Smooth and Steady

This morning's training ride was smooth and steady. The dozen or so riders who were up on the levee were all of the same mind today and we did the paceline thing all the way. Charlie T showed up today. He's done with Texas A&M and headed to LSU for Law School in the Fall. I was actually glad that the pace never got very fast since I could feel my legs a little bit when I first got onto the bike. I was able to spin along in the 39 x 13 most of the way, just shifting up to the 53 x 17 toward the end when the horses started smelling the barn and the speed crept up a notch. Instead of getting off of the levee bike path at Oak Street as I often do, I rode farther down to Burdette Street and rather than switching over to Pine as I usually do, for some reason I decided to just continue down Burdette through Carrollton. As I'm riding along I'm thinking to myself "why the hell have I been torturing myself on the bumps and potholes on Pine Street for the last couple of years when Burdette is so much smoother?" I think it's the first time I've ever taken that route and it's much nicer that the one I usually take. Man, change is hard!

So our Data Systems operation is getting ready to move everything - lock, stock and barrel- from the main campus and my building to a new location in this big building near the Superdome that Tulane is leasing space in now. This is going to involve over 200 servers, a mainframe, terabytes of storage, tape drives, etc. The downside is that if things go as scheduled I won't have e-mail access from Friday the 24th through the next Monday. I'm not sure I will be able to handle that without medication.

With the Tour de La less than two weeks away, the training rides have been getting good groups and the speeds have been increasing. It looks like things are coming together on the organizational end, and Keith has gotten some moto-refs lined up for the road race, which is a big relief. I've still got some stuff to do that I'm pretty late on, but I've been really busy at work and not able to carve out much free time lately. Hopefully I won't forget anything too important! I think the main things left to do are to finalize the Race Bible and get copies made and assembled, and to make sure the results software is working by doing some test data entry and results. Online entries continue to trickle in, a few each day. It looks like a number of riders from Texas will be here, so that'll be nice. I hope everyone realizes that we will be charging the late entry fee on Friday night, so they may as well register online since we absorb the active.com surcharge and they can save the $5 for a cold mug of Abita Turbodog at the Acme Oyster House during the awards ceremony! My reward for officiating the Tour is usually an Oyster Loaf and a Turbodog after the awards ceremony. Yum!


A big typical summer thunderstorm passed over us about an hour ago and I think the big antenna on top of our building took two ligntning strikes, judging by the loud "crack" sounds I heard. Lots of good copper ground wire up here on the roof, though. It looks like it's cleared up pretty much now, so I may try and make it out to the lakefront for the training race this evening.