Hurricane Refugees

The Orlando Krewe has arrived, and looks like a good thing too. This slow hurricane is just sitting over central Florida, and it would be no fun to be stuck in a house with no power for the next week. Everybody's over at The Mom's condo, or as we call it "the country club." This sort of impromptu family reunion usually involves a lot of communal stuffing of faces, and this one is no exception. Unfortunatey, the building's air conditioning is on temporary life support after some sort of major rodent-caused power problem knocked out the electricity and subsequently damaged the building's a/c water pump. No repair possible until Tuesday, but there is still some minimal cooling, so it's not really too bad. The weather here is great - clear blue skies and a brisk northeast wind, but it's fairly warm with temperatures around 90F. Now there's another hurricane in the Atlantic making a bee-line for the Gulf of Mexico, so it looks like the suspense will continue.

Meanwhile up in corn country, The Daughter is escorting around one of her club teammates from New Orleans who is up at U. Iowa on a recruiting trip. She must be busy because communications have been sparse. I don't think she's gotten the house router working again, so she's probably still working with intermitent connections available from the neighboring houses. Since they're practically all rental properties occupied by students, there is no shortage of wireless connectivity in the neighborhood.

It's been a routine training weekend. Yesterday's Giro ride started out unusually easy, but ended up unusually fast. Aided by a bit of a tailwind, I had a max of 38 mph on the computer after the Chef Highway sprint. On the way back the group was going about 30 when somebody rolled over what he thought was a little stick. It was actually a piece of steel rebar that shot up and sliced Jay's leg just below the knee. He finished the ride, but went to the ER afterward and had to get it stitched up. He was out there on the ride again this morning, though. Today's ride was pretty brisk too. There was this triathlete in the group and he was blissfully unaware of the usual spots where the group slows down to recover and give the stragglers a chance to catch. He also kept riding off the front to show us all how fast he was. The group would let him get 15 seconds or so and then the pace would ramp up to 30+ until he was caught. On the last stretch along Hayne Blvd. today (with a nice tailwind) he did it again. I saw Brandon react right away and so I bridged up to them and before I knew it we were going 28. The tri guy started to fade and so we ramped it up a bit and were holding 31 mph for quite a while as the pack tried to catch. Hitting the bottom of the first bridge at 31, I hammered over the top only to have Brett come around me on the downhill. I latched onto his wheel as Charlie joined us and we were in breakaway mode all the way to the next bridge at 31 mph. Nice ride! I was feeling pretty good, but was glad to have a nice tailwind on my ride home! So, I guess it'll be around 130 mi. this weekend with a few hard sprints and a fair amount of high-intensity riding. Tomorrow there will be a "holiday" training ride on the levee in the morning, and I guess I'll probably make that one too.