Late for the Sunday Giro

Sunday's Giro was largely uneventful. The morning started strangely for me. I failed to reset the only two clocks (oven clock and bedside alarm clock) in my house which aren't connected to computers and reset automatically. And although I awoke hours before I needed to, I somehow managed to avoid looking at the ten clocks on two desktops, two laptops, two iPhones, an iPad, and three cable boxes, and relied instead on my oven clock as I sauntered around my kitchen, quite relaxed and unhurried, waiting for my second cup of coffee to heat in the microwave. I returned to my desk and perused a couple of articles about the shake-ups in the Saints roster. I checked the weather observation from Lakefront Airport. And then, for reasons unknown, I happened to glance up at the cable box sitting atop my TV and got most of the way through a double-take before realizing why the box read 6:25 -- daylight savings time. Damn. I usually leave my house by 6:30, and I hadn't started getting ready to go.

 I got away from my house at 6:45, and debated whether I could make it to my normal parking spot on Killdeer and then to the swim hole for 7:08, which is about when the Giro gets there. I decided to play it safe and park at Elysian Fields. At Nashville and Willow Street, about 12 blocks from my house, I saw a cyclist with an orange argyle kit (Ben, I think) heading toward the lake. It was 6:54. I wanted to find out where he caught the Giro because he couldn't have made it to the start, but I never got the opportunity to ask during the ride.

When I got on my bike I started soft pedaling east and ended up at the top of the Casino Bridge waiting for the group. Soon, I was joined by the OWNHB. Do you recall I indicated in the first paragraph that my morning started strangely?

I had an interesting conversation with the OWNHB, but I couldn't follow everything he was telling me sufficiently to relate it here with any degree of accuracy. He talked about the most famous European track cyclists training in the draft of motorcycles at 50 mph (40 mph for women), a largely equivalent workout he has devised locally involving a wildly geared bike and doing repeats from the top of the Casino Bridge, but only on the left fork, going to the casino, and only six repeats.

I keep nodding and looking back toward the west hoping to see the group appear. "They're late," I said.

"They're afraid of me. I'm too fast for them," he responded.

When the group finally did appear I learned that Max had a flat at the bridge over Bayou St. John. Max showed me his bloodied hand. I asked him if he had fallen, and he said it was the flat. Zipp 101s must bite because his hand was a bloody mess.

Nothing else of note occurred on the ride. The weather was perfect with calm winds and temperatures in the upper 50s. I was struck with how pleasant the ride was compared to last week's Giro which had split into several pieces both ways. The personalities present yesterday were almost identical to the previous week with the notable exceptions of Brett and Woody. But I've been on many pleasant rides when they were present. So I am at a loss.

Notes: Rob was present on a TT bike but was only seen on Hayne. HL beat the OWNHB in the Chevron sprint.

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