Last Ride

The last ride of 2004 was a very civilized group ride on the levee. Lots of conversation and a double paceline nearly the whole way made it a great way to end the cycling year. After a couple of laps around Audubon Park, Gina and Kenny did some extra miles while I headed home, a little concerned about an increasingly scratchy throat and planning on taking a look at the flame trap in the Volvo's emission control system that I suspected was clogged up and causing oil to blow out through the filler cap and dipstick fitting.

After I got home I started in on exploratory surgery on the car, but had to close up without fixing anything when I discovered the rubber hoses leading to the flame trap had basically disintegrated. This one will have to be referred to the specialists at the dealer, since removal of the intake manifold will probably be required, and I'm just not up to that sort of thing any more. With my sore throat showing no sign of improvement, I needed something to distract myself and ended up trimming hedges and sweeping up leaves for a few hours, after which I decided to investigate why my rear wheel bearings were loose just one day after I had adjusted them. I quickly discovered that, as Kenny had suggested earlier in the day, that the plastic retainer was cracked. I think I can replace it with the aluminum one from a Campi Chorus or Record hub for about $30, but it looks like I'll be riding on my racing wheel for a week or two.

Kenny called around 4 and invited me over to meet Gina's sister Amy and boyfriend (for some reason I only remember the girls' names - go figure) before they headed out to dinner in the Quarter. After a couple glasses of wine and an equal number of zinc lozenges (thanks to Gina), they were ready to head out, so I took a group photo after loading three bottles of champagne into their trunk. I have a feeling they won't make the 9 a.m. ride tomorrow! I guarantee that if they end up in the New Year's Eve crowd in the French Quarter, where they were going to dinner, and one of the camera crews spots them, they will make it onto TV for sure.

I've now had about enough wine to forget, for the moment, about my sore throat, and I guess I'll probably watch the New Year come in, once again, on T.V. Rather sad, really, but I don't guess I'd be much fun tonight anyway, and I'm just hoping I'm not running a fever by morning.

"After all, tomorrow is another day . . ."

Warmup

The weather has certainly warmed up around here, and this morning I headed out in shorts, arm-warmers and a couple of summer jerseys. There was a big group for the long training ride on the levee and I ended up in a little group of six or so off the front a little bit. We had a slight tailwind most of the way out and for the last mile we were up around 30 mph. Yeah, I broke down and used the big ring today. The return trip was a little slower, but the group split again, with a handful of us pushing a bit harder off the front. When we got to the playground, I turned around and rode back for the longest time, finally meeting up with the rest of the group that had stopped when Gina flatted.

As we were riding back, I was talking with Gina and she suggested we do a few more miles. Since I'm still off work until Monday, I agreed and we took a nice little tour, riding downtown through the crazy Sugar Bowl and New Year's Eve traffic. The big tents were all set up already in the French Quarter in preparation for the big New Year's Eve party and we spotted the 2005 New Year's baby up on the roof of the old Jax Brewery. After weaving in and out of the old Faubourg Marigny neighborhood, we headed back, stopping at one point to fix another flat, and ended up at Kenny's house for a look at GiVo's new Fuji team frame and fork. It's really amazing how light bike frames are nowadays.

By the time I got home, the computer was reading 68 miles and I was planning on enjoying a left-over soft-shell crab that was in the 'fridge. First, I discovered that the soft-shell crab apparently never made it into the refrigerator - probably left it at my mom's house after dinner. The next thing I know, I hear the alarm going off on my Palm Pilot, and I'm wondering, what hell is that about? What it was about was a dentist appointment I had, once again, conveniently forgotten about. I have a particular knack for forgetting about dentist appointments (especially when I know they're going to cost me around $600). So then I had to really hustle in order to shower, eat and get out to the dentist's office, where I arrived with not a second to spare. At least the visit was painless - the one good thing about putting a cap on a tooth that's had a root canal already.

Tomorrow should be an easy day, and we're planning a group ride for New Year's day morning and then the first real Winter Training Ride across the lake on Sunday. After that, it will be back to reality on Monday.

I'm trying not to think about that.

Good Ridin' - New Threads

Yesterday's long ride started out pretty cold, but there was a big group of around 20 and everyone was pretty much on the same page. Although the general level of aggressiveness won't reach its peak for another couple of months, you can already sense some of the guys wanting to push just a little bit harder now and then. We were about half-way back, maybe more, when the long paceline blew through a little patch of mud and gravel that one of the grass-cutting tractors had kicked up onto the asphalt. Ronnie said he felt his rim bottom out on a rock, and shortly thereafter he pulled out of the line with a flat. We were toward then end of the paceline at the time, so the front part of the group never knew there had been a flat. Six or seven of us stopped to help and save Ronnie from a solo ride home, and half a mile after we started riding again we came across Jay who was just finishing fixing his flat, probably caused by the same bad patch of road. With the nice and rapidly warming weather I took the long way home, riding through Tulane's nearly deserted campus.

So I ended up spending some time driving around running errands - tracking down a couple of picture frames for The Daughter (she had asked for some "New Orleans" sketches for her Iowa walls), and picking up a couple of new light fixtures for the kitchen. By the end of the day I had re-greased the hubs in both of my training wheels, installed a new chandelier light fixture in the kitchen, a pendant light in front of the pantry, and sliced my fingers in two places because I was too lazy to go find the wire-strippers and used my Swiss Army Knife instead. I wonder if the Swiss Army goes through as many band-aids and I do. The light installation was a real pain because this old house had a barely-attached pancake ceiling box screwed into the old plaster lath which was beneath a layer of sheetrock. That meant I had to install a new box with appropriate bracing, re-route the ancient wiring, and re-engineer some of the mounting hardware to accommodate the new but very non-standard dimensions of the sheetrock/ceiling. It all turned out fine and looks nice, although of course the wiring in this house would give an electrical inspector a heart attack. We're talking cloth-covered copper with ceramic post-and-tube insulators. I try to think of it as an interesting construction detail with historic significance.

Wednesday Morning
This morning we had a nice group up on the levee. I had decided to try out my new Christmas present - a Pearlizumi Kodiak jersey. As always, it is a little bit on the roomy side, since here in America guys my size are apparently relegated to something even below "small." Try finding a pair of pants with a 28 or 29 waist in a men's store some time. Been like that all my life and it's a pain in the arse never being able to buy clothes that fit right off the shelf. I guess what bugs me the most about it is that if I was some huge 6'8" guy with a 48 waist, I could take my pick of "big and tall" shops. Ever seen a "small and thin" shop?

Anyway, the jersey is great, and the little extra material around the middle isn't really much of a problem in the winter. This is a kind of heavy long-sleeve jersey with a brushed interior - very cozy. I may finally be able to retire my old Performance winter jacket.

On the ride this morning, Rob was feeling kind of jumpy, wanting to keep the pace at a reasonable level, which was fine, since it never got out of hand or anything. I did a fair amount of work on the way out, although by the time we got to the turnaround I couldn't see a blasted thing through my fogged-up clear glasses. The last 5 miles or so were through a fairly thick fog - thick enough that I flipped on my headlight for a while. The return trip today was a long steady ride with The Donald pulling practically the whole way at 22-23 mph. He does that sometimes, which is OK and has the added benefit of being both safer and cheaper than Prozak! One of The Wife's sisters, who lives near Atlanta, is on her way here right now, having visited various other relatives in Baton Rouge yesterday.

Nearly Normal

The weather this morning was nearly back to normal for this time of year. It was around 37F when I went out, and there was a nice frost covering everything, but by the time I got back a couple of hours later the temperature had risen over 10 degrees and there was a clear blue sky. I could have ridden longer under such nice conditions, but there are still a few Christmas loose ends left to tie up. We had a small group on the levee - only six or seven - and The Howard was out with his PowerCranks, slowly lugging some enormous gear. Anyway, it was a nice maintenance ride at mostly 19-21 mph with nice scenery, no wind, and a bit of conversation. One of the guys was in town from Boulder and kept saying how nice it was that we had that bike path to ride on. Sometimes I forget how lucky we are in that regard. If they could just put in some hills, it would be perfect!

The Daughter called last night around 11:30, having made it back to Iowa City OK, but, once again, without her luggage. I wasn't too surprised. When we checked her in at the airport yesterday afternoon, there was a huge 10-foot high disorganized pile of luggage waiting to be scanned. I'll bet her bags never made it onto the plane out of New Orleans, even though they were there over an hour early. I hope they show up today. She ended up taking two huge bags back with her, each weighing in at just about 50 pounds.

Meanwhile, Joey and Kelly D, who had stopped by the house for a while Saturday evening, ended up spending the night in Charlotte, courtesy of the airline, and didn't get back home until this morning.

The university is officially closed until after New Year's day, although I'm sure I'll stop in a couple of times between now and then. It should give me a chance to get in some nice rides and catch up on a few little things around the house. Next Sunday we'll start the "real" winter training rides, and I'll start pushing a little harder as we generally are in Joe Friel's "Build" period. Joe's book was one of the first I ever read where the author really seemed to have a handle on the kinds of training that U.S. cyclists typically do. I'm sure if I ever had the discipline to actually follow the full training program I'd be a better cyclist, but in reality I compromise quite a bit between a well-structured training program and one that allows for a bit more fun and group rides.

White Christmas in . . . New Orleans???

I could hear the sleet falling late last night, and with the streets wet and temps in the low 30s this morning, any chance of slipping out for a little training ride went out the window real fast. By mid-morning the steady sleet and drizzle was starting to accumulate on the car and the police throughout the area were busy closing down roads. We had expected a little bit of what the weatherman was calling "wintery mix." What I didn’t expect was the snow! Some time around mid-afternoon, as I was recovering from overeating at The Mom’s house, we had a solid half-hour of steady snow. Actual snow! This was the first significant snowfall in the city since 1989, so naturally we had to go out and take a little walk in it. It’s around 11 p.m. now and there is still a thin layer of snow covering the car and visible here and there on the ground. Rather bizarre stuff for New Orleans, to be sure. I guess I’ll play it by ear tomorrow riding-wise, since I really don’t know what to expect. All I know for sure is that the cold won’t last for long and by the middle of next week we’ll have high temps in the 70’s.

I guess I had already written off this week training-wise, so although I'm already feeling kind of fat and sluggish, I'm not all that anxious to be out there riding in the cold slush. It will be better soon enough. If I can, I'll slip out tomorrow at some point for an hour or two, but I think I can wait until Monday to get back into the training groove. The Daughter leaves tomorrow night to head back to school in Iowa where the 36 degrees we have here right now is more like the high temperature on a nice day.

Winter Discipline

It was cold and windy this morning and, predictibly, only five of us were there in the dark at 6:15 a.m. for the morning ride. I knew it would be a pretty miserable ride, but for people like me who despise (and avoid) working out inside, getting out the door on mornings like this is part of an essential winter discipline. There have been years when I have succumed to the warmth of the comforter. It's like falling for that "here, the first one's free" line from the local drug dealer. You get up the next morning and it's even easier to skip that day too, and before you know it you've been sitting on the couch eating bon-bons for two weeks and what shred of fitness you still had is in the waste basket along with the brightly colored chocolate silver bell wrappers. All that does is add another excuse -- the near-certainty of being dropped on the next group ride -- to your already growing list. Then you wake up one morning and it's March and you're still not in shape and the guys who stuck it out all winter are blowing your socks off.

So we rode. It was windy enough that we were all having trouble holding a line in the crosswinds and The Donald eventually resorted to hanging a bit off the back because he was sure someone was going to touch wheels and go down. In fact, at one point I felt Rob brush my calf with his shoe. Ronnie turned back early, while Luke and The Donald discussed shortening the ride a bit and turning back at "The Dip." As we approached it, Rob started trying to convince them to keep going and do the whole long ride. He even resorted to "Come on. Are we men or mice?" The response was a chorus of high-pitched squeaks. I suppose I would have done the whole ride if there had been a few more riders, but if it was to be just Rob and me in that wind I probably would have done more harm than good. Other than seriously cold arms and toes, I was feeling pretty good. At least I have postponed setting up the indoor trainer for another day!

I had dressed for the temperature (upper 30s), but hadn't factored in the wind, and my knit gloves and arm-warmers were not up to the task today. By the time I got home the muscles in my forearms were so cold they were barely functional. I had great difficulty retreiving my keys from my back pocket and even more turning the key in the lock. The forecast for tomorrow is for slightly colder temps, and if this wind keeps up I'm going to go with the old wool riding jacket with the windproof panels and the neoprene booties. Hell, I'll probably wear all that even if the wind doesn't keep up! It's looking like another little cold front will come through around mid-day tomorrow, so we may get an actual freeze the night before Christmas.

The Threat of Christmas . . .

I had hoped to be able to ride this morning before the expected rain, but by 6 a.m. the sound of car tires on wet pavement told me I was out of luck. I got suckered into going shopping with The Wife last night to "pick up a few little gifts for the office." Since I needed a few of those myself, I went along. 10 minutes later I was finished; about $35 the poorer including an ornament I got for our own tree. The next hour was spent loitering around while The Wife inspected each and every gift item, contemplating its worth and appropriateness. My feet hurt. I was hungry. Finally she gave up and another $100 was gone.

The NOBC website has been down since yesterday, and if it still is, that's why you don't see the photos and background on the blog site, since that's where the images come from. Since the webserver and our space on it is donated by one of the local guys, I just sent him an e-mail and am hoping they get it back up soon. This happens every now and then . . .

The office is pretty dead now, with half of the staff already out on vacation. Hopefully I'll be able to ride tomorrow morning, although it will be quite cold the next few days. The club is trying to wrap up its sponsorship package for next year so we can get our jersey order out. The new colors will be blue and red with grey accents - quite a change from the green, yellow and black of the last few years. The Herring Gas team has ordered their new jerseys, and from what I heard, theirs looked so much like the initial version of ours that Amy has gone back to the drawing board for a little re-design.

LAMBRA is also trying to firm up the preliminary Louisiana/Mississippi racing calendar. Leadership on that has been a little sketchy and so there is an air of uncertainty about much of it right now. I went ahead and uploaded an Excel-to-html version to the LAMBRA.org website yesterday so that everyone is at least looking at the same thing. We could sure use a few more road races in there somewhere.

I've already had a couple of cups of coffee, mainly because it's here and I'm a little bored, so now I'll be wired and bored. Just to twist the knife, The Wife wants to take The Daughter out to look at cars. Not that we can afford to be buying any cars, you understand. I'm thinking in terms of a 5 year old Saturn some time during the Summer.

Rollin', Rollin' on the River

Today's brief window of warmer weather brought a lot of riders out of the woodwork for this morning's long levee ride, and a few of them actually wanted to get some exercise. We were less than half-way out before the group split, leaving just a handful of us to deal with The Howard's psycho-masochistic surges up to 29 mph every time he came to the front. The rest of us were pulling at around 24-25 mph. Gina went with the split and stayed in most of the way out. It probably wasn't a coincidence that as soon as she came off the back Howard seemed to ease up for a while and the pace dropped back down to around 23 for a few miles. I was feeling pretty good after my day off yesterday, but still wasn't quite ready to let my ego do the driving, even though I could hear it screaming "counterattack!"

Anyway, the warmer weather was much appreciated, and, for that matter, so was the faster pace. I think everyone was trying to put a little extra training in the bank ahead of the holidays and predicted frigid weather later in the week. The weathermen were talking "snow and sleet" last night, although we all know it's just a tease to keep us watching the news. At any rate, we are pretty sure to get a little dip below freezing on Friday, with a high of only 43 on Christmas. (It's around 70F right now!!) Still, I do remember that year about 15 years ago when, on the last day of work before Christmas break, we were surprised by a rare and extremely heavy snowfall and freezing weather that virtually shut down the city for the better part of a week and left lots of people with frozen and broken water pipes too.

That's about the last time that happened around here, so we're probably about due.

There's a guy up here on the roof (25 floors up) who just climbed over the railing connected to a lot less rope than I'd be comfortable with. Looks like it's window-cleaning time again. I wonder what it feels like to step off the edge of a building like that? I guess you get used to it - sort of like criteriums!

Missed Again!

I stuck my nose out from under the warm blanket just long enough to check the outside temperature. It was only 37F, but at 6 a.m. that, plus the chilly temperature inside the house and my dwindling motivation, provided ample excuse for me to turn off the alarm. After having a good training ride on Sunday, I guess I was feeling like I could afford the luxury of an "off" day. (Deep down, I know that there will probably be a couple more "off" days this week between the weather and Christmas.)

And so it begins. The annual battle against my deep-seated hibernation instinct. I can almost feel the brown fat accumulating around my waist. Tomorrow will be better, though, and I am already looking forward to riding. Hopefully we'll have a good group and can do the "long ride" that nets me something like 44 miles before breakfast.

The Daughter has taken custody of the car for the duration and plans on going across the lake to work out at the Northshore Gymnastics gym some time this evening.

Things are quiet around the office. A couple of our staff are missing and the phone has hardly rung. E-mails are few and far between, and the meeting I had on my calendar for this afternoon has already been cancelled and probably won't be rescheduled until after the holidays. I guess if there's one thing that is nice about working for a university, it's these long holiday vacations that actually start about a week early when classes end and faculty start to take vacations. It usually makes me feel uneasy, though. I am a creature of habit and routine and don't take too well to the holiday aimlessness that disrupts my schedule.

Holiday Mode

Picked The Daughter up from the airport late Saturday night. By some sort of cosmic coincidence, her old teammate Kristi from Slidell, who was returning home from the University of Nebraska, was not only on the same flight from Chicago, but had the seat next to her. We got to the airport early because The Wife was anxious, and there were Kristi's parents. The only problem was that D had needed to run to make it onto the plane in Chicago because her connecting flight from Cedar Rapids had been late. Her luggage, therefore, spent the night in Chicago.

So Saturday morning I woke up pretty sore and stiff from Friday's dance with the asphalt, but I got dressed, pumped up the tires, and headed out anyway for the Giro ride. Well, I went about four blocks and hit the "abort" button. My neck muscles were so sore that they were hurting every time I hit a bump, and the prospect of riding three hours like that was not looking too good. So I made some rather bad coffee and figured I should chill out on the couch for a while and try again on Sunday. Picked up a Barista coffee maker for The Wife (special request) and then hunted around to find a Starbucks that had the metal filter in stock. I was amazed that they would actually sell a coffee maker that used paper filters! Got a great deal, though. The $99 coffee maker was on sale for $79 and they threw in a bag of Christmas blend coffee, so I'll rationalize by saying that I essentially got the metal filter for free!

Saturday night was Robin's Christmas party, and it was nice being able to chat with a bunch of people with whom my usual conversations consist of things like "Hole!" and "Bumb!" Had some nice jambalaya and heard the TurDuckin and gumbo were good too, although personally I was saving room for another glass of Beaujolais Nouveau and some of those little chocolate eclairs.

Sunday was another winter training ride across the lake and I wasn't too surprised when only Con and Rob showed up at the Morning Call to drive over. We ended up with five guys and about that many mechanical problems. First, Rob discovered that he had somehow lost the bolt that holds his front brake on, so we had to improvise, removing his brake shoes and using some packing tape I had in my car to tape the brake caliper to the front fork. Next, Con had to stop because his rear wheel was crooked in the dropout and so the tire had been rubbing the frame for the last few miles. About 30 miles out, as we were riding across a particularly rough stretch, Mark broke a spoke (and the rim cracked too?!) in his rear Ksyrium wheel. We secured the broken spoke so that it wouldn't hit the frame, but the rim was pretty wobbly and the tire was hitting the frame, so he headed back the shortest way while we pressed on to do a little loop North of Enon, which was great. On the way back, Rob's rear wheel was starting to look worse and worse. The last few miles, he was starting to hurt and when we got back to the car we found out why. His wheel was hitting the brake.

Anyway, despite all the mechanicals and the steadily escalating North wind, it was a beautiful 72 miles out in the country today and we had a pretty nice training ride under clear blue skies with temps between 40 and 55. This was the first weekend that it really started to look like Winter, and tonight will probably be the coldest weather we've had yet, which means that it will get down almost to freezing in the city. On the way back home, I stopped for a coke at a gas station and got one of those bottle caps that said I won a free one-liter coke!

WhooHooo, Merry Christmas to me!

Clotheslined (Yeouch!)

OK. So I'm riding out to meet the group this morning, going maybe 10 mph down my tree-shaded street in the semi-darkness. I see this woman walking toward me in the street headed diagionally off to my left. Just another early morning walker. As I get within 20 feet of her, something catches my eye. I see her left arm make a sudden movement.

Then I see it.

The leash! One of those 25-foot black retractable leashes; and it's stretched all the way across the road. I never even saw the dog, which was all the way on the other side of the street behind a car. To make matters worse, the woman lifts the leash up over her head trying to get it over me, but it's way too late. I never even had a chance to hit the brakes. Went down like a sack of cement on my left hip and heard the "whack" as my helmet hit the asphalt. No major damage thanks to the low speed I was going and the extra layer of clothes I had on. I ground a few millimeters off of the back of my cell phone. Coincidentally, the damage was limited to the used battery I got yesterday after I walked down to the Alltel store to get a replacement and was told, not unexpectedly, "oh that model's been discontinued." What a racket. The salesperson went in the back and found an old battery and gave it to me to try. I had a bit of a headache for the next 10 minutes and a bruised hip and scraped up ankle, but at least no raw hamburger road rash. I'm sure my neck will be sore tomorrow - it always is after I whack my head on the pavement, which I seem to do every year or two. I hope the dog has a sore neck too, but if I had a choice about who to have put down, it'd be the woman.

But damn. I hate those stupid 25-foot leashes. The dog may as well be running loose, since the owner has no control whatsoever with a leash that long. I got back up and took off pretty quickly because I knew if I started talking with the dimwit I'd end up giving her a piece of my mind, which would have served only to make me more angry.

'Tis the Season

'Tis the season for shoe-covers. Broke out the old neoprene ones this morning since I knew there would be a small turnout and the pace would be moderate. Likewise, I dusted off the heavy riding jacket. No point being uncomfortable. After all, it's December! The one thing about riding in the Winter is that what you'll remember tomorrow morning isn't how warm you were when you got home, it's how cold you were when you stepped out the door. It's a personal game of psychology. If you freeze your butt off one morning, it makes it really hard to get out of bed the next. For a short ride, it's just better to overdress a bit.

There were four of us on the morning ride today and it was fairly cold by my standards. I guess around 36F and windy. I was toasty warm in my old cold weather stuff, although if the pace had been hard I'm sure I would have been soaked with sweat. Naturally, The Donald showed up in shorts and a long-sleeve jersey, asking the rest of us "Whatcha gonna do when it gets really cold?" Anyway, we just did a routine 27 mi. ride. Toward the end I was thinking that we really should have done a few miles a bit faster to get in a little high heart rate action, but then this cold won't last too much longer and as Miss Scarlet said, ". . . tomorrow is another day."

On the way back I got caught by a train (twice in two days??) and hovered around riding little circles at the crossing gate as a line of cars a mile long waited in escalating frustration while the train, only 10 cars from clearing the crossing, ground to a halt and sat motionless for what seemed like ten minutes. I contemplated doing a little off-road and crossing behind the last car, but it eventually started up again. I sprinted across before the gate lifted to avoid the crush of frustrated drivers and made it all the way to the light at Carrollton without being passed.

The commute in to work seemed colder than the training ride since I was wearing regular clothes and an uninsulated jacket and was sitting up slogging into the wind the whole way. On the cold mornings like this I usually wear a knit cap, my old Ray Ban sunglasses, leather gloves and a long jacket. Since I hate having to haul in another pair of shoes, I just ride in my Bass Loafers with an extra pair of coolmax socks hidden beneath the generic black ones. After I get to work, I can then look like a normal person in a matter of seconds!

Looks can be deceiving, can't they?

A Rather Blustery Day

There was a gusting Northwest wind and the temperature was around 37 F this morning, so like a true Southerner, I bundled up as if I were about to embark on an Arctic expedition. Down here where things like down coats are found only in specialty shops, that means double arm-warmers, the long lycra tights, a couple of jerseys and a vest. And, of course, light shoe covers. The neoprene ones don't come out unless it's around freezing. As I was riding out to the levee I heard the omnious sound of a train horn. Every morning I have to cross the tracks at the parish line in order to get to the levee, and now and then a train blocks my way. I was dreading the prospect of having to stop and freeze to death waiting for this one, but luckily it was very short and by the time I got there it was almost past.

I wasn't expecting much of a crowd for the usually popular Tuesday ride, and in fact there were only four of us who showed up today, and Richard of The Pelican Club turned back early. The wind was so strong that our little eschelon took up the whole path on the crosswind sections. Just as we headed out toward the West, I spotted a meteor streaking across the still-darkened Western sky - no doubt a straggler from the meteor shower that peaked last night. We decided to forgo the long route this morning in consideration of the wind and the fact that at our average speed of, maybe, 19 mph we would have gotten back quite a bit later than usual. Shortly after we turned around, though, Big Richard showed up coming from the other direction. I guess he had been running late, but anyway Rob turned around with him and I guess they did some extra miles.

It'll be a bit colder tomorrow morning, but if it's not as windy it will probably feel better than today.

Change is in the Air

Took a very easy and short spin on the levee this morning. The new Bill Keller Memorial" signs are up, as is the water level in the river. As I rode back, pushed along by an approaching cold front, I spotted what looked to me like a coyote out on the river batture trying to bag one of the herons feeding in the partially flooded areas. Despite the clear blue skies, the temperature stayed about the same all day and is expected to be down into the upper 30s by morning, dropping below freezing tomorrow night. Could be worse. The Daughter, up at U. Iowa, is expecting a low of around 8F tonight.

We had the guy from Data Systems in all day again today working on Irena's computer, which seems to be pretty well messed up. To make matters worse, there were major problems with Tulane's mailserver last night and mail and internet access in general was slugish at best all day today. This make two computers that they want to "restore," which is techspeak for "we don't have a clue what we or you did to screw this computer up so badly and we don't know how to fix it, but we're sure that if we throw everything out, reformat the hard drive, and reinstall everything from scratch it'll probably be better." In the old days, they called this "burning down the barn to kill the rats."

I guess I'll take a shot at riding tomorrow morning, although it'll be pretty cold and windy for sure. My calendar at work is filling up with a lot of things like office parties and actual work is already starting to slack off. The christmas tree is up, but not yet decorated, and the required chrismas gifts have yet to be purchased owing to the usual inadequate resources of time and money.

Situation normal.

Not Too Bad

Despite my own comedy of errors on Saturday morning, this weekend was not too bad at all. We have had marvelous, if not windy, weather all weekend, and so I've gotten in a couple of nice rides. The holiday season looms over the city now, and The Wife has begun the annual torture of non-stop Christmas music. Not that I have anything in particular against Cristmas music, it's just that after the first ten or fifteen CDs, it starts to get a little tiring. After the next 10 or 15 CDs, it starts getting on my nerves, and by Christmas I am anxiously awaiting the shelving of the Christmas music collection for another year.

Friday and Saturday, The Wife was in charge of a Psychiatry meeting downtown at the Intercontinental Hotel - one of the many very nice hotels in the city. Friday night was a party for the meeting participants and faculty/staff of the Psychiatry/Neurology department so I got to attend that. We also had a comp room at the hotel (with a comp bottle of wine waiting for us!). The party was a few hours of boiled shrimp, raw oysters, turkey, beef, Chinese food, and Kendall Jackson merlot (one of my most favorites). For entertainment, we had a local favorite - Charmaine Neville, who was, as usual, wonderful. After she finished her set, she had a bite to eat, chatted with us for a few minutes, and rushed off for one of her regular gigs at someplace like Snug Harbor, one of the well-known jazz spots down on funky Frenchman Street in the Faubourg Marigny.

So after all of the nice music, copious food, and ad-libitum merlot, I naturally screwed up and set left the alarm clock in the hotel room showing the alarm setting rather than the actual time. I had set it for something between 5 and 5:30 a.m. so I could drive home, change and get out to the Lakefront for the Giro Ride. I wake up early and look over at the clock and it's about time for me to head out. I get dressed, retreive the car from the garage (validated parking - whoo hooo!) and head out in the dark for the house. Along the way, I check my watch and discover it is 3:15 a.m. S*@t! Well, too late to go back, so I figure I'll get a couple of hours more sleep at the house. No such luck. First, there's a house alarm down the block that's going off like clockwork every half-hour. Then, around 4 a.m., I'm awakened by the now-familiar sound of someone crashing through one of the concrete lamp posts along S. Claiborne Avenue. They sure seem to have trouble negotiating that curve late at night (when they are drunk). I look out the window and there's a pickup truck that has come to rest across two of the three lanes. The driver tries to drive away, but the collision has broken the propshaft, which I can see hanging on the ground beneath the car, so he's going nowhere. The police arrive, lights are flashing, people are talking, and I get no sleep. The walls and windows of this old house are pretty thin and so you can hear people on the street talking from about a block away. Anyway, I finally make it out to the Giro ride, which was OK except for a few of us getting dropped on the way out as we were trying to help out a new rider who was opening gaps and having trouble hanging on. I end up doing a harder ride than I had planned, and after I get home discover that my rear tire has a slow leak. No wonder my legs were starting to hurt!

Sunday's long ride in the country was great. We had a dozen riders, and the route Bob had mapped out had lots of nice little hills and smooth low-traffic roads. A couple of the guys were pushing the pace early, and I figured they'd eventually have to pay for that. They did. One was among the 6 riders who took a short-cut back at around the 55-mile point, while the rest of us ended up with around 70. The other was really suffering on the climbs over the last 10 miles or so. My legs were a little sore, but I was feeling pretty good. The weather was great and it turned out to be a bit harder than I had planned, but then who can resist hammering up a hill or two on a day like this?

The legs will be sore tomorrow.

Blue Skies

Yesterday morning's rain ushered in a mild cool front and this morning we are treated to clear blue skies and the promise of three days of 0% rain probability. With lows in the 40s and highs in the 50s and 60s, what more could you ask of a December weekend? As I look out from my rooftop office window, there is a huge U.S. flag flying atop the Entergy Tower building, held taught by a brisk North wind.

The Friday morning training ride is usually sparcely attended. There are typically only two or three of us. This morning was a bit different, though, as a number of riders who had been feeling mileage deprived because of the recent rains showed up. Jeff, Rob and Matt headed out a bit faster than normal from the start, and when we met up with a few of the riders who had parked at the Jefferson Playground, they didn't ease up to let them turn around and catch. I backed off with Robin and eventually Jeff backed off as well, but we never saw Rob and Matt again. Got in a nice ride, though, although maybe a little easier than I should have been riding. At least The Tooth seems to be calming down and isn't bothering me much any more.

Tonight is the Christmas party for the Psychiatry department, which is tied in with a meeting they are having all weekend, so I'll hit the party, scarf up some free food and wine, and then get to spend the night at the hotel before heading out before dawn so I can make the Saturday Giro ride, which I predict will be fast. Sunday we have a long slow endurance ride scheduled across the lake. It'll be over an hour's drive to get to the start, so I hope we have a decent turnout. Being one of Bob Hodges' typical circuitous routes, I should probably check my brake pads before the ride because there's a turn about every three miles. He is promising that there are some nice little hills, though, so hopefully it will be worth the drive. The weather should be nothing less than spectacular.

The Daughter starts exams next week, and then heads home on Friday for her first visit back here since early August, but with the gymnastics cometitive season starting the first week of January, she'll be back on the road for Iowa the day after christmas. What's she want for christmas? Heart-rate monitor. (Well, hear-rate monitor and a CAR.) She'll get one of those, although for now christmas shopping is on hold until I get reimbursed for that root-canal!

Missed Again . . .

The thunder and lightning started around 4 a.m., right about the time I was reaching for a Tylenol #2 to quell the throbbing pain in my recently bored-out tooth. It was still raining by 5:30 a.m., so I turned off the alarm and went back to sleep. Between the tooth and the rain, I figured it was a message from the training gods, and such messages are not to be ignored. No riding this morning - again. I'm not quite ready to break out the dreaded evil indoor trainer, but the thought has crossed my mind already. It hasn't been cold at all, so if I get really desperate, I may just jump on the old mountain bike and go out for a sloppy spin in the rain.

Of course, at that point it's not really "training" any more.

It's "therapy."

Some Nerve!

So I just got back from the endodontist. Half of my face is still numb, and of course I'm starving but can't do much about that until the drugs wear off. I'll just say that is was not my favorite way to spend $710, and I hope it doesn't hurt as much as I think it will when the novocaine wears off.

We had a rather big turnout this morning for the levee ride. Rob, Jeff, Robin and I hung about 10 seconds ahead of the group all the way out (they were being passive-aggressive again), and when we turned around Donald blasted through and announced that they had decided to go longer this morning. No doubt they were all feeling mileage-deprived after yesterday's rained-out long ride. Rob, Ronnie and I had to get back sooner, so we did some nice steady paceline all the way back. I ran into Amy toward the end and she said that she had this great picture of Robin that she took after he finished last weekend's very sloppy mountain bike race out at the Spillway. Hopefully, someone will send me a copy, 'cause it sounds like website material.

Well, I Tried.

The forecasters were calling for rain some time in the early morning, but I woke up a little late and rushed to get out the door, so no chance to check the weather channel.

It was dark. A little too dark, in fact, as I rode out to the levee. By 6:15, it was just Richard and me as we headed up the river, trying to get a glimpse of the skies in the early morning darkness. I commented that we must have been the only ones who didn't check the weather radar. We had gone only about a mile before we felt the temperature drop. It must have plummeted 10 degrees in a matter of seconds as the wind shifted. Very impressive.

At first, I thought it was just a cool breeze blowing off the cold river water, but it wasn't. We went another mile before we felt the first little raindrops. We rolled on just a little farther until the little raindrops suddenly turned into bigger ones. We immediately decided it was time to beat a hasty retreat, but it was too late - way too late.

By the time we had made a U-turn on the bike path, we were being pelted with huge, cold, stinging raindrops. The rain soaked through my shoes and socks within seconds. The only bone that the Weather Gods threw us was a nice tailwind. I rode home as fast as I could, knowing that if I slowed down I'd freeze for sure. Half-way home, flying down partially flooded Oak Street in semi-darkness, wondering where the potholes were. I could hear the water rushing into the storm drains as I blew past the movie crew that was cowering under the awnings and balconies along the way. A sympathetic van driver flashed his headlights so I could make the off-camber turn onto Carrollton without stopping and I rocketed over the wet streets and through the rapidly growing puddles.

I have to admit, it was a blast! There is always something really neat about getting caught in one of these sudden downpours, and knowing that I would be home well before I would have a chance to get really chilled made it all the more fun. When it's dark and raining and the road is sketchy and there's water spraying in your face you have one of those rare chances to focus all of your attention on one thing. In the moment, full concentration. You feel like you're going much faster than you are and you get a certain sense of invincibility - taking the turns maybe a little faster than safe, feeling the tires slipping and sliding just a bit, balancing on the edge of control. As Mario once said, "If you feel like everything is under control, you're just not going fast enough!"

The weather is beautiful now. My abbreviated morning ride had been precisely timed to coincide with the movement of a cool front across the city.

Good luck or bad, at least I tried.

Monday Monday

Yesterday it rained - and rained. I made one quick trip on the mountain bike to pick up a newspaper, and although I thought the radar looked like it was clear for a while, I ended up getting rained on anyway. I spent the rest of the day doing exciting stuff like installing a hanging pot rack, cleaning out the pantry and watching TV. I think my wife has some sort of cup fetish. I threw out a whole bunch of those plastic travel mugs you get from the coffee shops, keeping only the nicer dozen or so. I also threw out a bunch of other cups - Mardi Gras style go-cups (must've been a hundred of those) and various childrens' cups. Not that I dared throw then ALL out, you understand - just the old beat-up ones. I ended up with a huge garbage bag full of junk from the pantry, and I didn't even attempt to deal with the top shelves.

So this morning the streets were still wet and it was warm, humid and foggy.

The ride was a little confused. There were just four of us at the start, and as we went past the playground, we spotted Robin unloading his bike, so we eased up for a while, Rob and I soft-pedaling along while the other two riders stopped. After a few minutes, we looked back and only one rider was coming. Jeff said that Joe had a flat, so I turned around and rode back to the playground while Jeff and Rob continued on. On the way back, we caught Margaret just in time for her to have a flat.

Bottom line - it was a short easy ride today. I think perhaps tommorow's ride will be fast, since there is a lot of pent-up speed lurking around. We'll see. The weather forecast calls for warm and humid all week. It's December and yet the lowest temperature we're likely to get this week is 51F, and that's not 'till Friday. It's supposed to get up to 78 today! It's kind of rough on the Christmas spirit when it's hot and muggy like this.

LSD Saturday

It rained all night on Friday, which had definitely NOT been predicted by the local forecasters. Bad sign. We had a 70-mile Long Slow Distance training ride planned across the lake on Saturday morning. Sometimes I think that the real reason I organize these training rides every year is to make it harder for me to blow them off when the weather looks bad.

The Wife took the car up the river to Baton Rouge on family business, so luckily Mark volunteered to give me a ride to the training ride. I got up a little early and checked the radar, which didn't look too bad, but packed riding clothes with the assumption I'd be getting wet. As we headed out for the drive across the causeway, it was cold and damp and the sky was full of low grey clouds, but as we neared the northshore, we could see the northern edge of the clouds and beyond that much friendlier looking skies.

There was hope!

We all started the ride pretty much prepared for a long, cold, sunless ride. I had shoe-covers and long gloves and a vest. I also had six Advil in my pocket in case my tooth went from bad to worse during the ride. As I expected, the result of my late dentist visit yesterday was a prescription for Tylenol #2, Ampicillin and a Root Canal. Oh boy. Next week is going to be so much fun. Anyway, the tooth wasn't bothering me too much today, so whoo hooo!

Anyway, a few miles into the ride, the skies started clearing up and before we knew it, we were riding through the countryside under clear blue skies, punctuated only occasionally by speeding gravel trucks (now I remember why I do most of the training rides on Sundays!). Soon the vest and gloves were in my pocket. Shortly afterward, I had my first flat. Last week my rear tire had blown out just as I was heading out to ride, so I had quickly slapped on an old tire that Robin had given me. As I was changing the flat today, I noticed that this tire was worn down to the casing in a couple of places. Guess I should have taken a better look at it before. I was glad I had brought two spare tubes, because I would probably need them.

Today we had a small group of nine including Bob and Stephanie on the tandem, Ray, Jaro, Mark, Courtney and Heather, along with Keith and John who were planning on turning back early.

Of course, I eventually had a second flat. No surprise there. On the way back from Enon, Jaro and I pushed the pace a little bit over the watchtower hill and kept it going until the next intersection, where I turned around to go back and pick up the riders at the back. As I went past Ray, he said that Heather has stopped about a mile past the top because of a problem with her knee. By the time I got back to her, she was pedalling with one leg. Must have been some tendonitis. She had mentioned that the cleat on that foot was loose, and I guess that and the climb up the hill had done some damage. She had already called for extraction, so I rode with her, pushing a bit to get her up the hills, to the next intersection where her friend eventually showed up. She had been riding pretty well up to that point, which was around 55 miles into the ride.

Toward the end of the ride, Ray came off the back, so I rode back and picked him up to pace him in the remaining four miles or so. All-in-all it was a pleasant LSD type of ride, although we got in about half an hour later than usual because of the flats and high level of "droppage." I was feeling pretty good today, especially considering the drugs I'm on right now. I think the mileage was about 71, although I had more like 76 on my computer because I had backtracked a couple of times. I noticed this morning that my total mileage since last February is just over 10,000 miles, so I guess it will be an 11 - 12k year.

Pain

Being a cyclist, I am accustomed to a certain type of suffering, and can successfully ignore the burning in my quads half-way up a long climb and the ache in my back or neck after a long time in the saddle, but I am apparently terribly unprepared for the pain of a TOOTHACHE. I'm taking Advil like candy and actually looking forward to a visit to the dentist this afternoon. I'm sure this one is going to cost me a root canal and cap, probably in the $1,500 neighborhood, and that's not including the other three or four neglected teeth that have not yet eroded to the point where raw nerves are exposed. Damn, I hate going to the dentist. I've always had lousy teeth, so every visit is pretty much guaranteed to be (a) painful and (b) expensive.

Wish me luck!

Anyway, I did make it out this morning for an easy Friday training ride. Oddly, this tooth doesn't hurt when I'm sleeping and doesn't even hurt much while I'm riding. It didn't start hurting again until I was most of the way back to the house. By the time I was at the office, however, it was screaming. Damned lousy enamel genes!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Didn't ride this morning. Could have, just didn't. Guess it was time for a little break.

You know what this means, of course. It will definitely be raining tomorrow.

180º

Talk about opposites! Yesterday we had a strong Southerly crosswind and the temperature was around 70F. This morning there was an equally strong crosswind out of the North and it was in the 40s. I went out in two jerseys, arm-warmers, light shoe-covers, gloves and vest and was never inclined to unzip anything. Again, I spent much time balancing between a wheel and the edge of the road, which was liberally sprinkled with dead road worms after yesterday's downpour.

On the way back The Donald went zooming past the paceline for some reason and then hovered four or five bike-lengths ahead. Every time we would close the gap, which we did very gradually, he would get out of the saddle again and surge ahead. He repeated this four or five times. This was with a pretty good crosswind that made you want to seek shelter at the back of the pack whenever possible. Maybe he was just tired of trying to salvage whatever bits and pieces of draft were available in the strong crosswind, or maybe he was just being anti-social. I dunno. I've long ago given up hope of figuring out cyclists, including myself. Meahwhile, The Howard, who one might have expected to be pushing the pace, was busy getting used to his Power Cranks. Until your neuromuscular system figures it all out, you're usually riding huge gears with those things in order to keep your cadence down enough to keep your feet in sync. Robin was out this morning. He's got the timing down to the nearest second now, so that as the group comes past the Jefferson Playground where he parks he's just closing the hatch on his car. This morning he was riding his Bianchi track bike and after the turnaround I think he and someone else dropped off the back and came in a bit slower than the rest of the group.

After I come off of the levee, it's a couple of miles through the Carrollton area to my house, and I usually ride down Oak Street. Oak Street was once the business center for the town of Carrollton, prior to its being annexed by the city of New Orleans long ago, so it's an interesting street with various businesses and buildings with awnings overhanging the sidewalk. It's home to the Maple Leaf and the hardware store and a few small restaurants, shoe stores, and a number of antique shops. This morning there was a movie crew that had taken over about two blocks and looked to be filming something at one of the antique stores. As usual (this happens every now and then around here), there were large trucks parked all over the place and their big catering crew was busy setting up food services in a nearby building. I guess it is for the movie that they have been working on for the last few months. They did a bunch of filming on the Tulane campus, some at my old high school's gym, and some at the Maple Leaf itself.

A Very Cross Wind

Slept badly last night and even considered skipping the 6:15 a.m. long ride this morning, but by virtue of force of habit and lack of resolve I somehow found myself on the levee anyway. Ahead of a cool front expected this evening, there was strong and gusty South wind blowing warm humid air across the unprotected bike path - ample enough explanation for the anemic turnout of under 10 riders. Every now and then there would be a little blast of cooler air blowing up from the cold water of the Mississippi River. It was exactly like walking past the open door of an air-conditioned shop on a hot summer day. We battled the crosswind pretty much all the way out and all the way back today. There was just enough of an occasional tailwind component on the way out to lure six of us into doing the whole distance, the rest having turned back early.

It's a real challenge to ride in a group on the narrow levee bike path when there's a crosswind like this. The road is wide enough to provide good protection for only the first three or four riders in the eschelon. The rest ride the tightrope at the back, precariously balancing between the edge of the road and the wheel in front. It's like trying to ride a 6-inch wide set of rollers in a crosswind, and under such conditions the rider who takes long pulls at the front is no friend at all to the guys at the back.

On the way back, we finally got a circular paceline going so that nobody would be stuck for too long unprotected at the back, but the level of concentration needed to deal with the paceline (and the one or two guys who never seem to be able to ride a straight line), the gusting winds, and the wheel-hungry drop-off at the edge of the asphalt, takes a bit of the fun out of it. Since I was already feeling lousy anyway, I rode today like a zombie, thankful to have the benefit of Ronnie's ample draft, and communication mostly by way of grunts. Because of the wind, we rode mostly at 20-21 mph, except for the few sections where the road turned briefly downwind and we could easily roll up to 25 or so.

Still, I was glad to have ridden this morning because tomorrow promises to be rather chilly and probably windy as well. I just hope the rain is over so I'm not riding on a worm-infested wet road tomorrow morning!

Sweet Fall Ride

We were promised classic Fall weather for Sunday's training ride, and, for once, the Weather Gods delivered. I drove over to Starbuck's and picked up a coffee before heading over to the Morning Call where we were to meet. The little cup of Cafe au Lait from the Morning Call just doesn't do it for me sometimes and the fact that they have the nerve to charge the same amount for a lot less than even Starbucks kind of rubs me the wrong way too. As usual, my kidneys and I were on a caffeine high for the next couple of hours.

Nobody there.

There was a group going up to St. Francisville for a training ride the same day, and of course the holidays have disrupted a lot of riders' training routines, so I headed out to the Causeway for the 24-mile drive across the water alone. The tape player in the Volvo is on the blink lately, having recently devoured a couple of inches of The Doors Greatest Hits, so it took a while to find something on the radio on a Sunday morning that wasn't another lame public service talk show.

At Abita Springs, we had a nice group of 9 0r 10 riders by the time we started, and I bundled up a bit against the 47 degree wind, knowing that the vest, at least, would soon be in my pocket.

This group was really in easy paceline mood today, and as we rolled through the Fall countryside the conversation stopped as riders were content to soak in the sunshine and scenery. There hasn't been a freeze on the Northshore yet this Fall, so there was still a lot of green. We did a few little town sign sprints and that sort of thing, of course, but in general the pace stayed in the low 20's, low enough to keep our one woman in contact except when we would surge for a mile or two. Everyone was happy to ease up and wait a few seconds at the intersections so she could latch back on, though.

We finished up with around 67 miles and back at the car I kept looking for Christine to come around the corner, since she had come off the back for the last time with only about 7 mi. to go. "She should have been back by now" one rider said as we loaded up the cars, and it was another few minutes before she finally appeared, having taken a wrong turn and done a few bonus miles near the end.

There's an article on the VeloNews site about Joey D. at http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/7245.0.html discussing the drug testing situation. Interesting. For the past month or so I have sensed a slight shift in attitude among many cyclists. Perhaps the USADA and WADA aren't infallible after all (duh!).

Drenched

We've had a bit of everything over the last few days! Thursday morning was chilly, but there were a lot of riders out on the levee. One new rider was in the group. He recently moved here from France (he's Dutch) where he was an active bike racer. His wife works for the French Cousulate here in New Orleans. He was asking about getting his USCF license and, not yet knowing his racing experience, I assured him that he would certainly not be assigned to Cat. 5, and that even if he were to be assigned to Cat. 4 we could probably get him upgraded right away to Cat.3. After listening him discuss his racing experience with Kenny (who raced in Belgium for a while) it was clear that he is more likely to be Cat. 2 or Cat. 1. Anyway, we had a great Thanksgiving morning ride. I spent the next 12 hours eating and drinking wine in the finest Thanksgiving tradition, and ended the day over at Kenny's house with Gina and her friend watching a DVD of Conan O'Brein show segments of the "insult dog." Funny stuff!

My brother and his family was in town from Orlando (and Tallahassee and Jackson) Thursday and Friday. On friday, after a nice easy training ride, we ended up having to drive The WIfe's mom back to Baton Rouge, which as usual ended up including lunch and a trip to Wal-Mart. At least I got a new $10 hair dryer, since our old one has burned out one of its heading circuits and wasn't drying too well.

So this morning I got up a little early and checked the weather radar. It looked bad. A big line of strong thunderstorms ahead of a cold front was about 80 miles West of us and heading this way fast. I seriously considered bagging it and heading back to bet. It was still pretty warm here, though, so I put on shoe-covers and an extra jersey, stuffed a pair of arm-warmers into my pocket, and headed out to the lakefront. There was a group of about 25 there as we headed out. I was figuring we'd turn around early, and I was absolutely sure I'd be riding home in the rain. We made it down to the end of Hayne Blvd. before the first raindrops started to fall. A group of riders turned around right away. We went another mile or so and a couple of us split off to head back by way of the service road. The remaining 10 riders or so kept going, and I wonder if they did the whole ride. As we rode back the raindrops got larger and we were soon in a steady light rain. It wasn't too cold though, and traffic was very light, so it wasn't too bad. About a mile before we got back to where the ride starts my friend flatted, but since it was raining pretty heavily, he just rode it in. I still had a 6-mile ride back home and within a couple of minutes the rain really started to come down hard. I was glad I had stopped to put on my arm warmers and to zip up my jerseys as I navigated my way through the flooding streets. I was absolutely soaked to the skin by the time I got home, but since the temperature never got much below 70F, it wasn't too bad. I wiped the bike down and pulled the seatopost out to check for water in the frame, but it was nice and dry.

Tomorrow I'll do a training ride across the lake and I'm expecting the weather to be rather nice.

Change is in the Air

It stormed early this morning. Thunder, lightning, even a tornado or two nearby. By 4:30 a.m. I had already switched off the alarm.

By 9 a.m. it was already clearing and the wind has, finally, shifted almost 180 degrees. It's blowing steadily out of the North now and cooler, drier weather is coming. About freaking time. I had the a/c running at the house again last night. Still, the forecast isn't calling for any really cold weather. It will dip down to maybe the upper 40s around here at night, but most likely we won't be firing up the central heat until some time in December. We have an old "unvented" gas heater in the living room, sort of built into the opening of the old coal-burning fireplace. It's the kind with the ceramic back that starts to glow red when it gets heated up. That one little heater can keep most of the house comfortable until the temperatures start to stay under 50 for extended periods of time, so we often prefer to use it rather than turn on the big old central heater down in the basement. That monstrosity was installed long before we owned the house. It resides in the spot where the original coal-burning furnace must have been. You can still find bits of coal scattered around down there. I am quite certain that the whole arrangement would send any good heating/air-conditioning expert into immediate cardiac arrest.

The timing of this change in the weather couldn't be better. With Thanksgiving tomorrow, people are starting to slip into the holiday mood. At the University, it always seems that people start kicking back a few days before any holiday. It's almost certain that by the time we're half-way through December most meaningful work around here will cease. The phones will stop ringing, the faculty will start to disappear, and the days will start to seem longer and longer. In fact, it's after 11 a.m. right now and my office phone hasn't rung once all morning!! Of course, I wouldn't mind hearing from those guys at Data Systems who were working on my computer and were supposed to return yesterday. I spend the better part of yesterday trying to get everything more or less back to normal, but some things are still kind of screwy.

Summertime in November

Man it's been warm and humid around here, which seems to be great weather for worms and mosquitoes, both of which tried to be intimate with my person this morning. As we were waiting on the levee in the early-morning dawn for the rest of the group to arrive, someone said something about mosquitoes. I looked down and found about ten of the little blood-suckers happily gourging themselves on my legs. Luckily, we took off soon after for the Tuesday long training ride.

After a mile or two, as I'm riding along with Rob, I realized that the group had dropped way back. We were zooming along at all of 16 or 17 mph, and I commented that they sure were going slow today. A little while later, The Howard showed up, having bridged up from the group. I found out later that someone in the group had a flat. Anyway, the next to arrive was Matt and soon after the pace started to increase. We were doing around 24 or so, except when The Howard would come to the front and try to nudge us up to 27 or so. Nobody was willing to play, though, so The Howard kept rolling off the front of our little group and then sitting up with a frustrated look and dropping back. This continued pretty much all the way to the turnaround when we slowed way down and waited for the group to catch.

The ride back was similar, with four or five on the front and The Howard trying to push the pace. Eventually it flipped my "race switch," and I started pulling a bit harder, which wasn't all that impressive considering that we had a lot more tailwind on the way back than we had on the way out.

Once again, there were road worms all over everything. I felt one on my face (got that one off in a hurry) and had a few of them on my legs and more stuck to the bike. I ended up just taking the garden hose to the bike when I got home.

We had our club meeting last night at a local restaurant where I had a nice Catfish Po-boy, and it was nice. I guess about 20 or 25 people showed up and we installed the new officers for the year. Laura and Robin handled a little sale of discounted jerseys from last season. I need to see if they have anything left that will fit me or The Daughter, since I forgot to bring any money to the meeting. The most exciting thing, to me, is having Charlie D. taking on the new Racing Director position. He'll be in charge of organizing training rides and getting good participation at races and that sort of thing.

From all accounts, summertime will be ending, again, tonight and it will get a bit cooler for Thanksgiving weekend. Not cold, mind you, but a little cooler. It was so warm last night that I ended turning on the air conditioner.

Road Worms - Edited

Just what's the deal with these nasty little annelids anyway? Every now and then when it has been raining and the humidity is high, certain sections of the bike path will be covered with these little slimy worms. They get thrown up onto your bike and your body as you ride and if you don't remove them before they dry out, they stick like glue to your bike. This morning it was warm, humid and foggy on the bike path. Perfect conditions for road worms. I even had one get thrown up onto my face. Yeech!

=======
OK, so I eventually went searching on Google for an answer, rather than doing any actual research on the subject, and came up with two opposing theories. The first is that the worms are trying to avoid drowning when their burrows fill up with water. Plausible enough if it weren't for the fact that worms don't have lungs and are quite capable of surviving underwater. The second, and perhaps more likely, theory seems to be that (a) it's the only time they can get onto the pavement since they need sufficient moisture in order to move around, and (b) they are out looking for other worms with whom to copulate, which is difficult to do in a worm burrow (or the back seat of a 57 Chevy). Group worm sex. Right there on our bike path!

The Weather Gods Smile

It was looking pretty bleak for the Sunday training ride. Saturday's Giro had been washed out completely, and I spent the rest of the day looking out window at grey skies and wet streets, eating Oreos and generally whatever else was in the pantry that didn't require cooking. The forecast for Sunday was calling for a 60% chance of rain.

I got up a little early this morning and checked the radar on the Weather Channel. Three times. It was, basically, inconclusive. Like those satellite photos from Iraq showing the weapons of mass destruction. No way to predict where it would be raining and where it wouldn't, but it was definitely not raining anywhere on our route by 6:30 a.m., so I topped up the tires and headed out the door. Kaboom! The rear tire exploded as I'm walking out the house, so I pulled the tire and tube off my racing wheel, put them on my training wheel and then had to rush out to the Morning Call to meet whatever group of optimists might be there.

As it turned out, we ended up with 11 riders at the start, with a few turning back early for various reasons. For the first half of the 67 mile route, the skies didn't look bad at all. We even got a little sunshine now and then, but around the mid-point the streets were good and wet, like it had just finished raining. After a brief stop at a store in Folsom, LA, we spend 15 miles or so on wet roads with some very light rain. It was enough to spray water and grit all over everything, but not quite enough to soak through your socks and make your feet wet. I had stashed a couple of light shoe-covers in my pocket at the start, but never stopped to put them on. For the last 10 miles or so we had nice mostly dry roads and warmer temperatures. The pace got a bit faster, too. It was probably close to 78F by the time we finished. Only two flats - not bad considering all the riding on wet roads today. All in all, it was a great ride. I'm glad I didn't let the threat of rain force me to cancel it.

This time, the weather gods smiled on us. Actually, they messed with us a little bit just for fun, but I think they were smiling while they were doing it!

What a Day!

It was a good thing that I ventured out this morning despite the rather heavy fog and got in a nice ride even though I had to stop once to fix a flat tire. Why? Well, it's because the rest of the day was pretty much downhill from there. First, I find out that that $499 charge that appeared on my bank statement, that I had thought was from the hotel, wasn't. It was some kind of fraud or, to put in it's kindest light, mistake. The charge was from some company in New York that issues certificates of authority for computer systems. So I had to call the bank, fill out a "statement of dispute," fax it back to them, and have them cancel and re-issue my debit card. Of course my account probably won't be credited for three days and I won't get my new debit card for about a week. Isn't that just great?

As if that wasn't enough, I had two of the networking guys up here working on my computer for a few hours trying to fix the mess they created. It is still not right, of course, and they managed to lose all of my WS-FTP IDs and Passwords and connection information, along with most of the non-default configuration information for practically every piece of software on the machine. I had to completely reinstall Adobe Acrobat, Palm Desktop and the sync conduits for Meetingmaker, etc. At least the blasted thing is usable again, but I am NOT a happy camper by any stretch of imagination.

Last night one of our club members who had been the secretary/treasurer for years before moving to Houston sent out an email to the club list about how she was withdrawing her name from the list of candidates. She wrote: "Unfortunately, after being contacted by current leadership and exchanging ideas... We'll find some position for you (so you will shut up), does not sit well at this time. So it is with much sadness and disappointment that I am withdrawing my name in the upcoming "election"?/appointments."

This was rather bizarre. She was certainly welcome to run for office if she wanted. The president had, however, already asked other people to run for the offices because he wants to get some new blood in there, which I certainly support. It's not like we ever have people begging to be club officers. Quite the contrary. The President sent out a request for nominations, and as usual, received none. So a few of the more active riders have been talked into running for the various offices. But for this person to think that other people in the club don't like her or that there is some sort of conspiracy against her is just wierd, and sending it out to the whole e-mail list is even more wierd. Anyway, I don't get it. It's just a little bike club, not the United Nations.

A Quick Ride and a Sneaky Hotel

The cloudy skies kept it dark a bit later than usual this morning and when I arrived to meet the group on the levee, I was the only one there. The streets were a little damp from an earlier sprinkling of rain, and I guess everyone had seen the big clump of green on the radar that was heading our way. Still, it didn't look too bad so I rolled out alone and was met after a couple of miles by Robin, Chris and a couple of other guys. In light of the small group, impending rain and strong winds, we decided to forgo the usual Thursday long ride and instead did the usual shorter ride, which landed me back home in time to catch a ride to work with The Wife. Even so, our little paceline was working pretty hard to maintain 22 mph into that wind on the way back. I'm glad I got in a few miles today, though, because the forecast for the next few days is not looking too good. Lots of rain is expected, but winter temperatures are nowhere in sight. It was nearly 70F this morning. I guess I shouldn't complain too much. I think I'd rather ride in our 70-degree drizzle than in the sub-freezing sleet that a lot of folks get this time of year.

I'm rather miffed right now at the Windham hotel in Boston where The Wife stayed for a few nights earlier this month. The hotel bill was supposed to be charged to the master account for the meeting organization (which I didn't know until yesterday). I had noticed the charge appearing on my online bank transaction report about a week and a half ago, and was expecting that we would get a reimbursement. When I asked The Wife about it last night, she said that there shouldn't have been anything charged to our account at all except for $30 or so. Well, when I checked back, I found that the hotel had charged the room to my account (along with the $30) to the tune of nearly $600. Then, yesterday, they had credited it back to my account (so they had it for about a week). I could live with that, but what really ticked me off was than in-between the debit and the credit, they had charged another $400 to the account, for which, of course, there has been no credit (or explanation). Typical Hotel BS. I swear, I think they do this stuff on purpose. So the bottom line is that they completely screwed everything up, have had up to $1,000 of mine that they never should have had, and now we're going to have to get the whole mess straightened out ourselves. It was a small miracle that it didn't overdraft my bank account, mainly because I had been holding off on paying some (overdue) bills until I saw the expected reimbursement. Geez. At this rate we'll be eating Thanksgiving dinner at McDonald's - from the super value menu.

Strange Ride

A bit warmer and quite nice this morning. The clouds that have enveloped the area for the past three or four days have finally broken up and we can see the sun again, but it was hard getting out of bed for some reason. I lay there in the dark, my 10-minute "get out the door" window ticking away on the nightstand, contemplating my options. Perhaps I should listen to that little voice telling me to skip the long ride today. Finally, with just a few minutes to spare, I brushed the lazy thoughts away and headed for the bike, gulping down a cookie on the way.

I was a little overdressed and I knew it, but the biggest challenge for me this time of year is getting out the door and on the road, and if an extra jersey and arm-warmers will do the trick, that's just fine. They can always go into the pockets later. What you'll remember the next morning when you repeat this little routine isn't how warm you were at the end of your ride, but how cold you were for the first two miles. To coin a phrase (with apologies to Teddy), when dealing with Winter, "dress warmly but carry a big pocket."

There was a lower turnout for the popular Tuesday morning long ride than usual today, and for some reason I was in no mood to have my pace dictated by someone else. A few of us rolled along at the front slowly, maybe 21 mph or so. We had to stop for a second to let a line of dumptrucks cross the levee and one of the guys asked if we should wait up for the rest of the group. I looked back and said there was no need, they would be on us soon enough. It stayed together after that and the pace stayed fairly slow all the way to the turnaround. As we started on the return trip, there was this idea to do a smooth circular paceline at around 20 mph. Damn, but it got squirrelly. Robin remarked at one point that these guys get more squirrelly the slower they go, and he was right. Although there was a significant headwind, we would have done better at 22 mph. As it was, almost every time I would take one of those very short "circular paceline" type pulls, there would be this long delay before anyone would come through. Geez, I was only going like 21 mph.

It was like the whole pack had gone passive-aggressive on me.

Toward the end of the ride, it happened again to the guy who had been behind me as he took his pull and then pulled over, so I moved in to fill the gap and took another pull to keep the pace the same. Three or four of us immediately separated from the group and for the last mile or two finally achieved a smooth paceline. I dunno, I am usually pretty tolerant of inconsistent riding in the pack, but for some reason it really started getting to me this morning.

On another note, I see that the new movie "Pro" is now available. There have been a couple of articles - interviews actually - about it on The Daily Peloton, and I think I might just have to get me a copy. It's done by the same guys who did "The Hard Road." Anyway, for any of you with bike racing significant others, this would probably make a nice Christmas present!

Yes, Christmas is coming. Every year it reminds me of the elegantly written line from a Peter Dickenson novel:

"The threat of Christmas hung in the air, visible already in the fretful look of passersby as they readied themselves for the meaningless but necessary rites of false jovialities and ill-considered gifts. "

Not that I dislike the holidays, you understand, but I can relate.

LSD and the Guerilla Dog

It was cloudy and still a bit windy this morning, but that didn't stop a dozen of us from having a great "long, slow, distance" (LSD) winter training ride this morning. My feelings of impending holidays were strengthened by the recent appearance of Christmas tree lots and, particularly out in the country, yards full of Wal-Mart style light-up holiday lawn decorations. The holiday season is, for me, a particularly bipolar experience of fiscal dread in constant conflict with social exuberance. In other words, I have a hard time letting myself enjoy it very much, so it's always a little uncomfortable having to face the holiday pre-season icons of plastic Santas and excited sales pitches.

I had intentionally selected a rather oval route that had long stretches of east-west riding in order to minimize the effect of the predominantly North wind. As it turned out, though, the wind was never much of a factor. While the weather on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain stayed misty and clammy, our route, which was 40-60 miles North of the city, was treated to much nicer weather, including a little bit of much-appreciated sunshine. As planned, the pace was smooth and moderate, which wasn't hard to maintain with our small group of similarly capable and experienced riders. It was really great being out on the old country roads I've come to know so well.

We were only about 10 miles from the end of our 65-mile ride when we turned onto one of the small country roads that the local Northshore guys use as part of their regular weekday training rides. As we approached a small cluster of homes set far back from the road, we spotted three dogs on an intercept trajectory for the tail end of our group. We sped up just a bit and so the chasers were only a problem for a few of us at the back of the group. As we got out of their home territory, Mike, Branden and I were looking back at the slowing dogs as Mike was calling one of them an "old fattie." At just that moment, we were ambushed by an enormous black dog who had been waiting for us in the bushes. This monster almost bounced off of Branden as we went by, catching the three of us completely by surprise. It was only Branden's mountain biking skills that kept him from becoming dog chow. This whole episode was disturbingly similar to a military operation worthy of the Army Special Services. I'm sure these dogs must have been plotting the three-dog diversionary tactic in order to maximize the effectiveness of the monster black dog hidden in the bushes!

So a great winter training ride today with lots of LSD and a few town sign 90% effort sign sprints thrown in for fun.

Chilled

It wasn't so much the temperature this morning, it was the wind. On a nice sunny day, 50-55F can be quite pleasant for cycling, but this morning it was anything but sunny. There was a 20-30 mph wind blowing in from the North and the skies were thick and gray with November clouds. I put on two jerseys and a pair of arm-warmers, and suck a sheet of newspaper between the jerseys. At the last minute, I grabbed my vest. I was glad I did.

Arriving at the lakefront, I was surprised to see a big turnout for the Giro ride. It was cold when we started, but once the pace picked up a bit, I stuffed the vest in my pocket and before the turn-around I had also taken the newspaper out from under my jersey. It was windy enough that riding in the group required extra vigilance. The pace was unsteady and the gusty winds were blowing guys around a little bit, which can be a recipe for crashes.

On the return trip the pace slowed way down and there was lots of conversation in the pack, but I soon started to get really cold. It would have been better if we had ridden a bit harder because the combination of sweaty clothes from the earlier efforts and the slack pace dropped my core temp really fast. I was trying to take it a little easier than usual today because I'm planning on doing 65 miles of so tomorrow across the lake, and I didn't want to have sore legs.

Surprise Visit

After a fast training ride yesterday and a night of wine-drinking last night at my sister-in-law's house, I was hoping for a nice easy Friday morning ride today. A cool front blew through yesterday evening and it was much cooler this morning, although the real issue was the strong North wind. Just as the small Friday group was about to start, Robin rode up accompanied by Brad. Surprise! Hadn't seen Brad in quite a while. He was very active racing around here a couple of years ago, but got married and moved to North Carolina and so there hasn't been a lot of communication since then. So anyway, it was nice to catch up with Brad, who was here for a friend's wedding, even though Rob was intent on keeping the pace faster than I would have liked. One thing I remember about Brad was the time that he and a few of the other local guys went up to ride the "Six-Gap Century." Brad and Kenny ended up finishing with the top 10 or so riders (I think Brad was 2nd or something), proving that there is no real secret to climbing hills other than having a very good power to weight ratio.

By the time I got back home this morning, I was really cold, even though the temperature was around 60F. I think that I got a little sweaty when the pace got fast and then when it slowed down and rode easily talking with Robin and Brad I got chilled. I suppose that cotton T-shirt I had on under my jersey contributed to that.

Still, the hardest thing I did all morning was plodding up the Broad St. overpass on the still overgeared commuter with a heavy bag over my shoulder and a strong headwind in my face! When I got to work today, I noticed a new fixie commuter in the bike room. Unlike the other one that's usually there, this one is built up in the true tradition, using a mixture of salvaged parts. An old Mondonico frame, bullhorn handlebars made from old racing bars and a hacksaw, an old mountain bike triple crankset converted to a single, etc. The other fixie is what you'd call "uptown retro." It's got a nice Miche track crank, drop bars with a fancy quill stem, a leather Brooks saddle with the big brass rivets, some kind of luggage rack thing attached to the seatpost, etc. Very nice, of course, but very few recycled parts.

We'll be doing our first winter training ride this Sunday, and so I need to send out an e-mail and map out a route today. It'll be nice to be out in the country again, and it's looking like the weather will be really nice.

Missed the Boat

When I got to our usual meeting spot on the levee this morning, nobody was there. Odd, I thought, as I double-checked my watch. I was exactly on time, but there was not a rider in sight. For some reason, they left a few minutes early this morning. I felt rejected. An old bike racer coined a phrase back in the early 70s that I often repeat: "Bikies are like sheep." Indeed, if one of them starts to roll out early, they will all follow.

So I had a leisurely ride out under cloudy and drizzly skies, and met the group as they started their return trip. Big group for a Wednesday, and it was fairly brisk despite a good headwind. Talked for a while with Robin about some ongoing bike club stuff. There's this one club member who, for reasons I really cannot fathom, wants to be a club officer again. For some reason, this person has pretty much accused the president of the club, who has undoubtedly been the best president the club has had in the last 20 years, of trying to avoid having an actual election and instead appointing new officers for next year. In fact, the president has been trying to recruit a few people, particularly younger ones, into getting more involved and running for the officers' slots and doesn't have a problem with holding an election for positions where there might be more than one candidate. For my part, I would really like to see some new blood in the officers' positions.

Over the years, the club has managed to have actual elections only a handful of times. More often, however, when things are going well, nobody is willing to step up and the prior years' officers just continue on unopposed. There has been more than one occasion when we've "elected" riders who weren't even at the meeting and didn't know they had been nominated, much less elected, until afterward. I've always told people that they should be sure to attend the meeting where we have elections so that they can defend themselves! It's probably a pretty typical situation for a small organization like ours. I've tried quite a few times to have official elections, only to end up abandoning the idea because of a complete lack of interest.

Anyway, it seems to me that this person is intent on creating conflict where, as far as I can tell, there is none. The club is very open and most of the members work well together both when riding in races and when organizing them.

It's all kind of bizarre.

The weather here is dreary today. I made the ride in to work in-between the rain showers, so I didn't get too wet except when I had to ride through a rather deep puddle on the top of the Broad St. overpass. Even with full fenders, I still got a little splash on my shoe and pants legs. I sure wish they would clean out those drains up there. They have been clogged up so long that there are small trees growing out of some of them. There is a thick damp mist over the city and it's really starting to get to me. It looks like London in a Hollywood movie, and it's making me feel cold and sluggish like I should be storing brown fat and looking for a good hibernation cave.

A Ride on the "D" Train

"D" is for "Donald."

There's this guy, you see, who's a regular on the morning levee training rides. In a way, this particular training ride owes its existence, if not its character, to this guy. For years, I had been in the habit of leaving the house at 6 a.m. every weekday, riding out to the lakefront, doing a 10-mile lap along the water, and returning home. It was all a very solitary routine.

Then, the Levee Board decided to start "improving" Lakeshore Drive and began ripping out bridges, tearing up roads and generally making it impossible to ride the full lap. About the same time, the city started ripping up a section of Carrollton Avenue, the road I use to get to the Lakefront, leaving it temporarily shoulderless and covered with debris. So, a few days a week, when I needed an easy day, I would go out to the levee instead. The group then tended to be a bit kinder and gentler than it is today, and it was always a nice, smooth ride at a moderate pace. More often than not, Donald would sit on the front and pull the short train of riders at a steady 23-24 mph most of the 11 miles out and most of the 11 miles back.

Eventually, I changed my routine and started riding with the levee group every day, since it wasn't worth dealing with all of the traffic and torn up roads just for a few miles on the lakefront. If I needed more of a workout than the group was offering, I would do catch-up intervals, dropping off way off the back and then sprinting back up to the group.

Despite my best efforts to keep the secret, word of the morning rides leaked out and the size of the group began to swell. Strong riders like Matt, Todd, Eddie, Rob, and of course "The Howard" started to show up on a regular basis. By early last year, the Tuesday ride, which was now up to 44 miles, had started to become a little more of a hammerfest.

Donald was still spending inordinate amounts of time on the front, but with speeds often well above 27 mph, nobody owned the front any more. But it was all good and guys were getting stronger and faster and it became what it has become - a Real(tm) group training ride.

So this morning, in keeping with the time of year and respectful of a rather brisk wind, the group was heading out at a pretty easy pace when, and after a few miles, Donald came past everyone and just started motoring. I waited for a second and then started to gradually bridge up, the rest of the group strung out behind me. We weren't going particularly hard like we would during the season; just a bit harder than most were hoping for. Soon enough I made up the gap and tucked in behind Donald.

For the next 10 miles or so, it was just like old times as Donald pulled the long train of riders at a steady 24 or 25 mph. It was nice to be aboard the D Train again, looking out the window at the ships on the river, lounging in Donald's ample draft and enjoying the ride.

The return trip seemed a bit harder for some reason as the group reverted to a regular paceline rotation to battle the wind.

The train was almost derailed near the end of the ride. Up near the front, big Ronnie started to swing off to the right and caught Con overlapping his wheel. They traded a bit of rubber and from my vantage point two riders back it looked like Con was going down for sure. That's when Todd, who was in front of me, bailed out onto the grass. I was about to do the same, and had already grapped a handful of brakes, but then Con got it back under control.

Whew! Didn't need that.

Still Nice

Well the weather here is still really nice. This must be what it's like to live in some more normal part of the country during Fall. We had a nice Giro ride yesterday and the group is still in sightseeing mode, mostly content to let little breaks roll off the front without answer. As it should be.

So I broke down and changed the oil in the car, scraping up a knuckle or two wrestling with the drain plug because I didn't want to have to put the car on jackstands to get the clearance I needed. Did a few other fix-up chores around the house and a little yard work involving a tree saw. This morning I'm sore in all sorts of odd places. My neck is sore from being under the car (must be my enormous head), and my shoulders and arms seem to be sore too. Even my quads are a little sore from yesterday's ride. Y'know, I used to be able to recover from days like yesterday overnight.

This whole "getting old" thing is a real drag.

At 9:20 p.m. The Wife called from the airport to tell me she had arrived back from Boston. I was still at home, since her flight wasn't supposed to land until 9:46, so I hustled out to the airport only to find her just coming out because Delta had lost her luggage (again). They promised they would deliver it, and around 11 p.m. the phone rang and they told her they would send it in the morning. It finally arrived around 9 a.m. after two phone calls from whatever fly-by-night operation they contracted with to deliver lost luggage. I think they just hire whoever shows up with a car. We had to give them directions twice before they found the house.

We had the usual laid-back Monday morning ride today. It was a little warmer but still quite nice. Just me and Robin and Joe and one other guy I don't know very well. Along the way we stopped for a while to clean up a couple of broken bottles on the bike path, and one of the guys told us that there is apparently a group of people who live along the path/levee who are trying to get the Levee Board to impose more restrictions on cyclists. It was bound to happen, I guess.

Robin stopped by after the ride to give me a pair of handlebars he didn't need since I had mentioned the other day that mine were probably about to corrode all the way through. He also gave me about a dozen used tires in various states of usability. I'll sort through them and use the better ones this winter. I seem to have a much higher tolerance for old worn-out tires than most people and usually get another thousand miles or so on the ones they're throwing out.

Lots to do at work today but I've been kind of jumping around from one thing to another without really making much progress on anything. Must have been that cup of coffee I had. It always seems to have a bad effect on my attention span.