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.
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