Finally!

This has been a pretty dismal week, training-wise. After Monday's morning damp ride on the levee I was kind of hoping to slip in an early ride Tuesday morning before my flight up to D.C. Well, that didn't happen. Monday turned out to be wet and rainy, a continuation of the long-standing "flash flood watch" that we've been living under for what seems like a week. So I took the $33 plus tip taxi ride to the airport, flew up to DCA, rented a generic economy car at a particularly uneconomical price in the $60 per day range, missed an exit, had to drive across the Potomac twice, got back on track, and arrived at the hotel in Gaithersburg MD in the late afternoon. While the weather up in MD was cold and clear, back at home the streets were flooding - again. I found a nice little restaurant nearby with Dogfish Ale, but it always feels kind of sad to be eating alone at a restaurant.

Wednesday was a tour and presentations at NIST, which was interesting. If you happen to find yourself in need of some time on something like a disk chopper neutron time-of-flight spectrometer, or want to do some some electron beam lithography in a 19,000 sf clean room, I can at least point you in the right direction. One of our physicists is there right now on sabbatical working in the Center for Neutron Research. Anyway, by 2:30 I was back in the road to DCA contemplating what I was going to do with the four hours of dead time at the airport before my flight home. Luckily I got quite lost and tied up in traffic in Crystal City while looking for a gas station, which killed a good forty-five minutes. I'm glad I had GPS on my Blackberry, but next time I may just spring for the $10/gallon rental car agency gas when all I need are a couple of gallons. On the plus side, I was able to have a nice relaxed early dinner at the airport TGI Friday's while watching the long, long line of people trying to get through airport security during DCA's evening rush hour. By the time I'd finished my sandwich and beer the line was back to normal, so I made my way out to the gate, found an outlet for the laptop, and knocked off some of the accumulated email. By the time I got home around 10 pm I was tired and cranky from having missed two days of riding, even though they probably would have been very wet ones.

Thursday morning I was determined to get out on the bike, so I didn't even check the radar. I arrived at the levee to find a fairly large group, but when I noticed the rain jacket stuffed into Woody's jersey pocket, I asked if there was something I didn't know. The answer was a definitive, "Yes. We're going to get rained on." And so we were. It never got really heavy, but by the time we got out to The Dip, there was no debate on the decision to turn around early. When Erich, who was riding his track bike, flatted, most of us waited around until he was rolling again, by which time we were getting pretty cold. Even though I got home quite wet, I was still glad to have gotten in a little exercise under the circumstances. The rest of the day pretty much went downhill, weather-wise. I drove my mother in for a follow-up visit to an MRI taken the prior week and found that she has a compression fracture at L5 which is causing her substantial hip pain, so it was off to the drug store for an assortment of analgesics, then back to work.

By the end of the day it was raining pretty hard again, so I called The Wife for extraction rather than ride home in the cold rain. That would have worked out fine except that everyone else was already gone by then and when I went to lock the office door I discovered I'd picked up the wrong keychain. I was planning on picking up my keys at home and driving back to the office to lock up, but then I thought I'd just call campus police and see if they could lock the door for me. Big mistake. They told me that they didn't have the key, so I'd have to get someone to go out there. I thanked them and after I got home hopped back into the car and drove back to lock the door. Since it was pouring rain, I went in the back door, noticing that the lights were on in the office. I thought someone had come back for some reason. But when I walked into the hallway I found myself face-to-face with an enormous campus police officer with a Glock in one hand asking me who I was. Anyway, I satisfied him that I was indeed the person who had called earlier and that I'd come back to lock up, so I was back on my way home a few minutes later feeling glad that I hadn't walked into the office earlier with a large shiny metal object in my hand.

Finally, after raining all night, a cool front pushed through early Friday morning and the skies started to clear. At 6 am the streets were very wet, it was fairly chilly, and it was very, very windy, but I probably would have ridden anyway if I hadn't been up until 1:30 am commenting on a paper for The Daughter. So let's see. I missed last Saturday, rode on Sunday and Monday, missed Tuesday and Wednesday, rode on Thursday, and missed Friday. This definitely does not constitute a training program. Tomorrow I'm going to ease back in with a nice 50-mile coffee shop ride in town, and then hopefully a long training ride on the northshore on Sunday. I think I may have reached my peak un-fitness level a bit early this year.

Fog, Flats and Fun

It was 6 am when my Blackberry alerted me to an incoming text message. I was already sitting in front of the laptop with one window showing the radar and another showing the Causeway Cam photo of the northshore toll gate. The message read simply, "What do you think?" The question wasn't about the meaning of life or the state of the economy, it was about the northshore ride, and frankly, I wasn't quite sure how to reply. It looked like the rain was gone, but the streets were good and wet and a sudden warm front had brought with it a thick fog. I replied with a noncommittal assessment of the weather. "So it that a yes?" was the reply. I thought about it for a minute. The 7 am Giro Ride on the southshore would surely be wet and foggy. The northshore ride didn't start until 8 am, but the causeway would almost certainly be socked in with fog. I reasoned that either ride would be damp, but the odds looked better on the northshore assuming we could get across the causeway in time. When the weather is like this, I've found that nine times out of ten the decision to go ahead to do the northshore ride turns out to have been the right one. So I met John and Mignon at Puccino's and we headed across the lake on the causeway, where there was a 45-mph, one lane only, fog-induced restriction. I phoned ahead to tell Jason we were going to be late, and he said they'd wait for us. It was probably about 8:30 by the time we all rolled out onto the wet asphalt.

It was warm. Warmer than most of us were willing to believe, actually. Soon, pockets were filling up with unneeded arm-warmers and vests, and by the time we got to the Watchtower hill the fog was nearly gone. I'd been hoping to see a bit of sun, but we were never quite that lucky. The prior day's clouds still blanketed the area and the news was still about the prior day's flooding. Later in the day I would learn that one of Tulane's faculty members had died after his car went into a flooded canal. He'd rescued his wife, but hadn't made it out himself. When we get these kinds of torrential rains and the drainage canals overflow, it becomes nearly impossible to tell where the road ends and the canal begins.

The ride turned out to be a lot of fun. With a small group of about seven, all of whom were willing and able to maintain a good winter ride pace, things went quite smoothly. John flatted early in the ride, but otherwise we got in a solid 65 miles on the regular northshore route despite being rather warm and damp. I'd gone out wearing two jerseys with arm and knee warmers, but after the first twenty miles most of that was just dead weight. We were about five miles from the end of the ride when I started to feel that familiar squishiness telling me I was getting a flat. The wheels and bike were pretty grimy by now and I really didn't want to have to fix a flat so close to the finish, so I continued on until I started to feel the rim bottoming out on the bumps. We were only a mile or so from the end by that time, so I dropped out of the paceline, pushed my ass way back on the saddle to keep my weight off of the front wheel, and rode the last bit on the flat. By the time I got to the cars the inner tube had bunched itself up near the valve stem and the wheel was going "thump, thump, thump," but at least my hands were still relatively clean.

Sunday evening we went with the neighbors to City Park's Celebration in the Oaks, which was really just an excuse to watch the neighbor's kid having a blast on all of the rides. It was warm, foggy and misty the whole time, but fortunately for us, they were selling wine, which made it much more enjoyable. As usual, I couldn't resist the challenge of trying to get a few good photos with my pocket camera under such challenging conditions.

This morning the streets were still soaking wet, and there was a light mist and thick fog, so I went out on the rain bike and logged an hour's recovery ride, arriving back home good and wet, and just in time to take The Cat to the Vet for a follow-up.

Wind and Rain

OK now, before I get started griping about the miserable riding weather we've had around here lately, I must direct your attention to Jill's "Up in Alaska" blog today because the photos are pretty spectacular. Next time you start to wimp out on a training ride because it's a little cold and windy, perhaps this will help put things in perspective and provide a little extra inspiration.

So Friday morning the wind was blowing even more strongly than it had been on Thursday, but since the forecast was calling, in no uncertain terms, for rain later in the day, I rummaged around searching for a couple of recently laundered and subsequently misplaced items of cool-weather riding clothing and stumbled out the door with only five minutes to make it to the levee. (How's that for a run-on sentence?) I really wasn't expecting to see anyone at the meeting spot since I arrived four or five minutes late, so I just pushed on up the river hoping to get in an hour or so of riding before work.

I was still a couple of miles from Williams Blvd. when I saw John and Taylor already coming back, so naturally I turned around. They'd turned back early because of the wind (and cold). I'd been riding along with more tailwind than headwind, so I knew the ride back would be pretty hard, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to share the pain with two other people. We weren't trying to push the pace or anything, but just maintaining 20 mph required a pretty good effort every time my turn came up on the front, and for the last few miles when we were heading directly into the wind, we were lucky to hold 19. At least I made it home, gave the cat a shot of insulin, and made it to work before things got too nasty.

The rain started later that morning and has continued off-and-on since then. Saturday morning was a wash-out, and then things just kind of went downhill. By mid-afternoon is was raining steadily. I think they said that the airport has recorded eleven inches of rain so far this month. Streets all over the city were flooding all over the city around 5 pm. My main accomplishment for the day was finding 0.3 ml, U-100, 31 gauge syringes online.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to be able to do the northshore ride, assuming the weather cooperates and I can convince The Wife to stab The Cat with a syringe that I've pre-loaded with 2 units of "Vetsulin." I definitely need a long ride, if only for psychiatric reasons.

A Tough Week for Riding

Man, it's really been a tough week for riding, at least for me. It had started out pretty well, though, with a big group ride way over in Mobile, AL. Scott K had organized a Sunday ride from his new shop, and since I knew I wouldn't get to ride on Saturday because of the LAMBRA meeting I had to attend in Jackson, MS, I figured I'd hitch a ride with some of the Herring guys and take the opportunity to ride some different roads with a different group.

Saturday: Saturday's drive up to Jackson with Mark was a little more interesting than usual because there had been some rare snowfall in southern Louisiana and Mississippi. Some of the attendees who were driving from Lafayette encountered icy roads, but for us, the driving was fine and the day was beautiful. The meeting went well and we got a preliminary calendar worked out, formed a committee to make recommendations for the LCCS, and made it back home just in time for me to get in on a private dinner at Antoine's 12th Night Room that was associated with a Psychiatry meeting. By the time I got home, I was more than ready for bed, especially since Kenny was picking me up at 5:45 am the next morning.

Sunday: When we pulled into the parking lot at Infinity Bicycles I was surprised to see so many riders. In addition to the Herring guys (Scott's teammates) and the local riders, there were a number of people from Florida and Alabama too. It was cold but sunny, but I dressed warmly anyway. I knew I'd be hot and unzipped by the end, but with a no-drop group ride with over 40 riders, I also knew there would be a fair amount of stopping and waiting. So the ride was a lot of fun and just exactly what I'd been looking for, except for a couple of rather extended stops. The pace stayed in that happy place around 20-22 mph most of the time. I got in fifteen minutes or so of hard chasing when the group strung out on a busy highway, then got split up because of a flat. Scott had offered a prize to the first rider to the top of the Cochrane Bridge at mile 63, with the attack zone starting about ten miles before that. There was a fair number of relatively fresh legs since the pace had been so moderate, so as soon as we started out from the last stop the attacks started. Aided by a little tailwind, we spent most of the time in the 28-30 mph zone, and I doubt it ever dropped below 26. Although I had no intention of contesting the race to the top, it didn't take me long to figure out that the breaks weren't going to survive, so I tucked in near the back with Frank and just tried to avoid getting gapped off. Once we hit the climb things blew up pretty fast. Frank attacked the bridge climb early and ended up beating all those young guys to the top and I even put in a little effort for the last half of the climb myself. Afterward we all went across the street for pizza and caught the last half of the Saints game, which went into overtime, so it wasn't until rather late that we finally headed back for New Orleans.

Monday and Tuesday: We had a solid string of consultant meetings lined up on Monday, so I knew I wouldn't be able to ride that day. I told myself it was OK since it was wet and rainy anyway, but somehow, in the back of my mind, I knew I was already on a slippery slope. A morning meeting on Tuesday kept me from my regular training ride that day too, and the subsequent dinner at Cochon was great, but once again my usual late night routine got tossed out the window in favor of sleep, so I set my sights on Wednesday. That's when things started going downhill. You see, The Cat, who is something like 15 years old, was showing all the symptoms of diabetes and we had taken her to the vet Tuesday evening. Her blood sugar was off the charts, so then we had to take her out to Metairie where they could monitor her overnight and then pick her up before 7:30 am to return her to the Vet Wednesday morning. I was getting desperate for a ride, so I went out in the dark early Wednesday so I could be back at the house by 7 am.

Wednesday and Thursday: It was more back and forth with the cat morning and evening, plus a Wednesday night party at the Poydras Home listening to a loud American Legion brass band while contemplating the the pros and cons of living past 80. Back at the house I ended up staying up well past midnight trying to catch up on some LAMBRA and Tulane work while at the same time downloading and installing updated drivers for an old laptop that had been given up for dead a couple of years ago but is now working great after reseating the hard drive connector and downloading a few gigabytes of Microsoft updates and fixing a software problem that had been keeping the wireless from working. By Thursday morning I was tired, but really, really needed a long ride, so The Wife handled the morning cat transfer alone and I went out to the levee for the 6:15 ride. A cold front had come through the night before, dropping the temperature by about twenty degrees and bringing with it a brutal and gusty north wind. The ride turned out to be a pretty hard one, splitting the group pretty early, thanks to the crosswind. As I rode the last few miles back to the house I could feel the dried tears and salt on my face. Then I took my mother in for an MRI because she has a bunch of sudden hip pain that I guess might be a disc problem. Now if I can just get through my afternoon dentist appointment and stop the veterinarian induced bleeding from my bank account there might at least be some hope for the weekend.

We'll see.....

A Table for Four

It's cold again. Honestly, this time of year I never know what surprises the thermometer will bring each morning. Today it was back in the upper 40s - long tights and shoe-cover weather for me. Clouds on the eastern horizon blocked the sun, and together with a strong north wind made it feel colder and darker than usual. Like me, everyone had tried to time his arrival at the meeting spot to minimize any unnecessary standing around, so the crew went from three to a dozen in about two minutes. As we headed up the river into the wind I already knew what would happen. At some point we'd come to a long crosswind stretch, someone at the front would push the pace, and then something, almost anything, would cause a little gap to open. As we all know, a little gap on a crosswind day can be fatal.

It didn't take long for the group to sort itself out - stronger riders toward the front taking pulls; the rest lined up on the edge of the asphalt trying to get a draft. When I saw Mignon dropping back after taking a pull I let her into the paceline ahead of me because the headwind was about to become a crosswind. She had been telling me last weekend how frustrating it had been getting dropped on these windy days and I encouraged her to try to stay near the front where there was a better draft and lower chance of having the paceline break ahead of her.

So things were going along OK as we rode through Kenner and I found myself on Big Richard's wheel six riders from the front. We were on that long stretch between the parish line and The Dip with a strong quartering crosswind. The pace had already jumped up a notch as the road curved back toward the west, and only a few were still consistently taking pulls at the front. Suddenly the speed surged up again, taking us above 25 mph. Woody was testing his legs and thinking about the training ride he was going to do with the Herring guys on Sunday. I was still getting a bit of a draft along the left edge of the bike path, but I didn't dare look back. I knew there was nothing behind me but pain. Then I heard Keith say, "we lost everyone else." A moment later we came to a jogger in the oncoming lane and Richard had to move over to the right out of the draft. Bam! A gap opened immediately. I looked down at the computer and it said 27 mph. We got past the pedestrian, but the damage was done. The front group was still accelerating. Richard took a hard pull and blew. I came past, closed a few meters, and then started losing ground again. The wind was strong enough that I couldn't sustain the necessary 28 mph for more than thirty seconds, if that, and there was just no draft to be had. I watched the group of four pull away ahead of me and didn't even need to look back to know that I was all alone in the wind. As Erich (who was on his track bike with a 48 x 16) said a bit later, "There's only a table for four" in that kind of crosswind.

I rode the rest of the way to the turnaround alone at around 21 mph, which wasn't easy.

On the return trip the wind wasn't quite so much of a factor, so I spent a lot more time at the front. The pace nonetheless got fast and the number of people pulling started to drop. We were down to three in the rotation for a while, then just two. The pack had split again somewhere out there - I don't know exactly where - but eventually the speed dropped a notch and things smoothed out. So I ended up with a good training ride with just a couple of fairly brief excursions into anaerobic territory and a good long time in that winter training zone where I want to be this time of year. After a brief stop at Zotz for a cup of dark roast and turbinado sugar I was feeling pretty good.

Rain Bike Days

Yesterday and today were rain bike days for me. Although the forecast for both days was rather worse than reality, the decision to ride the old Pennine was an easy one. Tuesday morning at 5:45 am I peered through the Levelors and was surprised to find it wasn't raining. That was encouraging. I checked the weather radar right away. That was far less encouraging. I whispered to myself, "it looks like there's a little hole in the rain!" There was a good chance I could get in a few miles before the city would be overtaken by the green stuff, so I stuffed a rain jacket into my jersey pocket, pumped up the tires on the full-fender Pennine, flipped on the blinky lights and headed out to the levee. The air was cool but unsettled and you could tell that things were changing. There was nobody at the usual meeting spot, which didn't surprise me at all. Who would be crazy enough to go out on a morning like this when it was guaranteed to rain?

I would soon find out.

The first person I saw riding toward me was Howard. He turned around and asked, as if he was surprised, "Is this it?" I assured him it was, and told him I was just hoping to get in twenty miles without getting too wet and cold. So we rode on at a pretty easy pace for a few miles, and then Howard commented, "I think I feel raindrops." A little while later we met up with Mark G., and by then we were riding in a light drizzle that showed no sign of stopping. Still, it was pretty light and looked like it would stay that way, so I set my sights on a turnaround at the Pipes, which would give me my 20 miles and likely get me home before hypothermia set in. It never did rain very hard, but by the time I got home my feet and the fronts of my legs were feeling pretty cold. It rained most of the day - that cold, drippy kind of drizzle that chills you to the bone.

At 5 am this morning I could hear it raining pretty hard outside the bedroom window, but by the time I got up an hour later it had stopped and the radar was looking pretty good. The streets, however, were soaking wet. I knew that would keep most people off their bikes, but fortunately my rain bike's fenders would keep my feet and legs nice and dry, so I went out as usual. It was one of the loneliest rides I've ever had on the levee bike path. I probably saw four people the whole time, but by the time I was on my way back the asphalt was drying out and the sun was shining in my eyes, so it turned out to have been a good call. Granted, I never seem to get much of a workout on days like this, but I think it's still worthwhile to do these kinds of rides as long as you don't get too chilled. Right now the weather is much improved and the next couple of days should be windy and chilly, but definitely without rain.

So my nephew emailed me the other day looking for some information about my grandfather for a project he is doing at school. I dug out some old photos and stuff and spend a while with the scanner looking at an old diary and some old photos. It's nice that these things have survived the last hundred years or so. Reading my grandfather's brief diary that starts a couple of days before his wedding in 1922 and ends with his return from a honeymoon trip to California, I was kind of surprised that I had seen and visited most of the places he did. Here's a scan of a couple of pages of the diary recounting a train derailment approaching Colorado Springs and a couple of days of sightseeing before continuing on back to New Orleans. I don't think he ever got to take another extended trip like that and had to make do with reading National Geographic.

Turnabout

Sunday morning - the legs felt good, the sky was clear, and the temperature was on the rise. It was looking like it would be a great day for the Northshore winter training ride. Pat and I loaded our bikes into, and onto, Vivian's car, and drove across the causeway to see who would show up at the Lee Road Middle School. As usual, the temperature had dropped a few degrees during the trip and it felt chilly standing there in the parking lot staring into by the abyss that is my gear bag. What to wear? At the moment, it was clearly knee-warmer weather, but there was no doubt that in an hour the south wind and clear sky would be pushing the temperature into the mid-60s. Well, I went with the warm stuff, knowing I'd be unzipping things pretty quickly.

As late November rides go, this one was pretty typical except that we somehow lost Cindy, and her husband who was following on his scooter, within the first ten miles. The pace hadn't been particularly fast, and so as we were nearing the Watchtower I looked back. I couldn't see either of them. Probably some sort of mechanical problem, I thought. They had a map, so nothing to worry about. The group sailed through Enon and continued up Lee Road and Tullos Road with a light tailwind, but after turning east on 1072 some gaps started to open up. Nobody was turning the screws, but the fact of group riding this time of year, particularly right after Thanksgiving, is that riders' goals and fitness levels are pretty much all over the map. Later, way up at the northern end of the route, we stopped briefly to regroup. As I often do, rather than wait, I turned around and rode back to pick up the riders who were off the back and ride with them back to the group. This is a nice way to get in a few extra miles, avoid standing around doing nothing, and keep the group together. Later in the year when the rides get more competitive, this is a far less attractive option, but after the prior day's long ride it was just what I needed.

I ended up doing this three or four times over the course of the 65 mile ride. When we picked up a little tail-crosswind coming back on 1072, Viv got gapped off on the hills. I dropped back so we could take the Dummyline Road shortcut and it worked out perfectly as we met back up with the group right at the Enon town sign.

Next was the climb up to the watchtower from the Bogue Chitto river, and I thought I'd see if I could ride tempo at the front to limit the damage that I knew it would inflict on some of the more tired legs. Unfortunately, one man's tempo is another man's surge, I guess, and by the time the small front group got to Tung Road there was a long string of solo riders stretched out over a couple of miles of highway, so I turned back one last time and rode back up the road to pick up the last rider and make sure everyone got through the final intersection without getting lost. Then, for the last seven miles or so I time-trialed in passing a few of the solo riders along the way. I ended up with something like 66 miles, so all that turning around made up for the lost mileage from the shortcut. Worked out pretty nicely! Back in the parking lot, we were just about to head home when we saw Jorge about to drive out of the parking lot in the wrong direction. He rolled down his car window and told us that Cindy had actually continued on the full route but that they had missed the turn at Sie Jenkins Road and ended up in Bogalousa where they had called him for directions. He had told them how to get back to Enon and was going to go pick them up there.

Later in the afternoon we walked over to Palmer Park to wander around the monthly crafts fair for a while since the weather was so nice. I took a cellphone photo of these "Bead Bikes" that were locked up at the park. Things will be going downhill in that regard for the next day or two, however. I got in a nice 25 mile recovery ride this morning, but by 10:30 or so it was raining. Right now, it looks like we should be able to get in tomorrow's morning ride before conditions start to deteriorate ahead of the next batch of rain scheduled for Tuesday evening and Wednesday. By Thursday the next little cold front should arrive, but it doesn't look like it will stick around long.