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.