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."