Cascade

Tuesday started out nicely enough. The long training ride had a huge group - I'd say more than 20. Then, about midway out as the group was approaching a spot where there's a big hole way over on the left side of the road, things went wacky. The pace was quite fast at the time and we were strung out into this long line in the right lane. Somebody called out the hole as usual, but I guess a rider up near the front was surprised and HIT THE BRAKES!! Geez, we almost had a big "Yard Sale" right there on the levee (bikie lingo for a road full of bike parts). When the guy in front of me hit the brakes, I had to bail out onto the levee to the right, narrowly missing a signpost. Meanwhile, Robin had to bail to the left and hit the hole, I think, doing some severe and terminal damage to his rear wheel in the process. The whole thing was completely unnecessary and I was irritated about it the rest of the ride. The pack split shortly after the "brakes" incident, which was a good thing, and the pace stayed pretty fast. By the time I got home, I was fairly tired. The Wife wanted me to go up to Baton Rouge with her in the morning to look at a car for The Daughter, and so after checking in at the office, we headed up the river. I was expecting to be back at the office by 2 p.m. at any rate, since The Wife would be meeting a couple of her sisters up there and getting a ride back with them after visiting her mother.

So we get to the car dealership and swing a decent deal on the car, which as I predicted earlier ended up being way more expensive than one of us had been planning on, and decide that we can actually wrap up the whole deal while we're up there. We had financing already arranged, but the guy who handles the details of the transactions was out to lunch and one thing led to another and we didn't get the whole thing finalized for a couple more hours. By now, it was around 3 p.m., so any chance of getting back to the office was gone and I was stuck hanging around the old folks home while the sisters happily enjoyed playing numerous rounds of Bingo with their mom and the other residents. Of course, I could have headed home myself, since The Wife had the "new" car, but it didn't seem worth it at the time. Unfortunately, I had by now completely forgotten about an NOBC meeting we were having in New Orleans at 6 p.m. to work on preparations for the Tour de La., so I missed that as well. By the time we're done at the old folks home, it's time for one of the sisters to catch a plane, etc., etc, so the bottom line was that we didn't get home until around 8 p.m.

Naturally the Princess will be sporting some nice wheels. Not exactly what you'd call a "prudent" choice of car by any stretch, but definitely a cool car for college. Hey, you're only a college student once. In ten years she may be stuck with a 4-door econo sedan, so I figured I'd throw a bit of common sense (and large wad of cash) out the window on this one. She deserves it.

This morning's ride was pretty fast for a Wednesday ride. We are getting into our classic Summer weather pattern now with a humid South wind and morning temperatures in the mid-70s. Later in the summer, it will be well over 80F in the morning, so I'm not complaining. On the way out, Rob flew past the paceline with Bob in tow and so I got out of the saddle for a few cranks and latched on myself. Rob was on his TT bike, surging up to 28-30, so only one or two other riders made it up to us. One was Robin who was also riding a TT bike this morning. Being smart enough to know not to spend much time out in the wind when there's a maniac on a TT bike pushing the pace, I happily sucked wheel most of the time, just taking a couple of pulls when the speed was slower. When we were about a mile from the turnaround, Rob surged again and Bob motioned for me to come through so he could ease off. I just laughed, since I was pretty much maxxed out myself. Bob's heading over to France for the summer around the end of the week to do an internship. Anyway, it was a nice workout. I was feeling sorry for myself for having spent so much on a car until Robin said that he had spent yesterday buying a HOUSE for his daughter. Ouch!

Now today I'm even farther behind at work, farther in debt, and likely will have to miss the training race this afternoon, and quite possibly the one day of this weekend's Giro de Brandon race that I was hoping to be able to do. Just a couple of little things that had nothing to do with bike racing will probably end up messing with my riding big-time. Cascade Failure.