Leg Pain and a Hurricane

The ol' legs were a little stiff this morning. Six of us did a nice 70-mi. ride yesterday in what we optimistically refer to as the "low rolling hills" North of Lake Pontchartrain. We started from Abita Springs and rode up to the old town of Enon, did a loop North of there, stopped at the Enon store for a cold drink, and headed back. It was mostly just a moderate pace, but with the prior day's Giro still in my legs and a few sprints for town signs and that sort of thing, and then a fairly fast few miles on the way back, I wasn't feeling real fresh by the end. The computer showed an average speed of 20.2 mph - pretty typical for these rides. We missed all of the rain that fell on the South Shore that morning and had really nice weather, and got flipped off by only two rednecks all day, although by the time we got back to the car (which had been baking in the sun the whole time, of course) it was pretty hot. It was a nice group of Woody, Eddie D., Jay, Gina, Kenny and me. Stopped for some shrimp po-boys on the drive back.

No, not that kind of Hurricane! (Although one or two Hurricanes from Pat O'Brien's might help out with the sore legs thing. For that matter, they might help out with the whole hurricane thing too. I'll have to look into that . . .)

Hurricane Ivan is looking rather worse for us today. They keep moving the projected path to the West, and now New Orleans is well within the probable hit zone. If this thing remains a Category 4 or 5 the city and the school will have to make some hard decisions within the next 24 hours if they anticipate needing to evacuate the city. Not looking forward to this at all. Also The Wife has a meeting in SanDestin that starts on Friday that she organizes for the LPMA, and they won't be able to officially cancel unless and until a hurricane warning is issued there. If we get a category 5 hitting the city, you can pretty much assume my house will lose most of its roof and the aluminum siding that was put over the original weatherboards around 30 years go. Plus, we will have to deal with my mother, her dog, our geriatric dog, and a cat. We're keeping our fingers crossed, but I have a bad feeling about this one. I'm not quite ready to run out and start buying batteries and stuff. If it ends up coming ashore in Mississippi or Alabama, we should be OK since we'll be on the good side of the circulation and won't have any big flooding problems. If they end up being way, way off and it heads farther West, leaving Destin in the clear, maybe we'll be able to evacuate to a free room at the Hilton in SanDestin!! There's always hope!