Back on the Road after Ivan

It was a bit of a drive over to Ft. Walton on Sunday. With all three bridges over Pensacola Bay/Escambia Bay closed to regular traffic, we had to head Northeast out of Mobile and work our way over to CR4, eventually coming back down to Highway 90 near Crestwiew and Niceville. Distance-wise it was only about 50 miles farther, but since much of the trip was on 2-lane roads full of detoured I-10 traffic, it took a bit longer. There was lots of damage to see, even that far from the Gulf. Hundreds of trees snapped off, lots of downed power lines and repair crews all the way from West Alabama to the Florida panhandle. The Dad's place had gotten about 6 inches of water throughout, so we cleaned up what we could, rescued a couple of expensive rugs, and hired a couple of guys to rip up the soggy carpeting and haul it away. The SouthEast side of the roof was pretty much trashed, so I got up there and patched up the worst of it. Luckily no evidence of leakage inside. The 40 ft. boat survived well, losing the canopy on the flying bridge, even though two bow lines and one stern line were snapped. The dock sustained some fairly heavy damage, and about half of it was over in the neighbor's back yard along with the dingy that had been tied down to the boat. Looks like he'll need a new roof, new carpeting, new a/c compressor, most of the kitchen appliances unless they survive. I put a bunch of pictures on my Ofoto site. Just click the picture above to see them. The image above is the back of The Dad's house. The deck is piled high with debris from the bay. The big section of deck on the right is, we think, from a boat dock somewhere. Those roll-down storm shutters pretty much saved the day. Without them, it's likely that something would have broken the large windows, and then all that stuff would have been in the living room rather than outside.

Back on the road for the group ride this morning, and Kenny and Gina roll up to the front early are pulling side-by-side at 27 before I know what hit me. Howard is surging up to 30 or so when he hits the front, and one other guy is with us. It was great! After a few miles, Kenny looks back and says something like "the group's waaaay back there." What he was really doing was asking "may I please continue to hammer away, are is this socially unacceptible behavior?" I was enjoying the much-needed workout, so I just grunted an acknowledgement and we pressed on. First Howard sat up and dropped back to the pack, and then Kenny and Gina had to turn back early, but around that time Todd bridged up to us, so although the pace slowed a bit, we were still going pretty hard. By the end it was just me and Todd, although there were a few guys right on our heels. The pack had apparently gotten delayed when they were going around a walker on the path (way too fast) and some of the guys in back got surprised and took a cyclocross lesson on the grass. The ride back was a bit slower with more headwind, but the pace stayed pretty good.

So now I'm feeling pretty sore all over. Various non-cycling muscles got a little over-taxed with the hurricane cleanup, and the quads are complaining a little bit after the morning's ride. It might be Advil Time.