'll have to do it again.

Sunday Giro Ride heading out on Lakeshore Drive. It was damned hot by the time we got back.

The Wednesday evening 4-race lakefront series is halfway through right now, taking a week off for the holiday. It's been a bit of a rush to get out there to officiate them, but fortunately the weather has been OK for the last two and I don't think we've screwed up the results too badly. I have been experimenting with a couple of LED work lights that I bought to help with the finish camera since it's pretty dark by the time the last of the three races ends. Although the images are still pretty dark, the numbers were all readable, so that's definitely an improvement. Other than that, I've just been doing the routine rides during the week and the Giro Rides on the weekends. There isn't a road race on the schedule until August, which makes it hard for me to stay motivated. I always did best in the years when I was racing three or four weekends every month. Here we are in July already and I think I've only really raced four or five times all year, and some of those were pretty low key.

When a hot wire hits the ground.

So the other day I was coming home from work on the bike, crossing South Claiborne Avenue, when I saw something odd. There had been a big thunderstorm with lots of lightning earlier in the day, and I'd gotten a notification from Entergy that the power at my house had been out. A while later I got another notice that it was back on. Anyway, I'm crossing S. Claiborne where there's this little house that's kind of behind my back yard and has been abandoned since Katrina in 2005, and I see this huge section of high voltage cable hanging from the tree. I rode up to it to have a closer look and I could see that it had dug a hole in the ground when it was still live, and also had set the fence alongside the house on fire, burning up a ten-foot section entirely. Down the street I could see Entergy trucks working way up on the poles. People have stolen sections of the copper ground wires from almost every pole along S. Claiborne, which I suspect is not a good thing in the event of a lightning strike, which is what had clearly happened. Later that evening I discovered that one of the two little TV cable boxes wasn't working. The cable line comes from the same pole, so I guess that's what blew it out. Luckily the TVs and internet and everything else seemed to be working fine. I ended up having to drive out to Metairie to get a replacement box from Cox, a process that went surprisingly smoothly.

No helmet, no jersey, on the old Pennine

Last week someone mentioned the Heart o' Dixie triathlon and it reminded me of when I did it way back around 1980 or 81. I think it's the oldest triathlon in the country now. Anyway, when I went looking for the website I stumbled upon a photo I'd never seen before showing me on the bike there. I had been convinced to go do the race the day before and hadn't been swimming in a couple of years, but I'd been doing a little bit of running in the off-seasons. I finished 10th that year because triathlons were so new back then that there weren't really any dedicated triathletes. Also, the ride was fairly long and it was point-to-point. I finished the ride I guess five to ten minutes ahead of the next person, but my shoes hadn't arrived yet at the gas station that served as the transition area, so by the time I started the run six or seven people were already up the road, and a few more passed me as I shuffled through the run and onto the horse racing track at the fairgrounds.

Meanwhile, Facebook and Instagram seem to be having major problems today. I wonder if we'll ever find out what the real problem was, or is.

Summer Rain Taps on My Frameset

Father's Day Giro heads out along Lakeshore Drive

At home nothing but back-to-back Giro Rides last weekend was actually pretty relaxing despite the rapidly escalating summer heat. Along with that summer heat, though, come the unpredictable summer thunderstorms that can turn a nice sunny afternoon into a terrifying episode of blowing rain, lightning, thunder and flooding. It's just one of those things you come to expect once the weather pattern settles down for the summer.

I spent some time last weekend re-organizing the club race equipment. It was badly needed after the Tour, which was the third race (5th if you count the thee TDL stages separately, which I do) we've organized so far this year. It was also time to start thinking a bit about my own somewhat neglected bike, especially once I got the reminder from my Garmin app that my chain had reached its 2,500 mile limit. I always set up a reminder so that I'm not tempted to let the chain go over 3,000 miles, which practically guarantees the need for a new cassette. It also give me a little time to hunt around for a Campi Record chain on sale. I know I don't really need to be using the expensive Campi chains, but it's one of the few indulgences I allow for the Bianchi, and the easiest to provide. Besides the routine chain replacement, I'm also kicking around what to do about the rather badly worn chainrings that are now about as rare as hen's teeth because Campi changed the bolt design after only a year or two, and then a couple of years later moved to 12-speed. From what I can see, it might be cheaper to buy a whole new 11-speed crankset on sale (since the last 11-speed generation has been superseded by the 12-speed stuff) than to get new chainrings. I'm also trying to track down replacement handlebars. I really like the aluminum 3T Ergosum bars that I have been using, so of course 3T stopped making them. I can either try another brand, pay roughly four times as much for the carbon ones, or get the Ergonova that has a super-short reach and might necessitate a longer stem. Meanwhile, I need to sell those 40.5 Bont Vaypor S shoes now that I've pretty much decided to stick with the 41s. Those shoes were around $340, so it would be nice to recover some of that rather than hang onto them as backup shoes that I'd probably never need.

The ride back along the levee was pretty intense. At one point I thought the crosswind was going to blow me off the road.

Anyway, after an easy Monday ride I headed out on Tuesday morning after a quick check of weather radar that looked just fine. Perhaps the check was a bit too quick. I knew that rain was in the forecast, but was still surprised to find only one other person up on the levee at 6 am. I'd made it across the train tracks just before a train came through, so we waited for the train to pass, thinking there must be some people stuck on the other side. There weren't any, however. Perhaps they knew something I didn't? The other rider turned back six or seven miles later as he usually does, so I continued on alone, planning to turn around at the Big Dip. Things were going fine until I was almost there and started to feel some light rain. Looking up ahead I could see an ominous dark cloud, but since I was only a mile from the turnaround I kept going. A couple of miles after I turned around the light rain turned in to moderate rain, and then the moderate rain turned in a torrential, horizontal-rain, downpour that never really let up all the way back. For a few miles the rain was pelting my legs so hard that it hurt, and I could hear it tapping loudly on the carbon frame. I got back home soaked to the skin and had to pour the water out of my shoes after removing them. I really need to remember to drill a hole in the bottom of each shoe. I had the same problem with my older Bont shoes.

Seriously. How hard is it to stay between the white lines?

By the time I was ready for work the rain was gone and I ended up taking the bike to work as usual. Typical summer rainstorm. Along the way I stopped on the Broad Street Overpass to take a few photos of the damage that motorists had already done to the bollards that are "protecting" the new bike lane. There are at least four of them that have already been completely broken off from their attachments, and probably another thirty or forty that have obviously been hit and/or run over. All I can conclude is that these drivers are just not looking where they are going, which as a cyclist is rather frightening. I mean, it's not like these great big white things are hard to see, and I'm pretty sure they aren't jumping out in front of the cars.

This afternoon I'll be heading out to the lakefront to officiate the first of the four Wednesday evening races. It will be a rush to get out there in time, and keeping track of riders in the combined-category races will be a challenge as usual. I was at the dentist this morning getting the "healing cap" screwed onto the post that was implanted a few months ago, making it the third time the dentist has taken a scalpel to that spot. At the moment it still hurts, despite the Aleve I took a couple of hours ago. I'm hoping it doesn't make me too miserable this evening.

Calling All NOLA Dino Riders

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

Tour de La - Triumphs and Tribulations

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

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

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

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

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

Erich and Kenny at the Criterium

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

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

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

The dogs got to share the podium with the winners.

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

There was champagne from Apolline Restaurant for the podium

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

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

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

Hammers in Hammond

2 of 3

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

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

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

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

Way Up in Tupelo

Sunday's Renasant Criterium masters

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

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

Getting the finish set up on Saturday

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

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

GW and me finishing out the remaining laps

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

Ready to ride at Stoney Point

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

The bar at the Southern Hotel in Covington

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

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

A Busy Few Weeks

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waiting for the start of the Beth's Friends Fondeaux

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

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

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

Dennis and Reggie at Urban South post-ride

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

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