Oh Man, it's Summer

10:30 last night. I look over at the outside thermometer. 85 F. The air-conditioners are working hard and have just started to get the upper hand after having been off during the day and having to cool down a house that was around 86F.

This morning at 6:15 it was still around 80 and the air was thick with moisture. An easy spin out to meet the Levee group had me already sweaty and once today's big training ride group really got going there was sweat flying everywhere. That's the problem with riding around here in the summer. In most places there's at least a reasonable proportion of your sweat that actually evaporates and does what it's supposed to do, but here it just drips. It drips from your nose onto your top tube and it drips from your helmet and forehead into your glasses and it drips from your arms onto your handlebars and into your brakes and shifters.

Despite the impending Tour de Louisiane, the pace on the way out was fast, fluctuating between 27 and 30 mph with a couple of guys on TT bikes. Rob's got his aero bars so low I think he's in danger of taking skin off of his nose. Todd was there, all bandaged up, describing in detail how when he got home after Sunday's crash he found he could insert the whole tip of his index finger into the gaping hole in his elbow. David was out trying out a used Litespeed Arenberg that he's thinking about buying. His copious and corrosive sweat has almost dissolved his current steel steed and so Ti is particularly attractive to him right now.

When we stopped on the way back to fix one of the levee ride's frequent flats, the heat was intense and I'm sure we left a pool of sweat on the asphalt. By the time I got home the local news weatherman was already reporting a temperature of 88F at Audubon Park. This makes commuting to work a little less convenient. When it's hot like this, as it will be until September, I pack my shirt and undershirt, and ride in whatever old T-shirt is handy. Since I don't really want to be riding up the elevator in a sweaty T-shirt alongside the Vice-President and other people to whom I'd just as soon prefer not to explain how I get to work, I change shirts in the Bike Room, leaving the sweaty one draped across the bike to dry. The really important thing is to have a very cold drink with me so I can cool down on the way up to the office. I usually put a soft drink (that would be a "soda" to y'all) in the freezer as soon as I get back from my training ride so it can chill down while I shower and change.

Registrations are going well for the Tour de Louisiane. I think we're up to around 55 or 56 online registrations right now, which is a bit ahead of this time last year. I always worry that the Cat. 5 race will fill up and I'll have to send people away on race day, since there's a 50-rider limit for that category. Right now there are about 23 slots left, so I'm sure the field will fill up. I just hope I don't have to disappoint anyone. A couple of times a day I've been updating a special page on the website showing registrations, but I haven't put a link to it from the rest of the site, so you just have to know the URL to see the list. It's hard to know what to make of the pre-registrations, but it looks like we'll have a good-sized contingent from Texas, particularly Houston. The weather forecast is still looking OK. Typical summer weather, which means a hot with a chance of afternoon thunderstorms popping up at random.