Nice November Weather

A clear blue sky, slightly cooler temperature, and a bit less wind made it a fine morning for riding. The night before, someone had posted that the unpaved gravel hump in the bike path that we've been avoiding for the past couple of months had finally been re-paved, so it would be the first time the group would be doing the "full" long ride in a while.

The ride out to the turnaround started off at a pretty good clip, especially considering the crosswind. I think everything was still together, though, when we spotted Donald about a minute up the road. That's kind of when things started to get out of hand. It seemed that Rob was determined to catch him before the turnaround, and the pace started to pick up in fits and spurts until the front of the group fractured completely. Rob and one other rider split off the front and caught, but the minute they did, Donald ramped the pace up another notch and it split again, ultimately leaving Rob and a string of lone riders, including me, spread out over half a mile of bike path as we approached the upriver end of the bike path at Ormond.

The group was unusually slow to come back together on the way back, and at one point before we had all regrouped, Rob was pulling just three or four of us at the front with the rest of the group fifteen seconds back. So someone told Rob to ease up and wait, but since, as usual, he had his ipod plugged firmly into his head he didn't hear him. So we let him go and eased up to regroup, but it was fairly obvious that the rest of the group wasn't really too interested in catching. Rob eventually looked back, discovered he was alone, and eased up. I suspect, though, that Donald was being passive-aggressive and for some reason didn't want to ride with Rob today. A few of us rode up to Rob, thinking that the rest of the group was right behind us, but as it turned out, there was still a fair bit of space between us. Anyway, we eventually ended up with just a little group of four off the front. Rob was pushing the pace a bit, and when I realized that two out of our four would soon be either pulling off or turning around, I decided to sit on the back and conserve some energy for the inevitable two-man time trial into the wind with Rob riding on his forearms and me hunting around for a bit of draft. So it turned out to be a pretty hard ride by my standards, and I was all too happy to sit up at the Playground for a long cool-down and let Rob sail off down the river.

The weather was so nice all day that around 1 pm I decided to go for a ride around the park rather than eat lunch. When I got near the entrance I spotted a couple of people sitting on a bench eating po-boys. Behind them was a fully loaded tandem touring bike. So naturally I stopped to get the story. It was a couple from Scotland who had ridden down the entire length of the Mississippi River. They had just arrived in New Orleans via the bike path and had stopped at GNO Cyclery to get a broken spoke fixed. They had directions to someone's house for the night. I figure they were in their late 60s and they looked just a bit road-weary. Even at the modest speed they were doing, however, they were happy to be near the end of their journey, which in this case was the little town of Venice, another fifty or sixty miles downriver, I think. It's basically where the pavement, and dry ground, ends.

Wind and Women

This morning it seemed the wind was blowing even more strongly than yesterday. Thanks to the wind, I was still feeling a little chilly in my arm-warmers as I waited atop the levee for the rest of the group to arrive. Once we got going, though, the headwinds and crosswinds kept us working pretty hard. We had a couple of triathlete women on the ride this morning. One of them (Tanya) rides with us pretty often. The other I didn't recognize, but I think I'll remember those short shorts next time! I'm sure three or four of the guys asked me if I knew who she was. Anyway, at least the general level of attractiveness of the paceline got a hefty boost today.

On the way home I stopped for a few minutes for a cup of dark roast at Zotz on Oak Street, where I had to navigate around a road closure where they are fixing some of the granite "cobblestones" that were just installed a month or so ago. I guess these guys don't have a lot of cobblestone experience. I had noticed last week that some of them were already coming loose. They're mainly there to slow down the traffic, but I suspect that today's modern suspension systems just laugh at that sort of thing. The interesting thing about them, though, is that they were recycled from the original stones that the street was originally paved with. They had mostly been covered up with asphalt for the last fifty years or so, so it's kind of neat that they dug them up and used them as "traffic calmers" at the intersections.

Later in the day I went over to Country Day school to meet with a couple of students who are trying to get a cycling team started. The instigator, Marc, moved here with his family from Spain fairly recently. I gave them some information on bikes, training and racing. Hopefully they will be able to get something going. In the meantime, Michael is working on the annual LAMBRA meeting, currently scheduled for Dec. 5 in Jackson, MS, and is ordering a batch of LCCS jerseys for this year's winners. I think we may try for a new design for 2011 and offer whatever leftover jerseys we end up with to current and former LCCS winners at a big discount. I need to write up the order for the LCCS awards and Cup, and while I'm at it I want to see what it would cost to get some kind of trophies or plaques to give to our District Champions, at least for the Road Race and Time Trial. The problem, of course, is that we have so many age groups that it could easily get too expensive. Perhaps we'll just give awards for the skill-based races. I dunno. We'll have to see about it.

A Slow Return

Monday was supposed to be pretty much of a wash-out with Hurricane Ida, or more likely Tropical Storm Ida, scheduled to roll into the Gulf Coast that day. So when I squinted at the tiny little image of the weather radar on my Blackberry, even before getting out of bed, all I really saw was a whole lot of green. Glancing out the window I could see that it wasn't actually raining, but I figured that between the wind and nearby rain, trying to get in a ride was a bad bet, so I opted for an extra hour's sleep. As it turned out, I'd lost the bet that day, because most of the rain somehow missed us. Ordinarily, missing a Monday ride wouldn't have bothered me a bit, but after three full days off the bike that included two days of ad libitum feeding, I was feeling like a slug and my joints were starting to rust. Just to compound the problem, we went out for a nice dinner at the Maple St. Cafe' that evening for my mother's birthday. I went to sleep early, but determined to ride in the morning come hell or high water.

This morning the alarm never quite went off. My antique clock-radio (red digits, mechanical tuner, and all) had been set on good ol' WTIX. Well, apparently the broadcast antenna for this little fly-by-night oldies station, which is located down in Galliano somewhere, must have gotten knocked off-kilter by the wind because they were essentially off the air. The result? I woke up at about 6:20 for the 6:15 ride. "It's OK," I told myself. A nice solo ride out to meet the group on its way back would be a good way to ease back into riding. Unfortunately, there was neither a group to meet nor any easy riding to be had. The wind was still blowing at 15 to 20 mph when I hit the levee. I looked down at the computer only to have it reach up and slap me right in the face with a 14 mph reading. Obviously, I was going to be making a slow return from my little sojourn in Colorado. So I did my best to get my legs back into the game, with the morning traffic on one side and some remarkably high water on the other. All of the rain up north has really swollen the Mississippi down here lately. The water was covering the batture in many places, and in general was at least five or six feet higher than normal. The only good thing about that is that you get to see a lot more wildlife when it's like that.

I was way out by The Dip when I saw Taylor coming the other way so I turned around to ride back with him. It wasn't a hard decision, since I'd been looking forward to a little tailwind for quite a while by then. I was also far enough out and late enough that I should have already seen the group on its way back, so I figured they had probably bailed out this morning because of the wind. Anyway, I rode back with Taylor listening to him tell his usual jokes (I think he must subscribe to the joke of the week club) and contemplating how caustic his sweat must be to have completely rusted his entire headset. Granted, he was riding his old beater bike. His carbon Trek had cracked and the replacement had just arrived at the shop the day before, so I guess the next time we see him he'll be on shiny a new Trek Madone. It's a good thing carbon fiber doesn't rust!

Tomorrow I am meeting with a small group at Country Day school about starting a cycling team. Should be interesting! Oh, by the way, at the request of USAC, I set up a LAMBRA Facebook page. Facebook is so confusing! So this is a "page" rather than a "group." I'm not exactly sure which is better for this, but I don't think it's a big deal one way or the other since we already have a website and a discussion list. We'll see .....

Up in Colorado

I'm up in Colorado Springs this weekend for the annual USA Cycling Local Associations conference. Since USAC moved out of the Olympic Training Center last year and into their own building, most of the meetings are being held at the nearby Rodeo Hall of Fame. Friday night we had a reception at the new USAC offices, which are much, much nicer than what they had at the OTC. The new place includes a nice indoor training facility for staff, a really impressive collection of photographs on the walls, and a big and conveniently located western bar that occupies part of the building. Unfortunately, I didn't sleep very well because the sudden change to dry air, and perhaps some allergy issues, made it difficult to breathe. I woke up with a pretty good headache. Saturday morning the weather was just beautiful. Kind of cold, but clear and nearly windless. With the morning sun shining on the nearby mountains, I was really wishing I had a bike. It would have been a great day for a ride up to Manitou Springs or something.

We got started bright and early with some of the usual presentations by USAC staff. The one about insurance and liability is always a little bit frightening. We also went through all of the proposed rule changes, after which the Board of Trustees went off to debate them. We ended the meetings with presentations by two chip-timing companies, followed by a reception and dinner. Tomorrow will be similar, with the meeting starting at 8 am. I'll have to head off to the airport around 2:00, by which time I expect I'll be pretty beat. This meeting can be pretty humbling for those of us from the smaller regions. Like last year, there was a lot of talk about cyclocross because so many districts are in the middle of their big 'cross seasons where typical turnouts for single races are running somewhere around the total number of licensed LAMBRA riders. Anyway, it is certainly enlightning to hear about what's happening in the larger districts. Sometimes it makes me feel happy that we don't have quite so many problems to deal with on a daily basis.

Short Week

The Wednesday ride somehow felt harder than usual this week. I think perhaps it has something to do with all that Halloween candy I've been eating. Somehow we ended up with a fair number of little leftover Hershey bars, Skittles, and other tempting products of the modern petrochemical industry. Anyway, the only interesting thing was that there was a film crew working at the Maple Leaf. Somebody told me which movie it probably was, but of course I immediately forgot. The had a big base camp set up near where the ride starts, and as I rolled past I could smell breakfast cooking. Those film crews sure do eat well.

This morning I didn't really know quite what to expect of the ride. The group was pretty long, and right from the start I could see that Rob was going to be pushing the pace a bit. Woody was there on his track bike, so I knew he was still in off-season spin mode, but with a light wind and the temperature in the low 60s, I figured it might get unseasonably fast today. It turned out to be OK, though, at least on the way out. Not slow by any means, but also not blazingly fast either. After the turnaround, the paceline was starting to get little erratic when VJ suddenly sat up. He'd broken a spoke. We were still a long way out, and so most of us waited around so he could stop and deal with the flailing spoke and make sure he'd be able to get home on the wheel, which was something along the lines of a Zip 404, I think. After a quick check, it looked like it would go the distance, so we got going again, but by then a little group was way up the road. The rest of us weren't all that worried about trying to catch them, but pretty soon Mark G. went to the front and took the pace up a couple of notches. That kind of got things going again and after a while we could see we were starting to gain back some of the ground we'd lost. By then the front group had lost a few riders who had turned off to head home, while at the same time our group was getting smaller and smaller. I think we were down to just three for a while, and then Mark left for home, leaving just two, and finally near the there was just me and Ali who had dropped off of the front group. After Ali turned off at the playground, I think there was just Rob up ahead.

So it's a short week for me because tomorrow morning I'm off to Colorado Springs for the USA Cycling Local Associations Conference. It should be interesting. Hopefully none of the more crazy of the proposed rule changes will get past the USCF Board of Trustees. At least the trip there and back will give me a little time to think about getting our LAMBRA meeting together. I've got two delinquent events I'm still trying to get cleared up, one of which was a small NOBC race. I have a feeling I'm going to end up doing the chief referee report myself even though I wasn't even in town for it. That's assuming I can get my hands on the one-day license forms that I was promised would be mailed to me a few days ago. Looks like we're going to have to crack down on the officials and promoters and make sure they don't leave the race site before filling out the forms and writing the check.

November

I can't believe it's November already! I guess I shouldn't complain, though, because the weather around here since Saturday afternoon has been fantastic. It was a little lonely for my Monday morning ride, but today we had a pretty good turnout, even if most of them were a little late. On the plus side, it's not dark any more at 6:15. I can't begin to say how much less stressful that makes the first ten miles of these early morning rides.

For some reason the group was a little slow getting started this morning. I have a feeling it may have had something to do with the Saints game last night. Football fever is running rampant in New Orleans lately. Anyway, the group eventually got its act together this morning and started a nice little paceline. The consensus pace settled in at around 24 mph with most people successfully ignoring the occasional surge by that guy on the track bike.

The ride back, however, soon became quite irregular. There was a bit more of a headwind, and keeping the pace above 23 mph started to take its toll. By the time we were halfway back the paceline was in a continual cycle of disintegration and reconstruction with the speed fluctuating from 21 to 28 mph, and I was finding it difficult to stay smooth. At one point I took what I thought was a nice smooth pull at a reasonable speed, only to discover that I'd opened up a big gap. I eased up and got back into the group when it caught up, only to find that they were then going the same speed I'd been going earlier. Some mornings it's just not worth trying to figure out the pack mentality.

Later, on my way to work, I passed this knocked-over fire hydrant (above) on Lowerline St. It's been leaking water rather badly for the last few weeks and the neighbors have even put up a sign complaining about the complete lack of action on the part of the city. Now it seems they've even taken to decorating it for holidays like Halloween. It's bad enough that city water is pouring completely unchecked out of the ground here, but you would think that a FIRE hydrant might warrant some level of priority in an older neighborhood with old wiring, old gas heating systems and old wooden houses, especially with winter fast approaching. I know from past experience that it only takes about half a day, at best, to repair this kind of leak, even with four guys standing around leaning on shovels and two of them actually working, and maybe another half day to then repair any torn-up asphalt. Somehow the city always seems to stretch that out into a three or four month ordeal for the people who live around there. If you are wondering if the city is back to normal since the hurricane, you need look no farther. We sure could use a Mayor around here, but I can't imagine who in his right mind would be willing to take the job given all of the ass-kissing that would be required just to have half a chance of getting elected, and that's assuming you could get half the electorate to look beyond the color of your skin.

This Weekend

This weekend started out as expected, with a light rain, wet streets, and dropping temperatures. At 5:45 a.m. I turned the alarm off and pulled the covers over my head. At 8 a.m. I finally put my feet on the floor. The rain had stopped, but it was too late. There were things to do and I knew I'd never break free for a ride. One thing about being in New Orleans is that when the streets are wet or the weather is cold, you can always tell yourself that it'll be better tomorrow. It usually is, and Saturday was no exception. It was about 5 p.m. by the time the house was marginally suitable for visitors. I walked out onto the front porch looked out over the street. There were already kids in their Halloween costumes playing around in front of their houses, held barely in check by their parents who were waiting until closer to sunset before letting them loose on the neighborhood. I had a feeling it would be a busy Halloween night, since this year it fell on a Saturday night. Our first visitor of the night was a rather mystified and wide-eyed little girl whose parents had chosen our house for her very first trick-or-treat. I flicked on the porch light and reached into the huge aluminum pot for a handful of candy.

For the first hour or so there was a steady stream of costumed kids climbing the steps to the porch to yell "trick or treat." Some of the neighbors came around to keep us company, along with a few friends who were in the neighborhood and/or on their way to other Halloween night festivities. From all reports, the French Quarter was pretty wild last night. Just when I was starting to wonder if the bulk of the kids were finished for the night, we had another huge surge, and for fifteen minutes or so we were handing out candy as fast as we could to a seemingly nonstop line of kids. One thing I noticed this year was that a lot more of the parents were in costume. I guess it must have been because Halloween fell on a weekend this year. Anyway, things went well, we had a lot of fun, I drank a bit too much wine, and we finally shut things down around 10 p.m. Then, as always happens when I drink a lot of wine, I woke up at about 2 a.m. quite thirsty and then couldn't get back to sleep. The bottom line was that, for me, that extra hour of sleep promised by the shift to daylight savings time was completely squandered.

My original plan for Sunday was to ride part of the Giro Ride, come back early, and then go back out at 10:30 to meet a few people, including some from the newly forming Tulane Cycling Club, for a Tour du Cafe' ride through the city. Well, the weather Sunday morning was just spectacular. Clear blue sky, light wind, temperature around 60F. I rode out to the lakefront, meeting up with Big Richard along the way, and latched onto the end of the smallish Giro group as it headed East. The pace picked up pretty well on Hayne Blvd., but then a small group split off the front when the rest of us eased off because of an approaching ambulance. There was another group behind us that had decided earlier to stick with a 20 mph pace regardless. The rest of us eventually got a decent paceline going, but it was too little too late to catch Brett, Rob, Mike W., and the other one or two who were with them. We all re-grouped after the turnaround, and although it started off slowly, the pace kept gradually rising until we were up to around 29 mph approaching the Goodyear Sign sprint. I ended up making a few hard efforts and generally getting in a good workout, arriving back home around 9:30. That gave me a little time to recover before heading over to PJ's coffee on campus to meet up with the Tour du Cafe' group. I picked up a cup of dark roast to get me going again. [More photos]

We had only five for the 10:30 ride, but since the plan was to keep the pace easy and make a few stops, it wasn't a problem. We rode out to Metairie Cemetery, making a few detours to get around the streets that were blocked off for the Voodoo festival, and did a couple of laps there in honor of All Saints Day before continuing on to the lakefront and then over to the Starbucks in Lakeview where I had a nice Macchiato. From there, it was back to City Park where the big Voodoo Festival was going on, down Bayou St. John to Grand Route St. John and Esplanade to the French Quarter where there were still a few consumed people wandering about from the prior night's festivities. We rode through the French Quarter, teeming with visitors, back toward uptown, stopping for another coffee stop on Magazine Street at Mojo Coffee House. I was standing in line to place my order, trying to decide what to have, when I came face-to-face with a big pecan pie and decided that what I really needed today was definitely another 500 calories of sugar. Considering the size of the slice I was given, it was probably more like 800. Anyway, by then I finally took a good look at my watch and realized it was already almost 1:30 and I had said I'd be home by 1:00. So we headed back uptown, splitting off one by one for home. I ran upstairs, put some clothes on, and we jumped in the car with the neighbors to go look for dead grandparents in the Metairie Cemetery Mausoleum. We weren't even sure which mausoleum they were in, so it was absolutely amazing when we found them within five minutes among the thousands of vaults.

So now, after 90 miles and probably over five hours on the bike that started at 6:30 am, I think I'm finally ready to take a shower . . . . .