Finally the streets are, mostly, dry! The skies are still grey and it's a bit colder, but conditions were pretty decent for this morning's long ride. My computer pickup cable transplant was successful and the Ergobrain now has fully restored sensory input, which means the speedometer is working again, so there' s one bit of good news.
The news at the levee pump hill was a bit more disappointing this morning, though. I would have expected a bunch of ride-hungry guys, but there were only Rob, Bob and myself this morning. Bob's the rather tall guy who moved here last Summer to start law school at Tulane. He doesn't usually make the morning rides and this morning he was running late and wasn't sure if he should stop when he saw me coming up the levee from River Road, but he did. A moment later Rob showed up and we hung around there in the gusty wind for an extra five minutes, but nobody else materialized so we finally rolled. We were soon joined by Jeff, Ronnie and Donald and settled into a paceline for what we knew would be a windy ride up the river.
The river, BTW, continues to rise. The businesses that are located on the batture, between the levee and the water, have all had to move their equipment and cars and things up closer to the levee, and this morning the infamous riversand operation, where there is often a line of dumptrucks blocking the bike path, had the heavy equipment out trying to build up their access road which had been flooded by the rising water.
Soon enough Rob got uncomfortable with the group's moderate pace and rolled up the left side past The Donald, who was on the front at the time. Donald, of course, held his pace, so Rob gradually rolled off the front listening to whatever music or motivational recordings he always has piped into his ears when he rides. I thought about riding up to him, but it was nice and comfy in the group and he wasn't going away very fast. After a while, Bob went off to bridge up to him. Right about that time, I noticed something lying across the road ahead of us. It was still a bit dark and it looked like maybe a 2x4. Easy to bunny-hop, so no worries, right? Well Donald, who was on the front, thought it was just a dark patch of asphalt and didn't realize until he was on top of it that it was one of the metal "Yield" signs, complete with steel signpost, that had been pulled up and laid completely across the road. No doubt someone, probably one of the truck drivers who we often battle with, intentionally placed it there. Donald got over it OK but Ronnie plowed right into it. Jeff managed to squeeze past it on the left edge. I had been all set to hop over it, but when Ronnie hit it, it flew up about a foot and so I ended up hitting it pretty hard. Lucky I didn't go down, actually.
Naturally, Ronnie's rear tire pinch-flatted immediately. I turned around to go move the blasted thing and just as I did, my rear tire went too. All I can say is I hope whoever did that was watching and got a good laugh out of it. Good thing we didn't see who did it, because I have a feeling that nobody would want to mess with an Angry Ronnie!
After I fixed my flat, I rolled up to Ronnie who was just about finished fixing his and he was fuming about Rob not having warned us about it. Rob and Bob were probably 200m ahead of us at the time, so there's not really much they could have done except to stop. At any rate, they never knew what happened and continued on to up the river.
After all of the delays everyone except me decided to turn around early at "The Dip," so I kept going at an easy pace and caught Rob and Bob on their way back near the Luling bridge. We rode back at a good pace, though, and got a nice stretch of 26 mph tailwind between Williams and the Country Club, which we soon paid for after making the bend and riding directly into the wind, struggling to hold 22, most of the way back to the playground. So I got home a bit late today.
When I got to work, the staff were all excited because some vagrant had just strolled right through the office from one stairwell to the other, holding a plastic bag in one hand and his pants up with the other, his face marked with bloody cuts. Of course they called Security but by then the guy was long gone. We had been told we couldn't lock the doors to our suite up here on the roof because of the fire code, so I guess we'll just have to buy a few automatic weapons so the secretary can defend herself, right?
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