Don't You Just Hate It?

The big thunderstorms that were supposed to start in the middle of the night last night never materialized, and I woke up to find the streets dry. I clicked on the Weather Channel to find that we were under a tornado warning, and indeed it was pretty windy - but no rain. So, do I go out for a ride or not? The radar looked bad. There was a big long line of red and yellow and green stretching from SW Louisiana all the way up into Georgia, and it was moving generally Eastward, but the Northern end was moving a whole lot faster than the Southern end. It was practically pivoting around a point just West of the city. So I waited, and watched the radar, and it still didn't rain. I made some dangerously strong coffee. Still no rain. Damn, don't you just hate it when the weather toys with you like this? It wasn't until around 9 a.m. before it actually started to rain. Right now it's raining cats and dogs and there's no telling when it might finally clear up. At least it's looking like tomorrow will be better, and we're planning a ride up on the Northshore. Still, I was kind of looking forward to the Giro this morning.

It will be a soggy day for the Jazz Fest, but all-in-all they have had pretty good weather and this bit of rain probably won't deter too many people anyway. I suppose that the Athens Twilight organizers are not having a good morning today up in Athens, Georgia where the weather is really nasty this morning, but by the time the main events go off tonight, things should be fine.

I had dinner last night at Commander's Palace, which is always a special treat. For all the high cuisine and fancy wines and famous desserts they have at Commander's, the one thing I really, really like the best is the Turtle Soup with extra Sherry. Yum!

Thanks Dr. V!

Raceless in New Orleans

It's been great being able to race two full weekends in a row, and not having anything nearby this weekend feels like a let-down. Post-racing depression, I guess. I'll have to officiate the track events on Saturday night next week, so I guess there's no way to make the little Crit in Pensacola. The next big race around here is the Giro de Brandon on the weekend of the 15th, and I may have to miss at least the Sunday race for that one because of a conference I'm involved with here in N.O. So anyway, I always feel better on the bike the more I race and vice-versa, so I guess I'm feeling a little deprived right now.

This morning's ride was nice. The winds were fairly light and it was an easy day, so the group rode double paceline all the way. I think Dan and I sat at the front almost all the way out, since nobody was too anxious to pull anyway. Last night I met Jack B. and a few of the Bike Tulane people for dinner at Fresco's down on Maple Street. It was nice - mostly telling bike stories and talking about what might be done in the city and on campus to encourage more people to ride. The forecast is kind of sketchy for tomorrow morning, so I'm really hoping the weather turns out OK because I'd really like to put in a good Giro ride.

The Athens Twilight criterium is tomorrow night. The only person I know for sure is racing is Gina who will be there with the DeFeet girls. Their race doesn't start until 8:45 P.M., and the Pro race doesn't start until 10 p.m. Now that's a late night! I wish I had ridden that race once back when I could have. It' s probably one of the best attended races in the country since it's near the University of Georgia campus and the streets are lined with college students, probably the week before their exams start.

Tough Transition

When the alarm went off this morning, I looked over and thought, "good, I can sleep another half-hour before I have to get up." Well, not really. I am apparently having a difficult time making the transition from the Tuesday-Thursday training race schedule to the Wednesday training race schedule, because I thought it was Wednesday. Whenever I do an evening training race, the next morning I feel like I just got off the bike. For the last couple of years that was fine because we ride later on Wednesday. Anyway, I got out to the levee a couple of minutes early (I mean, IF it had been a Wednesday), and it wasn't until Dave and Bob rode up that it finally dawned on me that today was Thursday and the training ride was already half an hour up the road. Sheesh! So we rode steady out past the dip where we caught the group on its way back and had a pretty nice ride. I really do need to get out there and ride by myself more,and it was kinda nice taking those long, long pulls.

Yesterday's Wednesday training race didn't have a very good turnout for some reason. Maybe a dozen guys at the start. A couple of riders took off right at the start - I didn't even know they were out there until they had 30 seconds on the pack. One of them was Charlie Davis. Shortly after that, two riders jumped off the front and bridged up to them, I should have gone with them, but the pack didn't respond much. So I went to the front and, along with Rob K., we tried to get things going to see if we could close, but a certain unnamed NBO rider just kept letting gaps open and wouldn't work except to make fruitless attacks, so the gap grew and eventually Rob got tired of it and went home. I tried to make a decent workout out of it, although that certain NBO rider was taking some sort of perverse delight in attacking me every time I would finish a pull. In the last few miles before the finish I took a pull at the front and dropped back to the back as that same rider let a gap open, so I just let it go and rode in easy.

We could use some more riders out there on Wednesday, guys!!

So an exciting book order came in today. What am I reading, you ask? Well, there' s the ever-popular "How to Lie With Statistics," which I bought just because it is such a classic, along with the more recent "How to Lie with Charts," as if I need any advice on that subject, and "Damned Lies and Statistics." I wanted them as reference materials for the presentation I'm giving in a few weeks. Exciting reading, huh? I think there are actually some interesting examples of misleading statistics that I can use.

Cool . . . Pics

A nice little cool front blew through last night, and although temps during the day will hit the 80s, it was quite nice for this morning's ride. It was a smallish group and we just rode a nice steady paceline at moderate speed, enjoying the weather. It was one of those rides where it's so smooth and quiet that your mind starts to wander. One of the guys almost wandered right off the road, in fact, on the way back, causing The Donald to freak out for a moment. Otherwise, it was just a routine easy training ride except for the two new bikes that showed up. Bob B. was out for his first ride on his new Fuji Team bike that replaced his older Cannondale. We also picked up Bob Perrin on the way back and I noticed that he was on a new grey Bianchi. Even Joe F. showed up on our return trip. Joe was sick for a while and we didn't see him for most of two weeks.

Jay S. sent a few new photos from last weekend's criterium. That' s Jay in the photo up there, so I guess that means that his wife actually took the pictures. Anyway, they look quite good, and I'll try and get them up on the website later today. I've got a lot of fires burning right now at work and after spending half of yesterday getting the results ready to upload to the USCF database I'm even farther behind than usual. There's a little regional NCURA conference here in New Orleans in a few weeks at which I'm supposed to give a presentation and moderate a session and I haven't even gotten started on that yet. I think it was supposed to be due today, so that one will have to get bumped up on the To-Do list.

Better than Advertised

When the alarm went off this morning I stumbled out into the living room and clicked on the TV to check the weather radar. I just barely missed it. The Weather Channel shows it "on the 8s," and by the time I got to the television set it was 5:49. The forecast had been uncertain the night before, with some calling for thunderstorms all night and others saying they would miss the city. Indeed, it had rained, but the streets were almost dry, and when I finally got to see the radar, exactly two minutes before I had to be out the door, all it showed was a band of storms heading away from the city. It turned out that the weather was much better than advertised this morning, but I suppose last night's forecast was enough to scare off a few of the regular riders because there were only about seven of us up there on the levee for the Tuesday long ride. So we mostly rode a nice smooth paceline with Todd pushing the pace up a bit when he'd come to the front, until we got to the grain elevator and Big Richard's rear tire exploded. It took a while to fix that one because the casing had a big slice in the sidewall. I had some pieces of an old Tyvek race number in my bag that I carry for just such an occasion, so Todd put a piece in there as a boot and we sent Richard home while we rode ahead to meet the other riders who didn't stop. On the way back the pace got pretty fast and even though we had a nice little tailwind, I could still feel a little bit of last weekend in my legs. In particular, one of my hamstring tendons has been a little tender since the Road Race. I think it is improving, though, so I guess I won't need to break out the Celebrex.

I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time today putting together last weekend's stage race results in order to upload them to the USCF Results and Rankings database. Because of the format required by the USCF and the fact that I wanted to include not only the overall results but also the results of each stage, the table ended up being well over 500 rows long. Luckily, the system only found a handful of incorrect license numbers and names. Anyway, the results are on the website, the photos are on the website, the LCCS database had been undated, the LCCS website has been updated, and the results have been uploaded to the USCF database, and I can finally wash my hands of the MSGP and start thinking about the upcoming Tour de Louisiane that we haven't really even begun to pull together yet.

Fun Weekend

Well, we had a blast at the Mississippi Gran Prix! The Club had 23 riders at the race ('thou some didn't race the second day) including a large contingent of very competitive Cat. 5 riders. The weather was cool and dry, much like the prior weekend, except for the criterium on Friday night for the Cat. 1,2,3 riders. Only Realdo raced in that one, which was restricted to the Cat. 1,2,3 guys, and he said that the streets were wet and there were some crashes. One casualty was local rider Ben S., who crashed twice. The second time got him a concussion, dislocated shoulder and ambulance ride, but he seems to be OK now except for the fact that he's missing about an acre of skin. Richard B. had his big motor home trailer thing at the races, which made for a great home base for everyone.

Otherwise, everyone had a lot of fun. The masters races were pretty animated, with a lot of action from Mobile Velo, NOBC, Alabama Masters and LaS'port. At one point in the Road Race we got all the NOBC guys on the front and did a great team effort reeling in a solo break that was looking particularly dangerous. After that, I got in a 6-person break that worked pretty well together until the 5-k to go mark where there was a nice little hill. The group split in half at that point, so the three of us in front motored until the hill at the finish when Will from AL jumped early. I held him about half-way up the hill, but blew up in the last 100M and was lucky to stay ahead of Larry! That evening the TT was really painful. It was windy and hilly and I went out a bit too fast because I underestimated the hills (I hadn't seen the course before I rode it - big mistake) and turned in a rather dismal 4mi TT time of 9:11. Apparently I wasn't the only one having trouble, though, because it was still good for 4th in the masters race.

Sunday's Circuit Race was held on some great smooth roads in a local community college. I was only about 6 seconds up on the 3rd place guy on GC going into it, so it was a real battle. There were bonus points on the line for both a hot spot and for the finish, and the other Mobile Velo guys were attacking relentlessly. Luckily, the two Alabama Masters riders were shooting for the stage prizes, so I got a little help from them. Plus, of course, all of my teammates in the race helped by chasing down breaks and riding tempo at the front to keep me out of the wind a bit. I had Charlie, Jay, Mark, Steve and Peter in the race with me. Charlie and Steve were both in the top 10 too. Although I just missed out on the bonus at the hot spot, so did Larry, so it kind of all came down to the finish where I got the little 4th place bonus and ended up retaining 2nd place by eight seconds. Everyone rode great and it was a lot of fun having a challenging course, strong teammates and some good competition. The Cat. 5 race was particularly interesting since we had seven riders in that one and they did a super job of team riding to get four riders into the top 10 on GC. For some of the Cat. 5s, it was their first real experience having a real team effort and I think everyone learned a lot. This event turned into a great opportunity for a lot of the club riders to get to know each other and to pick up a lot of those little racing tips from the guys who have been around the block a few times already.

The Cat. 1,2,3 races were fast and competitive. The Herring guys had some real competition for a change, although they still easily outnumbered any of the other teams. Realdo rode well, finishing 5th in the road race, and even though he had a rather dismal Time Trial time, he rode smartly in the circuit race and moved up to 8th on GC, taking 4th place in the stage as well. Hopefully I can find some time to do a decent write-up on the races, or at least the Masters race, soon. I also have a bunch of photos that I'll try and get up on the NOBC website at some point. I also still need to format the results to submit to the USAC results and rankings database and then work out the LCCS points for the event too.

So I went out this morning and got in a nice easy 24 miles of spinning with John R. and a few of the other usual levee riders. The weather isn't looking to be too good for the next day or two, but I'm anxious to ride anyway. My legs felt much better this week than last and I'm hungry for another race, but I probably need a weekend at home to catch up on some of those things that I have to do to support my habit - like work, for example.

Friday Already!

I always seem to be a little surprised when there's a race I'm planning on going to and it's suddenly Friday. As usual, I haven't given much thought to actual race preparation. In fact, I'd still like to find myself a ride so I don't have to leave The Wife carless for the whole weekend. I headed out the door early this morning with the idea to do a short easy ride to give myself some extra time to attend to some things at home. I was expecting to be riding by myself, actually, but as it turned out I ran into Mark on his TT bike and then Donald and a couple more, so there was a nice little group. It is getting warmer and the sun is coming up earlier, which I like, and as I rode along the river I noticed that the water is getting higher and higher on the batture. Perhaps it's the Spring thaw, or perhaps just a lot of rain somewhere between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Anyway, I turned around at Williams Blvd. and rode back mostly by myself. As I got nearer to town I ran into Victor who was on his way to work at Ochsner. He's one of the many people who commute along the bike path - in his case, pretty much the whole bike path. His bike was making an odd noise and we stopped to investigate. I noticed that the last two cogs on his cassette were just a little bit loose, so maybe the lockring just needs to be tightened. Then again, it could be something rattling around in his seat bag or a problem with his bottom bracket. He said he'd have the shop take a look at it soon.

As I rode down Pine street back to the house, I passed the big green truck that picks up recyclables, hopping up onto the sidewalk as I usually do to get around it. A couple of blocks ahead of it I passed a slow-moving pickup truck that had five or six full recycling bins in it. Amazing. The locals are out scooping up the aluminum cans ahead of the recycling truck, and taking the whole bins to boot! I wonder if the guy goes back and returns the bins. A couple more blocks ahead of this guy was another guy on an old bicycle with two huge plastic bags full of aluminum cans hanging from his handlebars. Man, the price of aluminum must be high!

So I'll be heading up to Brookhaven early tomorrow morning, somehow, for the Mississippi Gran Prix. Richard is supposed to be up there with his motor home again, so that will be fun. I think Realdo is riding up with him this afternoon in order to make the Cat. 1,2,3 TT. When I went to register online at active.com yesterday afternoon, I discovered that the masters race wasn't listed. Since I've used active.com myself for a number of years to do registration for the Tour de La, I had a good idea what had happened. I called Frank and he said that he knew it was supposed to be there because he had already gotten a number of entries, so he gave me his ID and password and I went to the event administrator site and discovered the problem. As I had guessed, the cut-off time for that particular class had been set to 12:00 noon rather than 12:00 midnight, so I fixed it and all was well.

Frank M. has finally succeeded in essentially reproducing the old Natchez Classic, that ended in 2000, in his home town! I am hoping that the convenient location, good prizelist, nice weather and reasonable entry fees result in a good turnout. I'm not expecting to do all that well in this one, since it's been a while since I've done an all-out 4 mile time trial, and not having a slick TT bike with fancy handlebars and super-aero wheels is a bit of a disadvantage. I'll be happy as long as I don't embarrass myself with a terrible time, though.

The daughter is doing well following her ankle surgery and was able to walk a little bit today (with the air cast, of course), and is currently off of the meds (anti-inflammatories and such) that she's been taking for the last couple of months. She said that the ankle actually feels better now than it did before the surgery.

Wednesday Night; Thursday Morning

The Wednesday evening training race had a decent turnout yesterday. I skipped out of work promptly at 4:50 to give myself just enough time to get home, change and ride out to the lakefront. As luck would have it, when I pulled my bike down from its ceiling hook, I found the rear tire was flat as a pancake. A long sharp piece of shell had stabbed it so that a couple of millimeters were poking though on the inside of the tire. It took a little while to extract the damned thing, and by the time I put in a new tube and pumped it up I was running late. I missed the start by maybe five minutes, so I rode along the lakefront and made a quick U-turn at Franklin Ave. to join the group part-way through the first of four laps. There was a tailwind in that direction and they were flying. I did a lot of work, but didn't make any attacks. There were plenty enough attacks! It was actually easier on the headwind stretch where riders seemed pretty reluctant to put themselves in the wind. On the tailwind stretches, however, all bets were off. Since it was the usual crosswind/tailwind thing, people kept getting gapped off when the speeds got high with the tailwind. I think Branden said he got gapped off three different times, and I was on the ropes a couple of times myself. I was trying to spend some more time out of the saddle accelerating. I felt kind of sluggish last weekend whenever I needed to respond to an attack, which is probably a result of a little too much smooth paceline on the levee and not enough jumps and sprints at the lakefront.

For the last stretch before the finish, it was down to maybe eight or nine riders. There were a couple of attacks and things split up a lot, resulting in some high-speed chases, but ultimately it came back together as the group went over the first levee at Pontchartrain Beach. Robbie, visiting from Dallas, took advantage of the sudden slow-down and jumped while the rest kind of looked at each other to see if anyone was going to take up the chase so far from the finish. He made it to the finish first, though, followed by Howard, Branden and me. My legs were not feeling all that bad, but it was still a long ride home!

This morning's levee ride started late. I don't know why, but people have been getting out there later and later. We ended up with about ten riders, though, and on the way out Donald was pushing the pace along with one of the Tri/Road guys whose name I forget. You know - that short guy with the two water bottle holders attached to his saddle. He was pushing the pace on the way back too. I had decided early that I would be taking short pulls today, and that's what I did, but anyway it was a good fast ride both ways.

I think I will have to take my dog in to be put to sleep tomorrow morning. He's about 15-17 years old, I guess (he came from the pound, so I don't know for sure); a Lab / Doberman mix with a big Lab's head attached to a thin Doberman's body. He's been living outside in the back yard for the last year and a half, since he pretty much lost bladder and bowel control. He would still be waiting for me at the gate when I'd come in from riding until a couple of days ago, but he can't lift himself up off the ground now, so I'm afraid it's time. Not really looking forward to that, but its got to be done.

New Stuff, Old Stuff

I installed that Chris King headset last night. Not having any proper headset removal or installation tools on hand, it was not something that you would have wanted your children or bike mechanics to watch. Now, I should mention that I have used the brute force headset installation method many times in the past, although I wouldn't recommend trying this particular methodology on your expensive all-carbon frame. The Cervelo, being good ol' steel, did not complain too much, however. My primary tools for this operation are two allen wrenches for removal of the stem and brake, a small block of wood, a long big-ass screwdriver, and a ball-peen hammer. Kids, don't try this at home without adult supervision!

After removing the stem and front brake, the headset cups are "delicately" removed by pounding them out from the inside with the screwdriver and hammer, being careful to work all sides evenly so that the cups come out more or less straight. The race on the fork crown comes off in a similar manner. Installation of the new headset involves propping the frame up on a solid block of wood on a table so that the head tube is resting square on the wood, and then carefully pounding in the cups using the wooden block to keep from damaging them and to help keep them going in straight. Anyway, everything finally went together nicely and I finished up by putting the stem, brake and computer pickup back on.

This morning's ride was a nice steady paceline; slow enough that I never put it in the big ring, but fast enough to count. I don't guess I was very talkative. The Daughter had some surgery done on her ankle up in Iowa City this morning, and I had a number of things on my plate at work as well. The surgery seems to have gone well and they removed an "extra" bone that apparently 20% of the population has that was causing some irritation, and fixed a tendon or ligament on the top of her foot that was torn. She should be back on her feet in ten days or so (I hope), and is counting on her teammates to help her out while she heals up.

Right now I'm taking a little break and checking out the live reports from the Tour de Georgia on Cyclingnews.com. I'm hoping to make it out to the lakefront for the Wednesday training race this evening.

Back to the Levee

Man, I was useless yesterday. I mean, more so than usual. This morning, however, all was well. The legs have only a slight lingering heaviness and the lungs are about back to normal thanks to the warm humid air blowing in from the Gulf of Mexico today. I had wanted to change out the headset on the Cervelo last night and install the King one I got from Robin, but by the time I got home it was nearly 8 p.m., the fridge was empty and I wasn't in the mood to be the creative chef, so we put in a call to The Italian Pie for a pizza. After that and a glass of wine, I decided sleep was more important than a fully functional headset. Funny how wine can make you think crazy things like that.

This morning's long levee ride had a pretty big group - maybe 15 I guess. There was a little bit of a tailwind on the way out and so the pace stayed fast. I was seeing 27 mph pretty steadily. When we hit the little bump at Williams Blvd., it was enough of a jolt to eject someone's little tail light, which exploded upon impact sending batteries and the lens and other bits and pieces flying. Todd's buddy Robbie from Lewisville (basically part of Dallas nowadays) was riding with us today.

There was some excitement today as we went under the pipes at "the dip." This is where the bike path drops down from the levee and runs alongside the river road for a few hundred feet to get under some large pipes. The paceline usually spaces itself out along here because of the ever-present gravel and other debris down at street level, and so if you're anywhere near the tail end of the group you feel like you need to make an extra effort on the way back up the levee to close the gap. The bike path weaves around a bit just before it climbs up the levee, and just as I came through that section I heard a lot of screaming ahead of me. I couldn't see what the problem was until the guy in front of me suddenly swerved to his left. When he did, I was confronted by Bob B. and his bike, at a dead stop, directly in front of me! I pulled the ripcord and bailed out to right onto the grassy slope of the levee. Whew! That was a close one. Bob hadn't tightened his rear quick-release enough after returning from last weekend's race and I guess that when he stood up to climb the levee the wheel moved enough in the dropout so that it wedged itself firmly against the chainstay. Basically, his rear wheel locked up and he skidded until the tire wore through and the tube blew out the hole, all of which took about two seconds. So after we all figured out what had happened, Bob limped back to Justin's car on the flat while the group continued on.

The ride back was uneventful. The pace stayed reasonably high considering the light headwind. Realdo and a couple other guys met the group just as we started the return trip. I was feeling pretty good, considering.

So it looks like "Game Over" for Tyler. If you want to read up on the actual USADA report, including the comments by the dissenting panelist, it's on the USADA website. By the time his suspension is over he'll be able to ride in masters races. Meanwhile, Lance made the unsurprising announcement that he's retiring immediately after the TDF this summer. I can't say I blame him under the circumstances. There seems to be a long line of people trying to take him down lately, either by way of litigation or innuendo.

I put a bunch of my lousy photos from last Saturday's criterium on the website yesterday evening. Hopefully we'll get a few really nice photos from Malcolm later that we can use to replace them!

Hopefully we'll have a nice turnout for tomorrow's Wednesday training race. I was really feeling my lack of interval training during last weekend's races. I mean, my recovery time sucks right now, and I know that one sure cure for that is a lot of races.

Tired, Sore and Smiling

Although overall the turnout was rather thin, the NOBC had a decent contingent on hand for the Tour LeFleur up around Jackson, MS. I'll try and do a nice race report a bit later. Work has me pretty tied up today.

The weather last weekend was great - warm, sunny and dry. Sunday's road race course was, I thought, damned challenging. My legs are still sore. In the masters race, Ed Chapman from Mobile Velo attacked early, taking me with him. A sizeable gap developed rather quickly and by the time we were most of the way through the 23-mile loop we had, I guess, a 1-minute gap. About then Ed started to ease up, and I looked back and saw two riders, one of which was his teammate Larry, bridging up to us, so we had a 4-rider break now with Ed, Larry, Jorge and me. The group worked together pretty smoothly for a while, although Jorge was skipping pulls, and by the time we got around to the hilly section of the second lap, Jorge had come off the back. Obviously that was the signal for Ed and Larry to start working me over, which they did with admirable efficiency. After chasing down about the fourth attack in a row, Larry attacked again on a climb and I had to let him go. For the next five miles or so (maybe it was more?) I basically time-trialed at the front while Ed sucked wheel like a vulture waiting for an injured deer to die. I was basically in training ride mode by now since both Ed and Larry were racing in the separately scored 35+ age group while I was racing in the 45+ group. When we got to within three miles or so of the finish, Ed finally attacked. I can't say I was highly motivated to go after him, and I just kept up a fast enough pace so that I could still see both him and Larry by the time we reached the finish. I have a lot more details on the weekend that I'll try and put into a race report for the NOBC website a bit later this week.

Tour le Fleur Day One

Greetings from the Comfort Inn somewhere North of Jackson, Mississippi! The first day of the Tour le Fleur omnium was today. We had excellent weather and a challenging course for the criterium. The course was a 1-mile long circuit through an old and very upscale neighborhood. This was a fairly non-technical loop with a 0.35 mile stairstep climb leading to the finish. The rest of the course wound through the neighborhood streets mostly downhill, with speeds reaching about 39 mph. I rode the master 35+/45+ race, which had a rather thin turnout today. On one of the first few trips up the hill, there was an attack that split the pack. After a while, the lead group include Jorge Merle from Dallas, Four guys from Mobile Velo, and me. Not exactly the ideal break for me!! The Mobile Velo guys were very aggressive, launching attack after attack. I chased down one or two breaks, Jorge chased down another, I chased down the next one. When the next attack came by Ed Chapmann, on the climb of course, I hesitated, hoping Jorge would cover it. When he didn't I looked back and discovered he was already off the back. Damn! One Mobile Velo guy off the front and three on my wheel. For the rest of the race, I spent nearly all of my time on the front. Every time I would ease up, an attack would go and I would have to chase it down. The Mobile Velo guys did a good job. I tried my best to get one of them to take the lead during the last couple of laps, but they having none of it, so I ended up sprinting from the front at the finish and of course one of the guys came past me, so I ended up 3rd (which was 1st in the Master 45+).

The Cat. 1,2,3 race handed Realdo a similar experience with Troy (Herring) off the front and the first chase group containing Realdo, Hunter East and four other Herring guys, so he ended up doing a lot of work and coming in 6th.

We headed over to Macaroni Grill after the race and had a nice dinner or lunch or whatever it is at 3:30 p.m.

Tomorrow is the road race, so we're all hoping for some bigger fields. Anyway, here are the unofficial results:

Cat. 1,2,3
=======
1. Troy Porter
2. Chris Alexander
3. Hunter East
4. Frank Moak
5. Tim Reagan
6. Realdo Jessurun (NOBC)
7. Bain Foote
8. Brian Bunch
9. Kenny Bellau
10. Tracy Martin
11. Scott Kuppersmith
12. Branden Morvant (NOBC)
13. David Coppinger
14. Brian Boudreaux
15. Matthew Espey
16. Noel Puentes
17. Eddie Delgado
18. Eddie Chapmann
19. Robert Kelly
20. Ben Schuler
21. Chris Stokes

Ca.t 5
=====
1. Jason Ham
2. John Hendrickson
3. Michael Rauch
4. Scott Gurgan
5. Matt Mitchell
6. Chris Emery
7. Jeff Foote
8. Bob Bell
9. Dylan Jason
10. Felipe DeVega
11. Paul Rogers
12. Jay Bookman
13. John Schmitt
14. John Grady
15. Stephen Jason
16. John Smith
17. Mark Yoshida
18. Andrew Parks
19. Francis Asprodites (NOBC)
20. Brooks Branham (NOBC)
21. Justin Homes
22. Gary Gray
23. Cary Watkins

Cat. 5
=====
1. Jason Miller (NOBC)
2. Pasquale Montalaro
3. Michael Riley
4. Paul Koehn
5. Brooks Abel
6. Sebastian Alvarez
7. Jason Redd
8. D. Bell
9. Doug Wilson
10. Michael Bradford
11. John Rauch (NOBC)
12. Brady Kendall
13. Chase Harrisson
14. Brad Smith
15. Bobby Stevenson
16. Nate Duncan
17. Carter Lusk
18. Marion Kerr
19. Don Boykin

Master 35+
========
1. Ed Chapman
2. Larry Carbonneau
3. David Field
4. Jorge Merle
5. Jimmy Olson

Master 45+
========
1. Randy Legeai (NOBC)
2. Rick Selby (NOBC)
3. Lee Hammond
4. James Rosati
5. Bob Stores

Women Cat. 1-4
============
1. ?
2. Amy Bergen (NOBC)
3. Talor Ehrens
4. Jackie ?

Junior
=====
1. Dylan Jason

Weakend

After staying up until nearly 3 a.m. last night, I was only too happy to shut of the alarm this morning and grab a few minutes more sleep. This week has been really crazy at work, and a combination of deadlines and unexpected last-minute The Prez had me running pretty ragged the last few days. The good news is that I'm heading up to Jackson, Mississippi early tomorrow morning for a weekend of racing. Tomorrow morning is the criterium, which is on a course I've never ridden before. I've been feeling my age this week, so I figured I'd go ahead and enter the 45+ race. The 35+ and 45+ are combined anyway, so the races will be the same. They will just pick out the top 45+ riders. Sunday will be a road race a bit north of Jackson. I don't have a clue what the course will be like, but I guess it will be the typical low rolling hills that characterize the area.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting away for a cycling-only weekend.

Work, work, work

It never fails. Whenever I'm expecting to spend the weekend racing bikes, work starts to pile up on me. After retreiving The Wife from the airport last night, I tried again to get TurboTax to update itself ("one-click updates"), and again it crashed my computer. I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling the software and trying again, and finally it successfully downloaded and installed its updates. It took substantially more than "one click." By then it was approaching midnight and, continuing my long-standing tradition, I put off actually doing my taxes until the night of the 14th. I figured I needed the sleep anyway.

This morning my legs were feeling the Wednesday training race, my lungs felt congested, and I was generally just tired, but I went out to the morning training ride anyway, with the firm intention of taking it easy. I get to the meeting spot about a minute after 6:15, and again there's nobody there, so I ride down to the playground where I pick up a few more. Eventually I think we accumulated seven or eight riders. We ended up turning around at the dip, where the pipes cross over the levee, rather than doing the whole ride. I wasn't the only one with tired legs, and the wind was still pretty strong, so it was an easy decision today. On the way back, The Donald installed himself at the front and just motored at 23-24 mph for five miles or so, after which Luke, still on his TT bike, came around on the right, politely asked permission to pull for a while, and stayed up there for another five miles. I took a few pulls, of course, but nothing very long or fast. These old legs probably won't be recovered quite in time for Saturday's criterium, but there's no point making it worse!

By the time I got home, The Wife was pacing up and down awaiting a pick-up from the car rental agency (she rented a car for the 5-hour drive to Destin). They were already about 45 minutes late, and there was no way she was going to make a scheduled 1 p.m. meeting at the SanDestin Hilton, so she was not a happy camper. Finally the elusive driver showed up. Then she picked up the car downtown and drove back uptown to the house to load up a whole bunch of meeting stuff - boxes full of agendas and programs and that sort of thing, and finally headed East around 9:30.

I'm spending today trying to get extensively revised budgets from three faculty members who have better things to do, which means that I'll get them at the last minute and then have to stick around to consolidate them and correct the inevitable errors and finally send the consolidated Tulane subcontract budget off to the folks at LSU who will be the prime contractors if the proposal actually gets funded, which probably wouldn't be until some time around next Thanksgiving. At any rate, I can't stay around here very late today because I'm supposed to meet up with Jack Bertel and the Bike Tulane folks at Fresco on Maple Street at 6:30, and then of course, there are those pesky tax forms to fill out . . .

Wednesday Races!

We had a nice morning training ride today, although I found that my calves are still rather sore. Better than yesterday, but still sore. I called Gina to get the med student perspective on my brother's UTI, and she surprised me by saying that she had been hit by a car while out training. Luckily, she was basically side-swiped rather than hit from behind. The car was apparently going pretty fast (like 55mph). She said that she kind of bounced along the side of the car before finally losing her front wheel and going down, sliding across the road to the left and ending up in the center lane. Very very lucky not to have broken anything! The street was wet and she was wearing arm and leg-warmers, so the road rash was not as bad as it would have been otherwise. She was out riding the next day.

So the Wednesday training races started today. The weather was good, except for the brutal Northwest wind coming off the lake. You could feel the spray from the waves hitting the seawall, which is always a bad sign. I was struggling a bit, as I usually do when it's windy like that. The race started out with Kenny pushing the pace really hard for the first lap. There was a bit of a tailwind on the way out (we do 4 laps of about 6 mi. each) and the speed was up around 31 much of the way, with most of the pack strung out in the gutter. On the way back into the wind, the speed dropped down into the teens. I spend most of that stretch out in the wind in order to reduce the number of riders escheloned all the way across both lanes. Toward the end of that lap, the pace picked up just as I was dropping back and two riders ahead of me unexpectedly sat up leaving Rick and me with a huge gap. There was no way we were going to chase back on at that point, so we rode steady through the tailwind section, then turned around early and got back into the pack when they were heading back. (Hey, it's just a training race!) On the third lap, Matt launched off the front with Charlie and one other rider around the fountain, I think, and they got a huge gap right away. Eventually, the pack started to respond as I took a couple of pulls. I was pretty wiped out, so around Franklin Ave. I dropped back. Mistake! Huge Mistake. The guys at the front could smell blood as they closed in on the break and the pace ramped up to around 32 mph. Because of the crosswind, there was no place to get a draft when I got to the back, and there was also no way I was going to sustain 32 mph on my own, so I came off the back pretty quickly. Back at the front, the 3-man break was finally caught a couple of miles later, and in the resulting sprint Noel won, followed by Woody and Kenny, so I heard. I had to head out to the airport right away to pick up The Wife on her way back from D.C. She is off to Destin for another meeting tomorrow morning.

So I'm kind of tired tonight and my lungs really took a hit this evening, probably a combination of the dry air, pollen level, and hard effort. I think I'll do the long morning ride tomorrow anyway since the weather will be nice again. Maybe I should be resting up for the Tour Le Fleur omnium this weekend? I dunno. Every time I try to do that I just end up feeling flat for the race.

Tuesday Again? Already?

Geez, the past week seems to have gone by quickly! I was up early this morning but still managed to stumble around and fiddle with the bike lights enough so that by the time I actually got out the door I was already running late. So I hustled down Carrollton Avenue in the early morning darkness to find nobody up on the pump hill. Damn! I looked down at my watch and it was 6:17 - just a minute or so late for the usual 6:15 start. I climbed the levee and just kept rolling, but I couldn't see anyone up ahead. Strange?! Then I noticed a flashing headlight coming toward me. It turned out that everyone else was just more late than I. I turned around and saw Luke who said there were a couple more at the pump. Somehow, it seems that wishful thinking has started to turn 6:15 into 6:20 in some people's minds.

It was windy today, but we had a decent sized group of about a dozen. The only real issue was when Howard, who was on his time trial bike, on his aero bars, in the middle of the pack, made an unexpected move when the pace suddenly slowed and almost took Rick and me down. There were a lot of rocks and shells up on the bike path today out past Kenner. It was as if there had been an overloaded pickup truck with bad shocks driving along the road dropping stuff all over the place. As we got to the turnaround today most people eased up, but The Donald kept rolling pretty fast so, being on his wheel anyway, I hung with him. There was an older couple walking toward us in the left lane and The Donald gave me the usual warning as we approached them. Suddenly, the woman took a step into our lane and Donald screamed to make sure she saw us. After we turned around, The Donald rolled up to the couple to explain, but the old man was pissed off that he had yelled at them. Voices were raised. I guess it's true that no good deed goes unpunished.

The ride back was easy for a long time, eventually ramping back up to 24-25 mph. Once it got up to 25-26, though, the rotation started to come apart. Robin tried to get things organized a few times, but to no avail. Then Big Richard had a flat and we all got a nice little break. Although it had been cool at the start, it was warming up really fast and I took the opportunity to strip off the arm-warmers and unzip the jersey. For the last four or five miles, The Howard got on the front and towed the whole paceline at about 26 mph. The whole time, Todd, who was on his wheel, was coaching from behind. The Howard looked pretty well toasted by the time he finally eased up under the Huey P. Me? I was feeling sluggish in the beginning of the ride, but was actually feeling much better toward the end. My calves are still really sore.

The Daughter and her teammates finally got back to Iowa City late last night after having to rearrange travel and miss another day of school. Meanwhile, I got a call yesterday afternoon with news that my brother was in the hospital with a raging UTI (104+ F fever - serious stuff). He went straight to the ICU where they started pumping in antibiotics. He's doing much better this morning and is out of ICU, so they're now waiting for the results of the blood cultures and are investigating to find a cause, since UTIs are relatively uncommon in adult men. Sounds like he had some septicemia there for a while, so it's good that his wife got him to the ER quickly. It also sounds like (all my information is coming 3rd-hand here) he also has some nephritis.

No Go

I had planned on riding this morning, but late last night I checked my calendar and discovered a scheduled dermatologist appointment I'd forgotten about. I was up at 5 a.m. to drive The Wife to the airport (wasn't I just there??) for a trip up D.C. to pitch for the APA to various congressional staffers. There just wasn't enough time to get in a ride and still make the appointment. Just as well, perhaps, since my calves are sore as hell. I guess it was from running up and down the stands at the meet when I was moving around trying to take a few decent photos of the meet. That, combined with a lot of walking all day Saturday must have done some damage.

I attended a little PR ceremony across the street this morning to mark the start of demolition of a building to make space for our new Bio-innovation Center that will house our Gene Therapy Consortium, among other things. They had all the local TV stations out, and the mayor various other city and state officials got their photo opps in. After the talking, they had a Jazz Band to a mock Jazz funeral march over to a different podium where they had an antique explosives plunger rigged up to some sort of pyrotechnic that exploded confetti all over the place. It was kind of neat, actually. Anyway, I scored a couple of free "meeting cookies" and a coke!

The Tour le Fleur is on for next weekend and it looks like we'll have a good turnout from the club. Now if I can just get back in shape after all this down time . . .

Salt Lake

A bit of a long weekend in Salt Lake City. The Daughter's team had a rough meet. To start off, one of their top all-arounds whacks her head on the vault table during warm-up and clearly has a mild concussion. She goes ahead and competes, but then starts feeling nauseous, so they have to substitute other team members for the other events. There are big errors on every event, and although The Daughter did a fine beam routine, the team, and any chance of qualifying for Nationals, goes down in flames pretty fast. We were staying at a condo in Park City, which was really quite nice, although we didn't have enough time to enjoy the place. The University of Utah was awesome and it was really a pleasure to watch them. I wish I had shoulders remotely like those of their top gymnast, who by they way won the all-around. Anyway, the U of U and Brigham Young qualified for Nats this year. Florida, Georgia and LSU are also going.

There was still snow on the slopes in Park City., and in the morning we could see people up there skiiing and snowboarding. Rumors of this part of Utah being "dry" proved to be completely unfounded and in fact I enjoyed a couple of nice Porters while I was there. We returned around mid-afternoon on Sunday after a nice flight in First Class. They showed "National Treasure" both coming and going, and so I watched it twice while The Wife worked on a quilt. I enjoyed the movie, actually. A few minutes ago, I called The Daughter and found out that a snowstorm in Denver had cancelled their flights and they were stranded in Salt Lake for another day. Luckily, they got to use the Condos that we were in (one of the team parents apparently has connections there), so I'm really glad that they got to see the mountains. I don't know how they manage school, though, when they miss so many days of class. At least the fact that they didn't qualify for Nationals this year means their season is over and they can concentrate on school for a while.

I have had just a bit too much wine tonight and will probably hit the sack in a few minutes. The Wife is off to Washington DC tomorrow morning, so I'll be up around 5 a.m. to drive her to the airport, after which I'll stop at Jefferson Playground and see if I can get in a training ride before the predicted rainstorms move in. After two days off the bike, I feel fat and lazy as usual. Robin said he has a Chris King headset he will give me. I took my Campi headset apart on Thursday and it is totalled, so I absolutely need a new headset if I expect to keep riding the bike.

Out West

The morning levee ride was quite nice today. Still cool enough for arm-warmers, and a bit of a breeze kicking up toward the end, but there were six or seven of us and we rode mostly in a double paceline. Feeling better today, but not looking forward particularly to this afternoon's travel. We'll be heading out to Salt Lake City around 1:30 or so where the weather is not looking too nice. I had been hoping to be able to at least get in a long walk in Park City on Saturday morning, but if it's freezing and raining and snowing, the smart thing to do may be to have a nice cup of coffee and kick back. Anyway, I'll pack a variety of clothes and hope for the best. We will be flying FIRST CLASS on this trip. Because of we made reservations so late (using frequent flyer miles), that's all that was available. Actually, I find first class rather uncomfortable. The seats up there are designed for huge fat American businessmen, and as a result, the seat bottoms are too deep for my upper legs, and my feet don't hit the ground, so I have to prop them up on my carry-on bag. If they want to do it right, they should put in fully-adjustable seats like the ones you get in a nice car.

The Regional Championships are Saturday night, but tonight we'll be going straight from the airport to meet the team for dinner somewhere in town, which means a late night trip from Salt Lake City to Park City on unfamiliar roads, probably in a combination of rain and snow. Should be interesting. Anyway, there will probably be live scoring on the web for the meet on the University of Utah Women's Gymnastics site.

Don't know if I'll be able to get online over the weekend, since we're staying in a rental condo and I'm taking the old Gateway laptop without wireless.

Tired and Hungry

I guess I let my legs get a little bit ahead of my stomach over the last couple of days, for which I paid dearly. Yesterday afternoon the radar looked promising, so I skipped out of work 15 minutes early, rode back to the house to change clothes and bikes, and headed out to the lakefront for the first Wednesday training race of the season. The rain earlier in the afternoon had scared away most riders who apparently still haven't learned the first rule of Lakeshore Drive: "It never rains on Lakeshore Drive." I swear, it can be raining everywhere else, but somehow Lakeshore will get none, or at least just very little. Anyway, when I got there I found only Tim, who is going really strongly right now. I was a little irritated at the low turnout. If we're just going to be doing this once a week, we need riders to show up and race even when the weather isn't ideal. Too many "fair weather riders" around here, IMHO. We ended up with Tim, Kenny, Brooks, Justin (or Josh - I never have gotten the names straight on those two), Amy and myself. Not enough to have a race, but we did a pretty decent hour of training anyway. In fact, Tim and Kenny pretty much towed Brooks and me around the course at a pretty fast pace. I was feeling really tired, probably at least partly because I had skipped lunch and hadn't really had much of a dinner the night before either. We finished up around 7 p.m., and rode home slowly after strapping my little headlight onto the handlebars because it would be almost dark by the time I got home with around 65 miles for the day. I guess the mileage has been stacking up a bit since last Saturday. The weekend was about 140 mi. and since Monday it's been about another 140. Anyway, I was pretty wasted by the time I got home, and the bathroom scale told me I was running a pound or two low, which for me is about 123.

The Wife was busy cooking up a pot of Chicken Andouille Gumbo when I got home and I should have eaten more than I did, but it wasn't ready until after 9:00 and after one bowl and a glass of merlot, I was done.

The USAC has new medals for state championships this year. It must have been 20 years since there was a new medal design! Over the years I've accumulated a bunch of the old medals, most of which never even came out of their little plastic bags. I'd be nice to get one of the new ones, though.

I woke up this morning feeling like I had just gotten off the bike, so I quickly decided that I'd try and take it easy on the morning long ride. There was a pretty big group, though, and despite the wind the speed stayed fast. I think that it was mostly Eddie, Rob, Matt and Donald up there, but it was hard to tell from my spot, which was mostly at the tail end of the group on Ronnie's wheel. I suppose that it was nearly as hard riding at the back as it would have been up in the rotation, though, because the pace seemed unsteady, fluctuating from 25 to 30 most of the way out. Every now and then a gap would suddenly open up and we'd have to surge up to 28 or so to close it. I was not feeling too frisky at all, though, so I kept my nose out of the wind as much as possible this morning. The ride back started out nice and easy for the first few miles, but eventually Eddie and Rob got things going again, helped by a nice little tailwind. Toward the end I went up and took a few short pulls, but everything was telling me to keep my foot off the gas today, so I only made a couple of hard efforts. Matt was out today on his spiffy new bike with its curvy fork and seat stays and curvy-spoked Italian carbon-fiber wheels. It was making me think about a neat bike I saw on the cyclingnews website yesterday that belongs to one of the women on the Velo Bela team in CA. It's a nice Orbea that weighs in at only 15 lbs. and has some nice small-person details like the standard-bend Easton handlebars that make it easier for short fingers to reach the brake levers. There is some very expensive stuff on that bike to be sure, like the Ti brakes for example, and the American Classic carbon wheels. I like the Easton stuff especially and would love those handlebars if it wasn't for the small matter of the $200 price tag.

I should be able to ride tomorrow morning, since our flight to Salt Lake City isn't until after noon, so hopefully I'll feel better by then. One thing is for sure. I will definitely be eating lunch today!

Hit or Miss

I've been playing Hit or Miss today with the weather. We got in our morning training ride before the rain started, so that was a good thing. In fact, the skies didn't look all that bad while we were riding. We did just a moderate speed paceline today, which was fine. When I got home, The Wife was walking out the door on her way to work and she said that there was bad weather moving in fast. I rushed around so I could beat the weather and just as I was about to leave, it started raining. The radar was just a complete mess of scattered green, but a few minutes later the rain stopped so I jumped on the commuter and made tracks for downtown, hopefully in-between the rainstorms. The rain didn't really start again until I was only three blocks from the office, so although it took all the starch out of my shirt, I didn't get very wet. As I walked in, the BikeTulane guys were set up in front of the "Bike Room" door with boxes of donuts, and since I had worn my helmet today, I helped myself to a fee one. The bike room was not quite as packed as usual because of the weather, but I suspect they got a fair amount of "business" before the rain started. I had to run out on an errand this afternoon and went through four or five cycles of torrential rain followed by sunshine. Crazy!

The "Wednesday World Championships" training races are supposed to start this evening, but it's not looking too good right now. Most of the really nasty weather is a few miles south of the city, but there's a tornado watch and flash flood watch, etc. posted for that area right now. I doubt there will be much of a turnout on the Lakefront at 6, which is only a couple of hours from now, although I think that most of the bad weather has finally moved through. The question is, should I leave work half an hour early so I can ride home, change clothes, jump on my road bike and ride out to the lakefront? The radar loop right now makes it look like we're in the clear at this point, but there are still thunderstorms in the forecast. I may have to be content with watching the neat streaming video on cycling.tv for the time being. They've been showing a lot of cyclo-cross today. The image quality is remarkably good so I'm hoping they will be able to handle the load when the big stage races start. At any rate, I might be willing to shell out a few bucks for this rather upgrade my cable service just to get a single channel (OLN) that shows mainly log-rolling all winter.

The Morning Race

I got out the house a few minutes late this morning and was just casually riding to the levee when I glanced at my watch. Oh S#%t!! I knew immediately that I wasn't going to make it. I'd be a couple of minutes late, and when it comes to the morning ride, two minutes is a very long time. Sure enough, the pumping station was deserted as I rode up the levee, so I dropped it down a couple of cogs and started my morning time trial. I caught the group right about at the Jefferson Playground, and it's a good thing because that's usually where the pace starts to pick up.

This morning's ride seemed fast. Rob was riding like he had recently polished off four or five expressos, and that got a few other riders going too. Rob practically attacked a few times, and I swear there were a couple of counter-attacks. The bottom line is that we were going fast all the way out. It was fun. I was skipping pulls now and then, along with almost everyone else who was in the rotation. Amazingly, most all of the group was still together by the time we hit the turnaround.

The ride back was much, much slower. I wonder why?

On my way home I come down from the levee path onto Oak Street, crossing a set of railroad tracks that is strategically located at a particularlynasty, and busy, little intersection. As I came across the tracks this morning I could see a driver about to pull out from the stop sign directly in front of me. She never looked in my direction - until I screamed at her. Even then, she had this "deer in the headlights" look on her face as she continued to roll out from the intersection. Not even enough common sense to put her stupid foot on the brake. Amazing. Must have gotten her license at Wal-Mart. Of course I pretty much expect that sort of driving at this particular intersection, so I had ample time to take evasive action. I looked back for Mary who had latched onto the group as it came past her earlier (she commutes in from somewhere around Ormond Estates, I think, on a nice Litespeed wearing one of those nifty Timbuk2 messenger bags). She came down the levee just behind me, but I think she must have turned right just past the intersection because I didn't see her. Or maybe she turns left and takes Monticello? I'll have to ask one day. Anyway, I didn't hear a "thud" behind me so I assume she missed the car and vice-versa, so I continued down Oak St. practicing my Rouge-Roubaix bike handling skills. As it turned out my sister was a few cars back waiting to cross the same intersection, so I got an e-mail from her about almost witnessing my untimely demise.

The pollen season is in full swing now. Everyone on our block just chipped in $45 each to have the tree people come out and spray all of the live oak trees (Quercus virginiana) to kill the emerging buck moth caterpillars. I woke up in the middle of the night last night because the inside of my ear (ie. around my eustachian tube) was itching like crazy. Everything is covered with a thick layer of yellow-green pollen and the streets are full of those little messy green-brown flowers that they drop by the tons this time of year.

So what do you think? Should I wear a helmet in to work tomorrow in order to get my free donut?? The "Bike Tulane" group will be handing out free donuts and strawberries at my building's bike room every Wednesday this month to everyone who comes in wearing a helmet. It's called "Project Donut."

Gotta love it!

DST

Aughh! The first weekday morning of Daylight Savings Time.

The alarm goes off and I hear the two local DJs trying to be funny before 6 a.m. It takes me a couple of minutes to summon up the energy to turn it off, and a few more minutes pass before my feet actually hit the floor. The room is dark and cool and I strain to see the outdoor temperature on my bedside thermometer. Fifty-two degrees. The skies are supposed to be clear today, so I decide to skip the long tights, but take along the vest and arm-warmers. Outside it's just barely light enough to leave the tail light home, and as I pedal slowly through the quiet neighborhood streets I can feel yesterday's ride in my legs. Today will be an easy recovery ride. I don't think I really rode hard enough over the weekend to be so stiff, but these old legs don't recover like they used to.

The levee is deserted, which is just as well. Riding alone suits my mood today anyway. Without the effort and company of the group, my head begins to fill with the day's problems. Things that need to be done, bills that need to be paid, drains that need un-clogging, work that needs to be finished. My pace gradually rolls up to 21 or so, but every few miles I ease up and coast as my mind wanders. I find myself scanning the river through the bright young leaves of the batture willow trees. It's quiet, and I'm glad I took the time to clean out my Look pedals last night. Every time they get dusty (The Rouge did it this time) they start to emit the classic Look creak with each pedal stroke. Today they are silent and if I listen closely I can hear the light click, click, click of the cadence pickup each time the magnet in my pedal axle passes it.

I see first Eddie and then Dan on their way out as I'm on my way back. More victims of the DST shift.

Back at home I run through the morning routine and hop on the commuter for the ride to work. The sky is blue and the temperature is perfect and even the RTA busses can't spoil such a spring morning. Things are quiet at work, but I know it's only the calm before the storm. Deadlines are looming and I 'm waiting for three other people to finish their parts before I can begin mine. The longer they take, the less time I'll have.

Situation: Normal.

I check the TXBRA forum and scan the results of the Cold Spring road race. Charlie took 6th in the Cat. 1,2,3 Masters race, but I don't see Rick listed. It sounds like there was some confusion and/or delay at the race in getting the results out, and riders who were missed are replying to the forum trying to set things straight. I get an e-mail from the U. of Iowa about a problem I'm having uploading to the "Inside Stuff" website for the women's gymnastics team. The site has bumped up against its measly 175 MB quota. They bump it up to 200 MB and I delete a bunch of files to make some more room so I can upload another 18 megs of photos that have been waiting on my computer since last week. I send them a reply, pointing out that I have more than 200 MB on the keychain in my pocket and why are they so stingy on disk space? I don't expect a reply.

Last weekend was "show off your new team kit" weekend around here. Every local team has a completely new jersey design this season and it seems like they all came together for the Saturday Giro ride. It's always a bit disconcerting to me when the jerseys change, and it takes a few weeks for me to readjust so that I can recognize everyone again from a distance. The new Verge NOBC jerseys feel pretty nice and I expect they will be particularly good when the temperatures start to increase. The shorts were a little uncomfortable on me during yesterday's 75 mile ride, but I think they will be fine after a trip through the washing machine. My new red-white-and-blue Bell Ghisallo helmet was just a tiny bit snug where the plastic at the back of the helmet was pressing against my head, but a few strategic taps with the old ball-peen hammer took care of that. I'll ride with it a few more times before I finally cut off the considerable amount of extra strap. Then I'll put a few stitches through the strap to keep the ends from dangling around and keep it in adjustment.

A Good Day to Ride

It was cool and still a little dark this morning when I headed out to the bike path. I was all decked out in the new team kit, having adjusted the new Bell helmet the evening before. I wasn't quite positive what time Realdo and Tim said they were meeting, so I figured I'd make my way down to Jefferson Playground for about 7 a.m. and I'd be sure not to miss them. Realdo showed up around 7:15, explaining that he had mistakenly set his clock an hour back instead of an hour forward last night, so he was lucky he made it in time. Tim was supposed to be coming toward us from Kenner, but we never saw him although we waited around for a couple of minutes at the pumping station in River Ridge where he usually meets the bike path. There were five of us, including Joe Fusilier, and we were shooting for a long but easy ride today.

When we got out to Destrahan, we decided to ride across the Mississippi River on the suspension bridge that goes to Luling. This is a really beautiful bridge that we're probably not really supposed to be riding on, since it's at the end of an Interstate spur that goes South from Interstate 10. The really neat thing about it is that the concrete barrier on the outside of the road is only about three feet high, so you can see right over it. Some people find it a little scary to ride over. The bridge makes for a nice little climb to break up the monotony of the levee bike path. We just rode across, looped around, and rode back across. On the other side, I started looking back up the bridge for Joe and, not seeing him, asked if anybody knew how far back he was. Someone said that they thought he had turned back before we actually got onto the bridge, which seemed reasonable, so we headed back toward town, picking up Brian and Laura along the way. When we reached the Audubon Park end, we turned around and headed back to do another 25 miles or so and shortly thereafter we saw Joe coming our way with another rider (there were lots of people out on the levee today because of the nice weather). So unfortunately it looks like we had basically abandoned Joe out there! Anyway, I ended up with 75 miles or so, which I badly needed. So it was a nice ride on a nice day, and other than the high pollen level that is playing havoc with my lungs and head, it was good.

A friend called today and I was happy to hear that she's feeling a bit better about a difficult situation. A good hard road race is always good for that sort of thing!

Day on the Road

I took the car out to the lake this morning for the Giro ride. Laura was going to be distributing the new team kit after the ride and I didn't want to have to haul an extra helmet and assorted riding clothes back the hard way. I got there a little bit early, thinking maybe I would ride a few miles before the training ride started, but the wind was blowing off the lake at something like 30 mph and it felt cold - cold enough that I dug around in my bag for an extra jersey. Just before the ride started, Jen was having trouble transferring a pair of Speedplay pedals from one bike to the other, so I was drafted to try and get them off. She had a Spin Doctor pedal wrench from Performance. What a POS! The offset design looks like it would help keep your knuckes away from the menacing chainring, but in reality all it does is cause enough tourque to be applied in the wrong direction to practically ensure that you will twist the wrench off of the pedal flats and, as I discovered, jam your knuckles right into the chainring. Anyway, I did succeed at getting the pedals off, although I'm sure there's still some of my blood on the crankarm. After the ride I had to carefully peel my glove off of my knuckle where it was stuck to it with dried blood.

The Giro ride was pretty fast, despite the wind which was most often a crosswind for us. I was feeling kind of lousy from the start - don't know why really. There were a couple of flats early in the ride that most everyone waited for, but it got fast enough along Hayne to split the group into at least three pieces, most of which regrouped after the turn onto Chef Highway. That didn't last long, though, and things split up again along Chef when the pace got fast again. So after we got back to the lakefront I hung around a while and picked up my new jersey, shorts and helmet, which I'll try out tomorrow morning, and headed home. Just enough time to shower, and then I had to drive up to Baton Rouge to visit The Wife's mom. We checked her out of the assisted living home and took her to the zoo, which was packed. It seemed to be particulary overstocked on large hungry fat women, actually. Well the mom-in-law started getting rather shaky after a while - I'm guessing low blood sugar and/or anemia - so we beat a hasty retreat back, after which The Wife felt an urgent need to buy a spring theme wreath for her mom's door. Of course, we didn't have a clue where to get such a thing in Baton Rouge and went to four or five different places before finding one. Didn't get back to N.O. until around 8 p.m. and then had to go over to my mom's house to dog-sit for the night. At least there's wine here!! I guess I'll hit the levee tomorrow, since this place is right at the start of the bike path, and try and hook up with Tim and Realdo who are supposed to be doing a long levee ride tomorrow morning.

The Friday Scoop

It rained all night and although the streets were soaking wet this morning, the radar indicated that the worst has already passed so I decided to go out for an easy ride. My only concession to the wet streets covered with messy oak tree flowers was to pull on a pair of shoe covers to keep the shoes a bit cleaner. It was no surprise that there was nobody waiting at the pump this morning and I rolled past without even slowing down. Fridays are always pretty thin rider-wise, and with the wet streets I was pretty sure I'd be riding by myself. Just after going past Jefferson Playground, I spotted Realdo on his way back from an early ride; no doubt trying to get home in time to swap parental duties with his wife when she went off to work.

A few minutes later, I was surprised to run into Frank Moak from the Herring Gas team who was also out for an easy ride. He was in town for a doctor's appointment at Tulane. Frank has alopecia, which explains the moniker "The Great Balded One." Anyway, I was glad to have someone to ride with on this dreary morning and as we headed out toward Kenner he gave me the scoop on the Herring Gas team's plans.

Frank was saying that the team was getting pretty beaten up by the elite Texas teams, and that even the local NBO team was starting to give them trouble, so they are planning on changing over to a masters-only team this summer. Those guys should really be able to clean up in the 35+ races! Herring's been around quite a long time and quite a few of them are now old enough to ride masters races, so they would just have to cut a few of the younger guys. The switch would also give them the ability to pick up some of the hot local masters riders like Jay Joyce and Todd Herbet! One of the new team benefits, in addition to free frames and clothing kits, would apparently be free monthly steroid testing. Not to see if they were abusing it, but to see if they still had any left!

Oh, and they are almost ready to order the new team uniforms already. In order to emphasize the new team focus, they will be moving away from their traditional blue colors and going with a bright red scheme. That way they will be able to leverage their new nickname "The Red Herrings."