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.